For this last project in humanities we learned about the Renaissance and we made a song. Our driving question was who or what has challenged your worldview in the transition from elementary school to high school? Now you are probably wondering what correlation those two things have and don’t worry… so did I. At first I was extremely confused, but I realized that the song was about the transition from elementary to high school, and we were learning about the effects of the renaissance and what it caused, so that’s the connection. Both of those things are about being exposed to new things and how that broadens your mind and the way that you think.

Competencies:

There were two competencies that were assessed for this project. The first one was create, which is pretty self explanatory. It is basically how I used skills to create what was being created, which in this case was a song. I think that I did pretty well on this aspect of the project because I used a lot of my iPad skills to create the song. The second competency that was assessed was cause and consequence. This one confused me a little because I wasn’t too sure how I was being assessed. I think it is how we showed cause and consequence with our song lyrics, and if that’s case I think I did pretty well on it. I really had to bring my experiences from my transition and put them into the lyrics. The cause was moving from elementary to high school and the consequence was all these things that were increased like homework and just work in general and so on.

 

For this project we made a song! The song was really fun to make and the lyrics we’re also really fun to make because we can make some very silly lyrics and I got a few good laughs out of some of my lyrics and some of other peoples lyrics. Our song was basically a parody of REM’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It. The lyrics had to be about the transition from elementary to high school. Here are my lyrics for my song:

 

As I said earlier I really enjoyed making these lyrics and as you can probably tell I had some fun with it. For the actual song it took me not too long to record but there was a few microphone interruptions and I had to fix them which took me a little while. If you want to listen to my song it’s right here:

The next part of our project was to make a group song with two other people and combine our lyrics. We then had to make a video with all photos of all of us from grade 7 or 8. The making of the slideshow was really fun because I got to see a bunch of photos from my past and from my friends past. For this project I worked with Logan and Nate (Nate’s blog and Logan’s blog). Working in a group was helpful because when we are writing the lyrics if somebody had a verse that they didn’t like, somebody else would have a verse that could replace it. In other words working in a group improved our creative process. This is our song and video:

Worldview

Overall, I think this project was very interesting and I learned a lot about the renaissance and making music. This definitely made me think about my worldview and how much I’ve changed over the last year. It was very nostalgic looking at my old photos and choosing which ones to put in my video. This project definitely help me with the competencies, which were create and cause and consequence. And lastly I think this project help me learn about how our world was shaped, because of the renaissance, and how my world was shaped, because of my worldview.

For this last project in scimatics we learned about area and volume, and made 3D object in a cad program. The program I used was Shapr3D. I used this program because it allowed me to do more, and it was fairly easy to use. For this project I made a goalie stick in Shapr3D. We had to design our object for either maximum surface area or minimum volume, and I designed my stick for maximum surface area and minimum volume so that the stick would be light and still have a lot of area to save the puck with.

Competencies:

The competencies that were assessed this term were applying and innovating, reasoning and analyzing, communicating and representing. In more simple form how well we worked and how focused we were, how well we did the math aspect, and lastly how we showed the math aspect. For the first competency I think that I could’ve done much better. I was definitely a bit distracted during class, and I need to work on it next term. For the second competency I think I did a pretty good job at. The math was not too hard and I think that helped a little bit but I enjoy math so I think that was the main reason, and I’m pretty happy about that. The last competency started a little slow because I was unprepared for our presentation. I realized this, so I edited my presentation and it upped my mark for that competency and I was really happy for that.

For the actual model I think I did a pretty good job making it realistic.

This is a comparison of my model, and a real goalie stick. At the end of the project we were supposed to 3D print our model, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to 3D print mine, so mine didn’t end up getting printed.

Overall I think that this project was really fun and interesting, and in the future this project will help me a lot with math skills such as the Pythagorean theorem and calculating volume and surface area and volume.

For this term in Maker we competed in a tournament called Destination Imagination. Destination Imagination is a competition where you are required to come up with a solution to a problem that was given. There were different groups, with different problems, and that’s what I think made it really interesting because every group had a different thing that they were working on and it was exciting to see what other groups were coming up with. To name a  few different groups there were technical, scientific, fine arts, and my group which was improv. The improv challenge was a little different than all the other ones because it’s improv and we didn’t know exactly how our script was going to go until we were doing the challenge, whereas everyone else had a script that they planned out before. I think our challenge was less stressful than everyone else’s in some ways, but more stressful in other ways. It sounds very strange but I think it’s pretty accurate because there was much less stress on getting our stuff finished before the tournament, but there was much more stress on the actual presentation because we didn’t know what it was going to be until we were doing it.

At first I was not looking forward to DI but after doing a tournament and looking back on it it wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it was going to be, and it was actually pretty fun watching all my peers compete. I think that our group worked pretty well together and I was happy with how the performance went.

The challenge was villain and superhero themed, where the superhero has an underwhelming power like having a built-in pencil sharpener, and the villain has a real power and the hero had to overcome a conundrum that was chosen, and defeat the villain with their underwhelming power. We also had to add sound effects into the skit which proved difficult.

The first thing we did when we got the challenge was read up on the rules of DI, and then read up on the challenge. For the first part, they gave us around 20 different powers and we had to choose ten, or two each. I chose animal communication and super speed because I thought they wouldn’t be too hard to show in a skit. Next we had to research our powers. I watched Ant Man for animal communication and the Flash for super speed. Once we did that we were each given one major part of the challenge to become a “master” at. The thing that I had to become a master at was the underwhelming power that the hero had. I had to research in depth about this aspect of the skit. For example I had to know exactly what elements of the underwhelming power gave more points, like the fact that the creativity of how it was used was worth more than how accurately it was depicted. After that it was a lot of practising with random conundrums and powers. Practising was really fun because some of the conundrums that were given were super funny and made a very interesting skit.

When the day of the tournament came around I felt pretty nervous but also prepared and like I knew what was going to happen. The first thing we did is our instant challenge and unfortunately I’m not allowed to talk about because it is against the rules of the tournament. But luckily I am allowed to say what an instant challenge is. It basically is a side challenge that is different than the real challenge. It takes less time and nobody knows what it’s going to be until you are in the room and the judges are explaining it, hence the instant part of it. I think that our group had a small advantage because we already had practice with thinking on the fly. I think it went really well but that’s all I’m allowed to say. For our actual challenge, we got mind control for our villain power, our conundrum was school isn’t let out over summer, and our underwhelming power was that the hero could solve any puzzle with ease.

I think that we can improve on our performance in many ways moving forward to the provincial tournament. One of those ways is to improve our sound effects. We also need to be a little bit more enthusiastic and energetic. The last big thing that we need to improve is using our prep time efficiently, because we only have two minutes to prepare and if we use that time unwisely our skit could be much less interesting. If you want to see the video of our presentation it is right here.

Overall I think that our performance was very successful. I had a good time at DI and working on DI, and I think this project improved my teamwork skills substantially.