The Iceberg- and What Time is it?

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A few months ago, myself and the rest of the PLP community here at Seycove began preparing for the winter exhibition. In my grade 8 class, we were tasked with building our part of the exhibition around three different periods of time: the renaissance, medieval times and our current time period. 

Iceberg Metaphor

While the end result of this project was of course our first exhibition, we wouldn’t have been able to do it without all building blocks that led up to it. This reminds me of the iceberg metaphor that PLP students are always learning about. This metaphor talks about how most people will only ever see and appreciate the little bit of the iceberg that stays above the water, in this case the exhibition, but so much more of the iceberg lives underwater, and most people never see that part. In our case some of the work that happened underwater was the power play post. 

Power Play

In many ways, this project is just a deeper dive into the power play project. For example, in the power play project, we made a medieval portrait of ourselves, including aspects of worldview from medieval and modern times. We then made another portrait, this time with Renaissance and modern worldview. I also posted a version of the paragraph I made to explain the Renaissance art. Finally, we made another piece of art, this time including 4-5 of our group members, and props we created for the live action version.

Time

This project made me think so much about the concept of time. I enjoyed incorporating different worldviews of time into all the portraits but also I thought about how time affects us now. It’s so crazy to think about how humans invented time and how it’s not really real but also how much it controls our lives. 

Time was a huge part of the day of the exhibition. It affected us when were setting up, and when we were performing in the exhibition itself, it affected us when we were cleaning up, and when we were waiting between rounds. It made us more rushed, or tired, annoyed, excited or nervous or angry. Can you imagine what our lives would look like if time was not something we could rely on? And worry about?

Time was represented in every part of this project. At the very beginning, when we worked on the power play project, I represented time in my Medieval portrait with an analog clock and a clock tower. I chose both of these pieces to represent how the way we perceived time has evolved and changed. Next, in my Renaissance portrait, I used a clock from the Renaissance times to represent time. Back then, people had just began to invent and use the clock. 

A Sundial

Clocks have been evolving for thousands of years, and will probably continue to evolve forever. I cannot even imagine what clocks and time will look like in a thousand years. Maybe we’ll have a clock built into our bodies? Maybe we’ll go back to telling time depending on where the sun is? Maybe we will be time traveling!

The sun dial was invented in the 100’s, and was most likely the first time any kind of clock was invented. In the 520’s, the candle clock was invented, and it was followed by the hour glass in the 1330’s. The weight clock in the 1280’s was the first mechanical clock, and it was invented in Milan Italy. From there, more precise clocks were invented, making time more accessible and reliable everyone.

Everything around us is always changing, from life in high school, to how clocks have changed overtime. We will never know exactly what to expect from the future, but whatever it is, I’m excited.q

 

My Face is in a Painting… Again?

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Here is my Paragraph explaining my Renaissance Art!

Learning about the Renaissance helps me reflect on how lucky we are that we now have the opportunity to learn.

Back in the Renaissance times, we read time in a very different and less specific way. It took a while for people to create the clock like it is now, people used sun dials, water clocks, or even just guessed the time by looking at the sky. Nowadays, you can just pull out your phone and see the exact time, or look at some clock in the room. 

It is so strange to picture life before clocks. I doubt ‘time’ was a completely bizarre idea, but it definitely didn’t control peoples lives like it does now. If you did not know the exact time, you could not arrange plans like we can now, or get in trouble for being late like you can now, because ‘late’ was barely a thing. If someone told you to meet up around sunrise, you could get there anywhere from 3am to 8am, and still not be considered late, especially if you think about how much seasons change how time must have been perceived. 

I showed this idea in my artwork by including a golden clock that I took from a painting called ‘Portrait of a Woman Holding a Clock’.

Another thing I showed in my artwork was the society aspect of worldview. Every type of person went to a church, it united people, and was seen as the most important place in the area. Churches had so much power, and so did the people who ran them. In the renaissance times, people were just beginning to be given power for their knowledge rather than for their religious standing. Even though almost everyone was religious, and went to church regularity, the people leading the church eventually began to loose power.

When education became something people wanted, the people who had knowledge became powerful. The church still had very much power, the Renaissance times was when I think that the dominoes began to fall, slowly taking away the power that the church held. 

I showed this in my artwork by including a wing of an angel, from a painting called ‘The Annunciation’

The last aspect of worldview I want to mention is beliefs. In the Renaissance times, people almost completely believed anything that the church said to them, which included their beliefs about the afterlife. People believed in angels, devils, heaven and hell. The church told people that those were the options, and people believed them- and still do. 

Even though we have learned so much in the years since the Renaissance times, some people see religious beliefs as a sort of fragmented reality, and some people see it as just reality. Now, people do not completely base their lives off of what the church tell them, but the Renaissance times still impacts how we live today. 

To show this idea in my art I used pieces of the painting called ‘The Assumption of the Virgin’.

Everything that happened in the past effects our lives today. Hundreds of years ago, someone created a sundial, and now time controls our lives everywhere we go. People wanted power and knowledge, and now, your social value relies on how much you know. The past dictates everything we do, and everything we know.

Sketches Pro, a Boot Camp

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I think Sketches Pro might be one of my new favourite hobbies. It’s user friendly and I love trying out all the tools. There’s an infinite amount of designs possible with this program. For this project, ‘Having fun with drawing’ we made five different drawings that helped us learn to learn sketches pro. 

Word

The first thing we were tasked with was drawing a word. I chose the word ‘Create’ and I made the word with green block letters, surrounded by little green doodles and lines. Making the word was a good starting point in our bootcamp because not only was it a fun thing to do, but it also showed our teacher what skills we already had. I am really proud of what I made, I like the imperfectness of the blocky letters I drew, the shapes of the letters, and the colours I chose. I think I could work on making the letters a bit easier to read, some people had a bit of trouble reading my word. To make my word, I used the pen-brush tool, and the grid ruler tool.

Shapes

The second thing we did was make 3d shapes with shading. I made two purple spheres and a green pyramid. We made these shapes to learn how to draw 3d shapes, and to begin learning how to shade. Shading your drawing adds so much dimension, and I am really proud of how all three of my shapes turned out. tIn order to make the shapes, I used the pen-brush, the sharpe ruler tool, the paint bucket and opacity tool, and the airbrush tool. My favourite is the circle I made using a sort of negative space to show the shape of the sphere. 

Robot

The next thing I worked on was the shape robot. I named my robot the ‘evil green butler’ and made it with a variety of different shapes and shading. I shaded the right corner of all of the different shapes, and added a purple shadow behind it. To make my robot I used the shape ruler tool, the airbrush tool, the blending tool, and the brush pen tool. I am really proud of my robot, and it might be my favourite thing we made in within this project.

Emoji

Another thing we worked on was making our own emoji. I worked on two emojis, an angry bumble bee and a sad face, but I only ended up finishing the bumble bee. This was the most complex thing I made in this project, and I am proud of how it came together.  I used the fill tool, the shape ruler tool, the marker tool, and the brush pen tool. I really like my emoji that I made, but i think I could have made it a bit less crowded. It is almost hard to look at with all of the contrasting colours I used, the bright yellows and the hard blacks. Maybe I could have used more muted colours or simplified the drawing. Overall I am proud of the emoji i made, and there is not too much I would change.

Logo

The last thing we made was a logo for our imaginary business. My business is a robot workshop. The way it works is you put in orders for us to build a robot of any shape or form, and we ask no questions. Some people use our robots to finish their homework, or play catch, but the majority of our customers use our robots to plot the demise of innocents, and like I said, we ask no questions. The robot on my logo is the ‘evil green butler’ which is the robot I created in the third assignment. I actually created two business and logos, but I liked the second one better. To make my current logo, I used the circle ruler tool, the shapes tool, the lettering tool, the colour fill tool, the airbrush tool, and the blend tool. I like my logo and the only thing I think I would change about it is to try and make the lower sentence follow the bottom of the circle. This is probably my favourite thing that I made in this project.

I really enjoyed this project, It was so much fun to explore sketches pro, and I will definitely continue to use the program and hopefully improve.

The Story of How I got My Face Stuck in a Painting…

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Have you ever seen yourself as a Medieval old lady and then surrounded her with symbols of world view? Well I just did. In this project we read ‘The Book of the Lion’, learned about Chinggis Khan, the Haudenosaunee people and their great law of peace, put together an artwork Choice Chart, and then finally stuck my face on the a painting.

THE BOOK OF THE LION

The first thing we did for this project was read ‘The Book of The Lion’, and fill out role sheets about different parts of the book. I am proud of my hard work on the role sheets, I put a lot of thought into all of them, and made sure everything I did was intentional and made sense to me.

Something I’m not proud of is that it’s still a real challenge for me to answer these PLP questions. It takes me a lot of time to get into the right mood where I can understand the assignment and figure out my thoughts. Hopefully it will continue to get easier with each assignment we do.

To fill out the role sheets, we would read around fifteen chapters at a time, and then answer questions and draw images relating to the piece of writing. My favourite image I created was the collage I made that represented the choice Edmund needed to make at the end of the book. It was also the image I had the hardest time with, because of how many things went into the making of the piece. I drew an image of a boat from the crusades, and in the background, I added three images. One is a photo of medieval Europe, one is a photo of medieval Jerusalem, and one is a photo of question marks, to show the decision Edmund needed to make between the two places.

To be honest, I did not really like the book and it’s not something I would to choose to read right now or recommend to a friend. I know that I am not the only person who thinks this, the story wasn’t captivating for me and I didn’t find the characters appealing or relatable. That being said, I understand why this book was chosen for us to read. The book showed the experience of being a knight in the Medieval times and this was all new to me. I found it interesting and surprising to see Edmund change throughout the book. He went from being an innocent teenager to a scarred knight. Similarly to ‘The Outsiders’, this book shows teenagers in situations I will probably never even encounter. 

I can relate this to the driving question because of how it is easier to relate to individuals one on one.  When we categorize people into large groups, it is harder to relate, and its easier to demonize them because we are not seeing their individuality. This concept is as valid today as it was 500 years ago, Even with air travel, internet, etc. 

CHINGGIS KAHN

The next thing we learned about in this project was different historical leaders, and what made them so powerful and memorable. Tyler, Madeline and I wrote a musical skit about Chinggis Khan, and his role as a leader.

I  am proud of the final product of the skit we made, a funny and historical musical short that we created in under entry minutes, I worked well and hard with Tyler and Madeline, and would love to do it again. 

  Something I am less proud of is our time management. We spent half of our time to write half of a script and ended up trashing it and pretty much improvising the whole skit.

 

To make our skit, we learned about Chinggis Khan and how he grew his Mongolian empire, and created peace.

To make this skit, we almost wrote a script, and then filmed ourselves acting out our version of Chinggis Khan‘s story and edited it in both iMovie and Capcut.

We can learn from this part of the past in many ways, one being how we talked about if someone so fearsome and bloodthirsty could create peace, why can’t we?Even though Chinggis Khan achieved peace through force and fear, after he created peace he also valued equality and merit. He created a society based on accomplishment and capabilities instead of family ties, which was a new concept to people in those days. It is also something people think today. 

Chinggis Khan also enforced the idea of not being ordained by birthright, which is something we believe today. It’s a hard task to compete because of biases people have and the system set up in society that values rich over poor. A merit based society helps the society  flourish, witch is something Chinggis Khan proved in his mongolian society.

Another thing that Chinggis Khan did was create a mammoth colonization system, called Yams. I can connect the Yam system to the internet today because all the internet is is a massive communication system. Communication brings people together, the internet and the Yams are one in the same.

Over all, I loved making a musical skit with my friends, it was definitely my favourite part of this project.

RPReplay_Final1700254581 

 HAUDENOSAUNEE PEOPLE, AND THE GREAT LAW OF PEACE

Another thing we learned about within this project was the Haudenosaunee people, and the great law of peace. We were given the choice to show how the great law of peace affected the Haudenosaunee people today however we wanted, and I chose to make a drawing in one of the apps on my iPad. I am especially proud of my work in this section of the project, because of how much I improved my drawing with the teacher’s feedback, taking it from something I was not very happy with, to something I am very proud of. My original drawing, didn’t make a lot of sense, and it was not my best work.

To do this assignment, I chose to do a drawing. I used sketches pro and drew a picture about how the great law of peace effected the Haudenosaunee people today. When we were learning about the Haudenosaunee people, we were taught about how to convince people to pursue piece, they showed how easily one arrow could snap, but when six were tied together, it was much adder to break. I drew arrows to represent the metaphor,  using traditional Haudenosaunee arrows, and colourful lines to represent the string.

One thing I really enjoyed was drawing and using apps like sketches pro. I have loved experimenting with the apps we were given, and I enjoy this aspect of school. 

We can learn about peace from this assignment, how it is not just an idea, but something we can accomplish if we tried. Peace is something we have to put work into, it doesn’t just happen, its not our neutral state. You need to promote and prioritize peace, and not just wait for someone else to pursue it. 

The other thing that this assignment made me think about was the power of symbols. The Haudenosaunee people had one, we made one, but why? Symbols can be solid or metaphorical, and could be used as a positive or a negative. One could be used to convince people to do something, or to believe in something.

An example of a powerful symbol is a a flag, or even a cross.  Both of these symbols symbolize groups of people, and are something people are proud of. People devote their lives to them, people start wars for them. They are symbols and signals, if you fly a Canadien flag, it could just be mean you are proud to be Canadien, but it could also signify the F**ck Trudeau group. People use the power of symbolism to get people on their cause. 

CHOICE CHART

Another thing we worked on was the artwork Choice Chart I think that I could have worked harder to ask Ms. Willemse about the directions or even just read them more carefully, it took me a while to understand what it was supposed to do, and when I did understand it, it still took me a while to do the chart well.

One thing i enjoyed was learning about medieval art, and the stories behind different art pieces.

To fill out the chart, I searched the internet and the app Google Arts and Culture for a photo, pasted them into the chart, and wrote about them.

It relates to the driving question because of how I compared the medieval worldview shown in the art to how it thought about today. 

In the Medieval times, everything was very hierarchical, and there were very clear lines dividing groups of people. Now, living in a society without such clean lines doesn’t erase patriarchy and hierarchy completely. Now, the lines are blurred, and people can move groups, you are not completely defined by your class. It still does create biases that will determine what privileges you may or may not get.

ART

At the end of the project, we worked on putting ourselves in an existing medieval portrait. I think that I could have worked harder to make the different pieces of art fit together better and more aesthetically. A lot of the pieces look like they were just pasted onto the painting, and I could work harder to make them look better together.

One thing that I really enjoyed in the making of the art was learning how to use the Super Impose X, experimenting with it, and then using it for the art piece.

After adding me into the chosen medieval artwork, I took aspects of all of the pieces from my choice chart, and added them into the art. I then added their modern counterpart right next to them.

One thing I thought about when making my art was how our beliefs in knowledge is always changing. People always think, and always will think that they have the most knowledge, because they did at that time. Generally, people are always gaining knowledge, people 500 years ago could probably never imagine that we would have learned so much more, that there was even more to learn.

 

It’s *not* the end of the world!

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Have you ever read ‘The Outsiders’? Heard the song ‘It’s The End of The World as we Know It’? Rewritten the song? Made a music video out of it? Posted it on your brand new Youtube account? Well… I have!

 

Role Sheets

I have completed all of these things and would like to tell you about the process. As we all read the novel by S. E. Hinton, we filled out role sheets which are work sheets about the chapters. We read around five chapters at a time, and then filled out these sheets on our iPads. We then shared the sheets with our group once a week, and reflected on our work. The role sheets show our teachers that we understand what we’re reading. By doing this, I not only better understand the reading but it also helped me practice critical thinking, and going deeper into what I have learned. 

The Book

Overall I thought the book was alright. I see why people like it and why it’s been so culturally impactful but I personally didn’t find it as engaging as other books I’ve read. I feel like it was more of a success because the author was so young when she wrote it, and it might not have been because of the book itself. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a good book, but it was an amazing book for a sixteen year old to write, and it would have not been so impressive if some middle aged man wrote it. 

 Memes

In the ‘It’s The End of The World as we Know It’ project, we created  two memes, one for the Western vs Other world view, and one for our expectation vs reality of high school. For the Western vs Other worldview, I made a stereotypical ‘Karen’ complaining that she is never safe in a place full of ‘gays and drag queens’. This meme represented the idea that Karen is afraid of ideas that aren’t dangerous to her while, there is so much actual danger going on in the world that she isn’t focusing on. In the other Meme, we were asked to showcase how we expected high school to be, vs how it really is. I chose to show how hard I expected it would be to open my locker, vs the fact it is not that that hard at all. We used pages to make both Memes, and did it in groups of two or three. We made the memes so that we had to think about both subjects and consider our worldviews in a deeper way. I’m really enjoying using all these aspects of technology and becoming better and better at navigating them.

 

Song

The part of the project we took the most time with was the ‘It’s The End of The World as we Know It’ song. After listening to it many times, we were tasked with re-writing the lyrics of the song, making it represent our worldview and how it was changing because of our transition from Elementary to high school. 

After I wrote my version of the lyrics, we were put into groups and we made another version of the lyrics- yep, another whole song to write!

We wrote lines like, ‘It’s the start of Seycove and it’s not easy’ and ‘Slow it down a notch, lockers, rush, help me please’. We these lines to try to explain how we felt about school and how this change to high school is impacting us.

After  our group made our final version of the song, we recorded ourselves singing it, and created a music video. We made it on iMovie, using photos of us over the years.

I found it more difficult to write the song in the group than I did on my own, but it was nice to share the workload. It was hard to agree on which lyrics we each wrote and sang but overall I’m pretty happy with our end product.

I found the first few PLP projects very big and difficult. Now that I’m getting better at the technology and have a few assignments under my belt, it’s getting easier. The projects are still challenging but they don’t feel as impossible anymore.

 

Becoming a PLP Learner- How am I doing it?

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For my fist maker project of the year, we did the ‘Becoming a PLP learner’ project. As I reflect on the project, I feel proud of the work I did, even though I can see many areas I could improve. When I started school in September, I understood the basic used of my iPad, but I have such a better understanding of the tech now. I didn’t even know that you could animate in keynote, or that I could make ‘stickers’ for a Memoji.

My Fidget

The first thing we made was the ‘Keynote Design Notebook’ which was a keynote slideshow that took us through some of the many things we could do within the keynote app.  The thing I was most proud of from the slideshow was the Barbie Squishy fidget I made using the animate tool, shape tool, colour fill tool, and the image fill tool. I chose to make my fidget about Barbies because of my favourite movie; the Barbie Movie.  I love everything about this movie, from the characters, to the storyline. I think that I identify with it much more than the shoe, or the dress- but the hoodie was a close second. One thing that I regret about the fidget is that I did not showcase my favourite character, Ken, as much as I know that I should have. The main attraction was, of course, Barbie, and I am worried that Ken may feel hurt that I chose his bau over him- I would never.

My MeMoji

The next thing that we worked on was our Memoji, and its beautiful be-stickered computer. I chose stickers that meant something to me, like the Ski-wi- skiing kiwi, the feminism sign, and the Kenough quote. I made the stickers similarity to how I made the fidget, with image fill, shapes, gradient,  outline, and of course Memoji. I tried to make the Memoji look as similar to me as possible, and I later added Animation to the Memoji and the stickers when I moved it into the final slideshow.

My WordPack

Another thing we did was the WordPack.  I had the Word pack. I chose the green colour scheme- my favourite colour, and put the words in the shape of a mushroom- just a shape that  drew my attention. I used the WordPack app, and used words like, Lover-of-food, Daughter, and Feminist to create the final product. one thing I could have done better is try to find out how to make the words I want bigger, like Daughter, Lover-of-Food, Feminist, and Sister. Instead I just let the app choose random words that don’t mean a lot to me to hi-light.

 

 

The last thing I have not touched on is the driving question; Who am I as a PLP learner? I am interested, and creative. I am taking in knowledge, and I am curious. I listen,  I talk,  and I am learning every step of the way.

BEFORE: Marvel

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What is a ‘Marvel’?

This is the first ever post on my new blog! I will be writing about my handsome puppy-dog and her past life. If you have ever met the tiny gorgeous beast who lives at my house, you would know of the frightening, the ambitious, and the admirable traits of the beautiful furry creature- but where do you think she picked up the praiseworthy attributes? Though it is not common knowledge, my dog Marvel was once… A STREET DOG IN MEXICO.

So what?

Before she was accustomed to soft beds and an abundance of organic food, the two pound furry baby we now call Marvel was used to fighting for her food, and for a dry and warm place to sleep. Now she scarcely barks about her past life, however, I have talked with the one dog who saw it all, her brother, Duker. (Pronounced D-OO-K-ER) Here is what I have learned about Marvel’s life as told by Duker.

The real story…

*The first thing I remember was our mom, Jamm, me, and my sister living in one of those boxes with the big blue letters spelling out IKEA in the alleyway behind Señor Escovedo’s fruit stand, beside the two blue dumpsters. Jamm would leave every morning to find us some food, usually returning by mid-day with some moldy scraps. Back then, before we were Marvel and Duker, we were Jarrito and Mango.  Anyway, we would have to entertain ourselves so we made up games, like catch the mouse, which Jamm outlawed after she saw that the mouse was twice our size. You might be thinking, what happened to Jamm? I still remember the night. Me and Jarrito were playing chase, when we saw Jamm running towards us, full speed barking.

“IN THE BOX! NOW!” She pushed us to the box, and then flipped it over on top of us. her bark was muffled when she called, “Now be quiet.” We can only assume that she was taken, just like we would be soon. We hid in the box until we were too hungry to stay. We decided to follow her scent as long as we could, until we eventually found a dumpster. We were planning to stay there for the night, until a group of stray cats chased us out. I thought we were dead meat, that is until a big pit bull ran over and stopped us in our tracks.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she said, and I was about to run, when little Jarrito marched right up to her and said:

“Why do you care?” Jarrito barked, and the big dog growled.

“This is out turf, no place for weak little pups like you.” At this point I was ready to pass out, but Jarrito barked right back

“Who said we’re weak?”

We were both nervous, but Jarrito knew that if we didn’t have somewhere to sleep, and something to eat soon, we wouldn’t make it through the night. Anyway, the big dog rolled her eyes, and told us,

“Come with me.” I remember looking at Jarrito thinking ‘We’re gonna run right?’ but no! she followed the big dog, and did it with swagger.

We followed the big dog to a dead end, a big brick wall. At first I was confused, and then I was REALLY confused when the big dog walked through the wall? We stood there puzzled, before the big dog stuck her head back out asking us to follow.

“Come on.” We inched towards the big dog’s head, and saw that she had slipped though a crack in the wall, just barely big enough for her to fit though, but easy enough for the scrawny things we were.

Behind the wall was like dog heaven. Piles of trash, food scraps, and bones covered the ground. Dogs of all breeds and sizes roamed happily, digging through trash and gnawing on bones.  In the centre, there was a huge beanbag, covered with dirty blankets and more bones. The Pitt marched up to the to the beanbag, and a tiny brown speckled head popped out. I noticed a long scar from its eye all the way down to its chin.

“What is it Dave?” ‘Dave’ the big dog who had taken us here, sat down in front of the beanbag and nodded towards us.

“Found them walking around the Cat Dump.”

“And?”

“Well, they looked hungry, and if I left them there, the cats would have eaten them.”

“Well if they are here to stay, at least put them to work.”

 

Now…

Duker then told me about how Marvel/ Jarrito slowly began to take over the group, until she finally battled Moosh (the little dog) for the bean bag throne. After she bested the little dog in a game of tag, the group morphed into a Mafia. Jarrito soon became the dog everyone feared. She ran many illegal businesses, from gambling rings, to rigged games, and was on the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Until one day, she and her brother were taken, just like their mother, to be adopted and pampered. Jarrito was forced to retire her Mafia career, but still practiced the art of manipulation on her adopted older brother Soda, and she still is the owner of all bean bag chairs.

*This interview has been translated from DOG to ENGLISH

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