Tag: project

Watt the Heck?!

Posted on by elsaw

Watt the Heck!?

How does electricity shape our society, and how can we generate it more sustainably?

During this project, we learnt many different types of energy and how to generate energy. But our main focus was how to generate clean and sustainable energy. 

Electricity is a huge part of everyday life, it powers our homes, keeps hospitals running, and lets us stay connected with each other. But a lot of it still comes from fossil fuels, which pollute the environment. To make it more sustainable, we need to focus on renewable energy like solar, wind, and hydropower. Using energy more efficiently and improving battery storage can also help cut down our reliance on nonrenewable sources. If we keep pushing for cleaner energy, we can build a more sustainable future.

Hydro Electricity Infographic:

This was our first assignment in this project. We had to make in infographic on our choice of sustainable electricity. I chose hydro electricity because I love water and I find it fascinating that water can power electricity. Hydroelectricity is a way of generating power using moving water. Dams or turbines are placed in rivers or reservoirs to harness the energy from flowing water, which spins turbines to produce electricity. It’s a renewable energy source because water cycles naturally through rainfall and rivers. Hydropower is one of the most reliable and widely used renewable energy sources, but it can impact ecosystems by changing water flow and affecting fish populations. Despite this, it remains a clean and efficient way to produce electricity without burning fossil fuels.

Operation Electricity! ⚡️ 

This was the final benchmark in our project. We had to create a replica of the game ‘Operation’. Using our newfound skills with electricity, we made a fully functional (most of the time) board game!! We made it with a shoe box, tin foil, wires, metal tweezers and a whole lot of electrical tape! It’s crazy what you can do with just those materials. 

I really liked doing the practice one because I was really proud of myself when it worked. It was a bit challenging to get my actual game to work 100% of the time because every once in a while I would have to re adjust the foil to get it to work. But I did it in the end! The tin foil we used was the conductor of electricity. We created a closed circuit for the electricity to flow through and to turn on the light.

thanks for reading this short little post on electricity and all the ways to harness, and use it (sustainably of course.)

Revolutions In Action🚦

Posted on by elsaw

Hello and welcome back to my blog. In this blog, I will talk about my PLP 9 experience during the winter exhibition! This blog is a 2-parter so you can read about BOTH the exhibition and the project called “Vive Les Machines À Métaphores”. I’ll start with the humanities project that led up to the exhibition. 

Vive Les Machines À Métaphores⚙️

This project was all about What Factors Precipitate ‘Revolution’ and How Have They Shaped the Modern World? Revolutions happen when economic struggles, political oppression, and social inequality push people to demand change. Big ideas, new technology, and outside pressures often fuel the fire, like in the French Revolution. They’ve shaped the world by ending monarchies, spreading democracy, advancing rights, and driving progress. Revolutions show that the fight for freedom and fairness never stops. 

Animal Farm:

Our project started off with us doing a novel study on the book Animal Farm by George Orwell. Animal Farm is a book about animals who rebel against their farmer to create a society where they are all equal. However, as the pigs take control, they become as oppressive as the humans they replaced. The story highlights how power can corrupt and how revolutions can betray their ideals. After we finished reading, we made an infographic on the four stages of revolutions and how each stage represented an action in Animal Farm.

Crane Britons Theory:

The first stage of a revolution is the incubation stage, people are unhappy because of issues like inequality, bad leadership, or economic struggles. Tensions build up, but nothing major happens yet—it’s all bubbling under the surface. Next is the moderate stage. Protests, strikes, and calls for change begin. Moderates try to fix things with reforms, but they usually don’t go far enough. The situation becomes more unstable, and people start to lose patience. In the most violent stage, radicals take over, the old system collapses, and things get chaotic. You might see violence, extreme measures, and big changes as the revolution reaches its peak. And finally in the moderate stage, things start to settle down. A new government forms, often less extreme than the radicals wanted. Society gets back to normal, though some parts of the old system might come back, just under new leadership. 

Revolutions in action:

Our next step was to learn more about revolutions. There were 5 different revolutions we could choose to learn more about. The Russian, American, Meiji, Haitian, and French revolutions. I chose the French Revolution because I already knew a little about it, so I took the chance to learn more. After we became familiar with our different revolutions, we were instructed to make an infographic on them. We used Canva to make our infographics both aesthetically pleasing, and packed with information. Here’s mine:

Exhibition Ending: 

Now it was time to put all of our learning into action. The grade 9 section of the winter exhibition was based off all of the revolutions. Each revolution group had about 5-6 people in it. My group consisted of Samuel, Eloise, Evelyn, Carmyn, and Liann. (I will link their blogs down below). Each group was to make a Rube Goldberg machine that was a metaphor for a revolution. A Rube Goldberg machine is a device that preforms multiple actions in order to complete one simple task (for example, turning on a light). Since they needed to be metaphors for a revolution, each action had to directly relate to an important event during the revolution. 

Spiral The economy spiraling.
Dominoes The government pushing aside the poors needs.
Bouncing off the National Assembly The third estate getting rejected from the National Assembly.
The tennis court The poor protesting in the Tennis Court Oath.
The rights of man board The government finally signing the rights for all men.
The knife and figures The execution of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The end of the monarchy.
The car and flames The Reign of Terror and chaos.
The car knocking over a board The execution of Maximilian Robespierre. Also the end of the Reign of Terror.
The ball hitting the French flag. Napoleon finally taking down the French government.
The crown The end of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic Era
The ball going back to the top The symbol of how revolutions never truly end and how once a revolution does end, a new one is ready to begin.

From the Top:

These are just a few video clips that highlight the progress we made while building. (My YouTube wasn’t working otherwise I would have posted this video)

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Presentation:

For the actual exhibition, all of the grade 9’s were put in a room with their Metaphor Machines. Once the people started to flow, it was time to present our machines. Each person in the group was explaining one stage of the machine. I was in charge of presenting the 6th action. Although I had to leave an hour early for a hockey game, I enjoyed seeing some of the other grades, and presenting our metaphor machine. On the whole, I think our group was the most successful. We had great organization and every single member contributed. It was hard work to build a Rube Goldberg machine, and even harder to get it to work properly. But in the end our group did really well and I enjoyed myself at the exhibition.

The End

That’s it for this blog post! Hope you enjoyed reading about the winter exhibition. Oh and also… Happy New Year!!

The Wilderness!🐻🌲🌊🌷

Posted on by elsaw

The Wilderness Must Be Explored!

Heeeellllooooo goooberrrrsss (my fandom name)! Welcome back to my blog! This is a post all about the most exciting humanities project I’ve ever experienced! This project was all about advertisement and inspiring adventure. The driving question was “How does language inspire adventure?” Ads use awesome visuals and cool stories to get you curious and excited. They show epic places, crazy activities, and breathtaking scenery to make you dream about going on adventures like that. Ads create a strong connection and make you want to live those experiences. They often paint a picture of a perfect life where adventure is a big part, pushing you to want to explore and discover new things. Some ads create urgency with limited-time offers, pushing you to act fast. When they feature famous people or influencers known for their adventurous lives, it’s super convincing because you want to be like them. Ads also say that trying new things and stepping out of your comfort zone can help you grow and discover more about yourself, encouraging you to be more adventurous in your everyday life.

The Quarry Rock Ad!

Who are first assignment in this project we took a short field study up to Quarry Rock where we then took pictures and asked hikers what brought them to Quarry Rock. Then we took this information and made an ad to visit Quarry Rock! We found out that most people go there for the excitement of a challenging hike (and an opportunity to take Instagram photos.) For the ads, we got maybe one or two revisions but in the end, we were all pretty happy how they turned out. 

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The Oregon Coast!!!!!!!!

Every year, the PLP grade 8’s, go on a trip to Oregon and now it was finally our turn!! on the trip we would learn a ton of stuff and also get to experience the coastal beaches and learn more about the history of not only Oregon, but the entirety of the US. This trip was a great way to test my limits on needing time away from my classmates and also running a whole day on 5 to 6 hours of sleep. This trip also tested teamwork skills like for example the quests that we did together, (you can read more about this in my adventure book that I will put below.) 

 

 

Rubber Boot Evidence!

Also, this wasn’t exactly an assignment, I just wanted to put it in here because it’s hilarious.

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The Adventure Book:

During our adventure in Oregon, we were supposed to keep track of our time by documenting everything in an adventure book! Although I wasn’t glad at the beginning that we had to do this I’m really glad that we made this book because now I can look back at this trip and look back at all the fun memories and experiences that I got to do. If you would like to flip through my book and learn more about our Oregon adventure in better detail, please do, I recommend it. It will be a fun experience.

2024 Spring Exhibition:

Now it’s time to talk about the (second) highlight of this project…..THE SPRING EXHIBITION!! This being my first spring exhibition. It was all new to me. The main theme of the spring exhibition was based off of our Oregon ads. My groups theme was excitement and escape, so we decided to play in zip lining, which was the most exciting part of the Oregon trip. Our food choice was apple juice and cookies. Apple juice and cookies are the two consumables we chose to enrich our audience with, because we thought it tied into excitement perfectly! During our field study to Oregon, we went zip-lining! During the zip-lining adventures, we were given the food choice of apple juice and cookies! Then we used our Oregon ads to make a display that would hopefully get the audience wanting to go to Oregon. I think that the exhibition went well, other than the fact my group had water balloons and I’m guessing you can tell where that led to. Thought to be fair, it’s not entirely realistic to expect a bunch of 13-year-old kids to be able to stay in one place for four hours and not want to have a little fun with water balloons. 

GROUP MEMBERS BLOGS:

Siena:

Eloise:

Cole:

Samuel:

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Thanks for reading!! 

I’m hoping this is my last blog post for the year, so I’ll see you silly goobers next time!!

 

Destination Imagination!

Posted on by elsaw

Hi and welcome back to my blog post! In this post, you’ll be learning about my first experience with Destination Imagination (DI). Destination Imagination is a world wide (if you make it to global’s) tournament that tests your team work, critical thinking, and creative skills. At the beginning you are put in a team group. I was in a group with 4 other amazing people (I will link their blogs down below). When you are settled in your group, the team manager (a teacher or parent) tells you about your task. I was placed in the scientific challenge. 

The challenge:

A broken jar, a bit of stone—the remains of the past are all around us. Have you ever wondered what those things might have been used for or what they meant to the people who made them? What archaeological mysteries will be revealed in this year’s Scientific Challenge?

-Create and present a story about a character whose discovery of an artifact leads to a finding.

-Include an archaeological investigation that contributes to the finding.

-Design and create a puppet that will portray a character from the past.

-Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.

The building:

For the building aspect of DI, all went really well! Im not supposed to share to much of our solution, but I can say that our props and physical aspect of our challenge went really well!

The performance: 

For the final aspect of our challenge, we preformed using all of our props and solutions as a sort of play. We used the story part to portray a message about a young boys love for science, but he doesn’t quite have approval from his peers. And then we used our physical props to make the story come to life. My team did really well in the performance, and it showed because we won first place! We were prized on our acting skills, and specifically our props, which were made all by scratch and with care. We had three vases, made with Papier-mâché, clay, and chicken wire. Then a puppet (our character from the past) which was made out of a mixture of styrofoam, clay, and cardboard. We also had cool costumes to make our characters pop! And for the last aspect we had 3 different backdrops, which we changed depending on the scene. I think we could improve a bit on our backdrops to make them a bit more clear and detailed, to give our audience more to look at. Also adding a bit more enthusiasm and energy to our performance (this excludes Tyler). But otherwise our performance was top notch! 

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Overall reflection: 

DI is a fun (for the most part) way to challenge your team works skills and your stress tolerance. It also allows you to do some critical thinking and to use some extra brain power at times. You will have to meet new people and also work well with a group. 

Thanks for reading my blog post! I’m off to spring break, so I won’t post much for the next few weeks! Make sure to check out my groups members blog posts to see their views of DI! 

Chloe:https://www.blog44.ca/chloer/

Tyler:https://www.blog44.ca/tylerm/2024/03/14/di-ing-to-get-it-done-destination-imagination-regionals/

Aidan:https://www.blog44.ca/kieral/

Finnlay:https://www.blog44.ca/finnleyl/

To make a video game!

Posted on by elsaw

To make a video game!

Hi and welcome back to my blog! It’s been a while hasn’t it? Anyways, for this blog post your in for a treat! This will be my first ever science blog post! In this super amazing and radical post, you’ll be learning about my first ever science project! The driving question for this project was “How can we communicate our knowledge of atoms in a fun and creative way”? To communicate our knowledge we made video games! On a website called “Scratch” we made some pretty cool video games with coding to display and communicate our knowledge of atoms. There are many different types of games you can make, but I decided to make a trivia game!

Amazing radical science quizzzzz!!!

Since I’m not that creative when it comes to naming things (except for my dog) so, I named my game “Amazing radical science quiz” with a few extra “z” and some exclamation marks for dramatic flair. My game is all about using your knowledge to complete a quiz. There are some simple questions and some more advanced questions to test your knowledge. It uses relatively simple coding to be able to click on icons to answer the questions and to get replies weather the answer is incorrect or correct, also to be able to hide and show answers based on the questions and backdrops. If you would like to give my game a try, you can search on the website “Scratch” or you can click on the embedded website I have put into this post. 

 

Reflection

I think this project went really well and I am very proud of the finished product. It was a great opportunity to test my thinking and technical skills while still doing something fun! I was presented with many challenges like ‘how do I get this to change when I click it’ or ‘why doesn’t this move when the backdrop switches’ but I was able to use my critical thinking skills and my communication skills to either ask for help, or find the solution on my own. 

Thanks for reading my blog post! I hope you enjoyed learning about my first ever science project! Make sure to check out my game, and or, read about some of my other experiences!

Radical Innovations!

Posted on by elsaw

Radical innovations or how it’s going

Welcome back to my blog! For this post you will learning all about the last humanities project we had before winter break! The driving question was “what can we learn from the past and why does it matter to us today?” I think that by learning about the past, we can recognize how lucky we are to be living in a world where the beliefs, laws, and ways of life are very different from the past. 

As one of the assignments we had to make and artwork choice chart! It helped us share with our group to and to help us get ideas for our final real life triptych! 

This project was extra special because our final products would be shown off at the winter exhibition! The winter exhibition is a PLP exclusive event where all 5 grades show off what we have learned in the form of for example a debate, or in the grade eights case, a triptych! A triptych is a three piece artwork that usually has a similarity between the three, like for example, the background. We made our own triptychs and then preformed them by standing still in a certain position to represent a different person in the society’s of the medieval, renaissance, and modern times, in front of a big audience! 

At first we made a digital version of our triptychs and then we preformed it in real life!

The digital version:                                        The physical version:

Radical Innovations or How it’s Going, built on our previous project “Power Play or How it Started” in many ways. For example many of the assignments were similar therefore, we could build from our previous one too make the new one even better! In Power Play or How it Started, we made an artwork choice chart, at first I struggled a little because I didn’t understand but then I got the hang of it, so when we did a second artwork choice chart in Radical Innovations or How its Going, I new what to do! Also, both of the project’s had the same driving question, meaning we could use the answers from the past project to help us elaborate more and give a better answer this time. 

If you would like to read more on our past project, Power Play or How it Started please click on the link provided!