Category: Assignments

#BCTechSummit, Eh

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Not too long ago my class and I went on a one day field trip to the BC Tech Summit. At first I had no clue to what it acutally was, but the more I learned about it the more intrigued I became. The BC Tech Summit, is almost like an exhibition where a few thousand people go to one spot in downtown Vancouver, and look at new forms of technology and how it is changing our world. Another cool part about is that entrepreneurs, and people like motivational speakers from generally BC, come to the Summit and talk about there expierences in life or more specifically with technology.

Of course, we were given assignments while we were there. One of the assignments was to listen and take notes on two of the speakers, after you were done taking the notes you would write about them and about there company. I chose to talk about David Katz, as I thought that his company was rather interesting.  This is what I wrote about him:

David Katz and Plastic Bank

David Katz is the Founder and CEO of Plastic Bank. When he was just starting his company he made an appearance on Dragons Den in one episode. In that episode none of the Dragons gave him an offer as they thought that his company was a scam as it is not a not for profit company and it is made so that he is able to pocket a lot fo the money his company makes. David has spoken at many events, as he is said to deliver a “genuine paradigm shift that inspires his audience to see opportunity, where others see problems”. Now onto what his company actually does. HIs company makes it so that anybody can find plastic on the side of the street or wherever you might find it, and take it to a centre where you can exchange it for money or anything that is use to you look cooking fuel etc. It is supposed to empower recycling ecosystems around eh world and stop plastic from getting into and polluting our oceans, and at the same time it is supposed to help people living in poverty by making it easier to create a better future for themselves. “The Plastic Bank creates social and environmental impact in areas with high levels of poverty and plastic pollution by turning plastic waste into a currency”. Another problem with plastic bank is that he is not really getting rid of plastic in this world as he is just buying plastic off of one person and selling it to other company’s. So he essentially he is just moving the plastic from one place to another. After learning about David Katz and Plastic Bank, I think that he has a great idea, but I think he went the wrong way with it, and if he changed it in some way it could possibly help the world immensely.

Quotes

The other person I decided to talk about was Brent Bushnell who is an entrepreneur for Two Bit Circus. This is what I had to say about him:

Brent Bushnell and Two Bit Cirucs

Brent Bushnell is the Co-Founder fo a company called Two Bit Circus. Two Bit Circus’ main focus is based on youth innovation. The company hosts “Circuses” for youth to come and showcase their work. That is not all that Two Bit Circus does, at these showcase events they also show off some of their own innovations. Bushnell’s company has created a fun way for youth to get creative and try something new, and gain skills that will help them later on in life. Brents reason for Co-creating this company is fully based off of following his passion. I think that following your passion is a great motivation to create amazing work. That is exactly what Brent and Two Bit Circus.

One of the other tasks we had was to look at the options for university’s while we were there. A few university’s showed up to the tech summit, including BCIT, UBC, and UVIC. I mainly talked to the person who was advertising for UVIC. The reason I chose to focus on them was the fact I didn’t know much about UVIC and to be completely honest I hadn’t put any of those university’s on my list. I wanted to hear what they had to say about UVIC. I still dont think I am going to go to any of those universitys as I have thought carefully about what universitys I want to go to. For the past couple of years I have thought about what Universitys I want to go to, currently I would prefer to go to Stanford, even though it is probably to expensive, and the acceptance rate is very low. My next option is McGill. The reason I chose it is, from my perspective it is a very good school, and it seems attainable for me. My third choice is University of Alberta. I chose that based off of the fact it has a fairly good engineering program that I am interested in. My fourth choice is UBCO, I chose that because I believe I can get into it without having to many issues, and it still needed to be decent distance from home as my parents want me to leave the general area of Vancouver.

The last assignment that we had to do while we were there was, to create yet another podcast. We had to interview a mentor who was at the summit to talk to youth about his company. I am not going to talk much about the person as I have a podcast that can explain everything. The person I interviewed was Dave Donaldson from Teck, which is a mining company.

Going to the Tech Summit was truly and eye opening expierence as it showed how quickly technology is effecting th world. It was given to me in many different examples such as entrepreneurs, and people in industry’s such as mining.

WWII, Eh

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This past unit in humanities has been centred around The Second World War. It was definitely one fo the more interesting units that I have ever done, as there was so much information packed into such small period of time. We were told that our end product was going to be a website. The website would be about the different perspectives of WWII, the persepectives would come from the view of each country. There was several different options to do your reasearch in a group on country’s who played major roles in the war but, if you wanted to you could go on your own and do reasearch on a country that wasnt on the list. I requested to do my reasearch on Canada, I now regret that decision as I already knew quite a bit about Canadas involvement in the war and I think it would have been a better decision to learn about another country.

Besides making the website, we learned about the war in general and all fo the battles. One of the most interesting battles that we focused on was Dunkirk. In the evacutation of Dunkirk, the German Forces had backed the French up against the English Channel. The French were completley surrounded with nowhere to go. The british decided to do an evacuation by sea. The rounded up basically every boat that could go through the English Channel. There were hundreds of boats from pleasure crafts to ferrrys and even fishing boats. Two days after the evacuation started the Luftwaffe bombed the port of Dunkirk, whihc made the evacuation much more difficult. On June 4th, 1940 the evacuation was completed after saving 340,000 people, which was much more than they thought they could ever achieve. ALthough the evacuation was succesful, France surrendered to Germany on the 22nd of June.

Another thing we did was do a book review on one of three books we had to choose form that involved World War 2. I made a blog post on that not too long ago here it is.

Unbroken Book Reveiw, Eh

One of the more intersting portions of this unit was the fact that our class got to interview a German War Veteran. It was so cool to just meet one in general but getting to talk to him about his expierence was completley unreal. The person we interviewed was is Helmut Lemke, as I said he is a War Veteran that fought for Germany, he fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Helmut is also involved with this program called the Historica Memory Project. It was definitely one of the coolest things I have ever done, after we interviewed him we each took a piece of the recording we took of him and made a small podcast out of it.

One of the more boring parts of this unit was learning how to cite videos, websites, and books. It was mandatory as we needed to do it properly on our website. Which now brings me to how we created our website. We used Weebly to make the website as our teacher thought that was the best way to do it as she had created websites previously with Weebly. We later found out that Weebly is super glitchy to use on an iPad, so ended up doing basically on our iPads and then sending it to a computer where we put the info into the website. My group and I evenly split up the work of the website where each one of us would do two pages or so, as there were three of us and we needed to do somewhere around six pages. Instead of me explaining what we did for each individual page I will just show you what we did.

Perspectives of WWII

This unit was one of my favourites and I really enjoyed doing the research on my country, as I found some very interesting information that I would not have found if I didn’t do this unit. I don’t know if I would change anything except maybe explore different website builders for the iPad as Weebly was not ideal. As I said before this was one of the most interesting and engaging units I have ever done. I feel that I have learned a lot from this unit not just in what happened but, I feel that I view the world a bit differently. One of the main things that has changed my worldview was Helmut Lemke, and I quote “No one wins a war”. That single phrase completley changed how I thought about war, because he was completley right, no one does win a war, every country involved lost something. WWII caused every country that fought in it to lose lives, either civilians or soldiers. That was the biggest thing that I took away from this unit.

Job Shadow, Eh

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Back at the beginning of our planning unit, our teacher told us that we were going to have to do a job shadow. We ended up getting the specifics of what we had to do not too much later, after that class I almost immediately decided on who I was going to job shadow. The person who I decided was my best candidate happened to be a family friend that I have known for many years, his name is Brian Webster. My parents didn’t know much about what he did, they just claimed he is a “mad scientist”. What Brian actually does is work in nuclear medicine industry, creating treatments for cancer.

The reason why I chose to shadow Brian is that I am very interested in chemistry currently, and I would like to do something similar to what Brian does or become a Chemical Engineer. Before I went to his warehouse I had no clue what nuclear medicine was, but I figured out that chemotherapy is actually a form of nuclear medicine. After I found out what he actually does for a living I was super intrigued.

On the day of my job shadow I went to work with Brian in the morning and we went to a warehouse, and I was expecting to see inside a large chemistry lab, but instead I saw two large machines that were constantly running. These machines are not machines that you can just buy on the internet, you have to find parts for them then put them together yourself. I was constantly checking out what was going in each part of his warehouse. He currently has two employees to help him take care of what is going on, as there a lot of things you need to do to get the job done. One of the main things you need to do is make sure the machines are working in tip-top shape, so if something breaks somebody has to find a way to solve that problem. The solve those problems by often having to design and manufacture custom parts.

Before Brian created his own company he worked for a company called Nordion, he was a full time chemistry production technician. He essentially worked with radioactive materials, wrote his own procedures, they then later formalized the procedures. Once he made his own company, he started mainly doing physics. What he does now is take certain elements and basically purify them to a certain percentage. The machines do most of the work but he has to do some by hand.

Brian spends most of his time at work at a computer console using spreadsheets to figure out the consistency of the machine, planning for the next shipment, emails, and tuning machines throughout the day.

The job shadow that I did that day, was an experience I will never forget as it was truly eye opening, and it showed me something that I didn’t even know existed until now. It amazed me how much chemistry and physics is used in all of our lives. I am very thankful that Brian gave me that opportunity to see what he does in his everyday life.

Unbroken Book Reveiw, Eh

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This past unit in humanities we have been learning about WWII, and we all ended up reading a book related to our unit. We had three choices, Code Name Verity, All the Light We Cannot See and Unbroken. I chose unbroken as I was intrigued by the fact that it is a true story from the Second World War. It was also made obvious that it was a good story as it was made into a movie. Here is my reveiw on it.

Unbroken

This is a spellbinding book that takes the reader on an incredible journey of a battle of wit, endurance and power. The story unfolds following a young Louie Zamperini who is a precocious precocious younger brother who in his mind believes he never measures up to his older brother. Louie is always getting in trouble and having to use his innate natural skills to escape situations. His skills were running away to evade capture. He turns this running skill to refocus his life into ability to run really fast and qualify to compete in the 1936 Olympics.

In the early stages of Louie’s life he figures out that if he stops focusing on negative activities like stealing, and focusing on something positive like long distance running he can become really proficient. You follow Louie as his brother pushes him to become one of the best runners in the country. Soon enough Louie is a celebrity winning races left, right and centre. The story follows Louie breaking records and training for the Olympics at a very young age. Louie does not win gold but he is determined to go to the next Olympics and be more successful. “He didn’t run from something or to something, not for anyone or in spite of anyone; he ran because it was what his body wished to do. The restiveness, the self-consciousness, and the need to oppose disappeared. All he felt was peace.”

As Louie becomes a young adult he is thrust into the centre of the early days of America’s entry into the Second World War in 1941. Then as many young men in their prime he must enter the service of the United States Air Force. What starts as an elite group of Bombers who take to the sky to confront the Japanese as they battle rages in the Pacific War Theatre. This tight knit group after successful missions finds themselves on a rescue mission. Encountering a life alerting situation the surviving bombers find themselves in a very perilous situation testing resolve and survival skills. After days adrift on the ocean with limited food and supplies they must dig deep to stay positive and remain above all hopeful they will be rescued. That their lives will not end.

This journey leads the reader through the difficult weeks before they are rescued. Enduring tests of inner strength they must all remain united over survival. Wind, storms, unrelenting sun and open exposure to dangerous predators of the oceans.  They also had to confront the worst in human nature which is the selfishness of human being in the struggle for survival.

After being crushed by the unrelenting elements of both nature and the sometimes dark corners of human nature, they are then thrust into the next test as they are captured by the enemy. Already their bodies weekend by the basic necessities of life, food and water. The survivors must now dig deep to find the inner strength to push on. Push on and remain hopeful with the will to survive a prison of war camp. These camps are not hospitable. They are austere places with the very basics of food. Rice and rancid rations doled out sparingly. Crude conditions which run rife with disease spreading and only creating once more challenge they must overcome. Work camps test the very sole of these brave soldiers who are humiliated and treated as slaves.

The leader of these camps assigned to rule over the prisoners is not of the calibre of the warriors in the war theater flying the Japanese planes. This anger and resentment makes the prisoners easy targets of the fury and frustration. Compound this with the fact that Louie is recognized as an “Olympian” he becomes the very personal target of a very cruel leader. Louie Zamperini and Camp leader Matsushirio Watanabe go head to head. What ensues is now a battle of wit, will, and strength of the human body and spirit.“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man’s soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”

It is a true story that exemplifies the worst and the best of human beings. By having a positive mindset and spirit can triumph over the darkest of moments in our lives.

Disruption, Eh

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This is now going to be my third and most likely final blog post on California, as I have made to others about my trip to California with my class. I did one about what we did everyday on our trip, and the other I did on High Tech High.  Anyways this next one is about the main reason why we went to California. The main reason why we went there is becuase California has many different examples of Disruption, starting from the San Diego Zoo all the way to Twitter HQ in San Francisco. What I am going to be focusing on is aircraft carriers, as my friend and I did a project on how it has disrupted Naval Warfare. The place that we got our information from was the USS Midway which is in San Diego California. It is now a museum becuase it has become obsolete as it has Diesel engines, and now ships are switching over to nucleur powered engines.

Anyways, I will now give you a background on the midway. The midway was the first aircraft carrier built after WWI, and just to give you an idea of big it is, it holds 4,000 crew 90 planes. It is also 296m long and weighs 45,000 metric tons. It is basically a floating city. It also went through a couple of changes, as instead of having an angled deck like you see in the photo above, it used to have a straight deck. The british came up with the idea to have an angle deck, as it allows the planes to land with less risk, and other planes were able to take off at the same time. After a couple of years the ship had been modified and it was back out on the water. Learning all of this before I went to California made me super intrigued and excited to learn more about while we were on the ship.

After we were came back from California, we had to get prepared for an essay we were going to write on disruption. We spent a week preparing, which sounds like a lot of time, but before you know it, it’s already time to write it. Here is my essay:

The
Historical Disruption
of Technology
Ethan Dennis

    Technology has been in a constant state of disruption that has affected all of our lives in many different ways. It has affected the military throughout WWI and also at the end of WWII. It also has helped people’s causes around the world and it could have helped the hippies rebel more successfully. Rivalries in the tech world have also caused a disruption, as the top tech companies are always competing to make the newest and best thing. The pace of change is going at a faster and faster rate and as a result technology is constantly changing the world.

    In both World Wars planes were a key component in changing how the wars were fought. At the beginning of WWI planes were used to scout their enemy’s, but by the end of the war they were used in dogfights and they had machine guns attached to them. Naval ships could only shoot 15 miles with their large guns, but once aircraft carriers were introduced they were able to hit a target that its hundreds of miles away. When pearl harbour happened it wasn’t as catastrophic as people thought. Although lives were lost, all of the ships that were sunk were now obsolete as the new super power had just been introduced, aircraft carriers.

   In the 60’s the youth were known as hippies and back then they did not have the technology we do today. The hippies were known for rebelling against the government, and established norms, and protesting to large extent, but they did that all by word of mouth. In Little Brother the main character did something similar but, he had technology on his side. He was able to use something called xnet to communicate with people instead of using word of mouth. This was much faster and way more efficient then using word of mouth. If the hippies had something similar to technology they could have been more successful, because they failed without it.

   Apple and Microsoft have always had an intense rivalry. Although they both took two different approaches to computers. Microsoft focused solely on software, while Apple focused on hardware as well. Bill Gates knew that he only had to make a software once, and license it to other computer companies such as IBM and HP. This made it so that Microsoft would spend less and make more. Even though they took different approaches to computers, they still were competing to innovate faster than each other, and some times they even built off of each other. This caused the technology to progress at a much faster rate.

I have shared with you three different examples starting at the beginning of the 20th Century, of how technology has changed our society’s. I talked about how human conflict in World Wars, has caused people to innovate and change how wars were fought. That was done through improving weapons and transportation. The youth in the 60’s were known as hippies, and they rebelled against the government, but they did not have technology to their advantage which could have immensely improved their results as they failed without it. The last topic I focused on was how the advent of the two Steve’s and Bill Gates with Paul Allen shaped the world with new innovative ideas, which in result has kept changing the world since they started their companies. Now if you think about the industrial revolution, we are currently in a bigger faster version of that, which is causing our world to be smaller, faster, and more dynamic then ever before.

Both of those assignments were great for basically the same reason. The video I made took what I had learned and put it into a descriptive video form. After watching it just shows how much I had learned on that ship. The essay on the other hand took what I had learned and put it on a piece of paper. While I was done proofreading it, I kind of took a step back and went “Holy crap!” I learned so much in just the span of 9 days. It kind of blew my mind and I am hoping that in the future I will have the oppuritunity to learn that much in that amount of time again.

High Tech High, Eh

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As you know from a previous blog post, I went to California. While I was there with my class, we visited many different places, stretching from San Diego to San Francisco. One of the main places we went to in San Diego was High Tech High. HTH was one of the components to our learning expierence while we were in California, as it is a school that is completely different from any other school that I have seen.

The first thing that we did while we were at HTH was got introduced to our HTH buddy, as they would be with us for the rest of our stay at HTH. We were paired up with a student from HTH becuase, it would help us better understand what people at HTH do on a daily basis. We first got a tour of HTH just to be able to see what the rest of the campus was like. It was very interesting as it was very noticeable that this school was very different from every other school. The first thing you notice is that there are projects all over the place. Yes, normally you would see projects in the hallways of most schools, but this was on a whole other level. For example there was a bridge in the middle of one fo the hallways. Not a small bridge, a bridge that was several feet of the ground and went from one side of the hallway to the other. I was just walking by when I saw it so I am not quite sure what the purpose of it was, but it was really cool as it was fully built by the students. Another big thing that you notice while you are at HTH is that there are not lockers what so ever, I’m not sure why but they just don’t have them. One of the most obvious things that you see while you are there is that each class room has large windows in them so you can see clearly into them of what they are doing. It gives a more open feeling and less compact. You are also probably wondering why High Tech High is actually called High Tech High. You probably think that it is some super high tech place with computers everywhere, but in reality it’s quite different from that. HTH is a school that approaches teaching the students at a completely different angle than most schools. They give the students more freedom of what they want to do. Most schools just end up making the students study a text book and then test them on how well they understand it. On the other hand HTH study’s something together in class than discusses it, and gives there opinion on it.

While we were with our buddies, we wet to each of there classes. The first class I went to was Humanities, which if you didn’t know is Social Studies and English mixed together. While we were in there classes we participated in each of their activities. One of them was writing about what makes a great school. Here is what I wrote:

   If I was not in PLP I would not have the same friends, I would not have the same sense of pride that I do when I am in PLP, and I would probably struggle a little bit more as it is not the way I prefer to learn. A great school needs a lot of things to make it a great school. To start off one of the most important things is the teachers, as they are the role models of the school and set examples for the students. The teachers have to be good enough to know if certain students are falling behind or not quite understanding something, and if that happens they need to know how to take action and get that student back on track. The most important thing is the sense of community in a school as it makes the student feel more comfortable.

The next class I went is the class with probably the biggest reputation and probably the most hated class… Math. We ended up doing a math problem in groups that was actually very interesting, that in the end just made my brain hurt.

The next class that we went was very interesting as we talked about events that had happened very recently. For example one event that was brought up was about a Dodge Ram Commerical with Martin Luther King’s speech in the background. When we watched the video, the person who had brought the topic up explaiend how he felt about it and I completley agreed with him, as the way they used the speech in the commercial basically defeated the point of the commercial. This class was very interesting as it gave the students chance to give there opinion on something, which gives other students a chance either agree or voice there own opinion and argue.

While we were at HTH we had a project assigned to us, and that was to interview our HTH buddy. We were assigned to do it because, it would basically force us to get a better understanding of what life was like going to HTH. Sadly while I did my interview, there were other students playing dodgeball on the field making lots of noise. Here is the interview podcast that I made:

Going to High Tech High was one of the most memorable expeirnces I have ever had. I learned about how HTH is devoted to creating a school with students that are hard working and devoted. The way they accomplish that is by making it clear that being in HTH is a privelage and not everybody is able to have that privelage. HTH is a diverse community where everybody feeds off each other to create great results, and most of all to create HTH creates great students which leads to making great people.

Yippies, Eh

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If you have never heard of The Youth International Party, you probably think I was just having a good time and misspelt yippee. Well that is not the case. The Youth International Party, also known as the Yippies were a huge thing in the late 60’s. They got a lot of attention, as that was their main purpose. They were very involved with pop culture which was Rock n Roll at the time. They were mainly well known for street theatre and politically themed pranks, which made them well known for their senses of humour, but they were either ignored or denounced. They were well known for massive actions, such as trying to levitate the pentagon, which is crazy but, I think I have to give them around of applause for basically fighting the pentagon.

Before I did my research on The Yippies, I read a book called Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. The book mentioned the yippies in a small part, because the book was about taking down the government essentially. The reason why was is because the main characters thought they were doing something wrong. That is almost exactly what The Yippees did, they stood up to the government, and stood up to what they thought was right. That is something that I believe in, although I probably wouldn’t have the confidence to stand up to the government.

I have done this reasearch and read this book because of our main driving question for this unit, which is based off of disruption and how it has caused things to change. If you ask me I think that the yippies caused plenty of disruption, as they basicallly got in the way of people who were opposing them. They were all over the news which obviously means they were disrupting something.

The yippies have interested me greatly, and they will always be something the back of my mind as they are very inspiring and something  I could learn from, but I don’t think I am going to be one. All in all it is probably one of my most favourite topics I’ve learned about in school.

#HistoryWeek , Eh

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In class we happened to be learning about a part of Canadas history in the middle of history week, so our teacher decided that we should put #HistoryWeek out on social media. Naturally, we decided the best place for that would be our blogs. Anyways, I should probably start talking about the actual history in the assignment.

The assignment that we were given was, select a topic that involves Vancouver’s history. Most of the options were places but you could select a person that has a legacy in Vancouver.  Anyways, our place we decided to research was Blood Alley. It originally wasn’t an option but my group and I convinced the teacher to let us reasearch it. I did not know very much about, I had just heard of it before and why it got it’s name.(If you are wondering, it has nothing to do with the movie.) Blood alley got it’s name from being the back alley of a bunch of butcher shops, and after every day they would throw meat out the back door and blood would run down the alley.

Blood alley is located in Gastown Vancouver, I have already told you too much as my group and I made a short video that tells you what blood alley is.

In this project I learned a lot about blood alley, and since I have done this project my dad and I have tried to spot Blood Alley when we drive through Gastown.

Safety in the Work Place, Eh

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In school we learned about working safe because there are many incidents every year that change peoples lives that could be prevented. I personally have a job and havent heard of anything life changing but one really bad burn. Most of the dangers at my work are common sense, and if there not you are told what to do.

We learned about your rights as an employee for example, you do not have to do something if you feel it is unsafe. As this a very important subject our  teacher made sure we knew this is by making us fill out these multiple choice tests that had answers embedded in the reading. we also watched a video about people who had gone through life changing expierences.

I found that a couple of those incidents weren’t that easy to prevent, but some of those were just complete lack of common sense. If you watched the video you would know that someone stuck there hand in a moving machine, like come one you have to be kidding me its like one of the most stupid ideas there is. I work in a kitchen so thats like the equivelant of me sticking my hand in the deep fryer when its on. Just from that one incident it proves common sense isn’t so common.

This photo basically explains how I feel when one of my friends does something stupid.

For the final assignment of this unit, we were instructed to make a visual that involves something that we learned this unit. I decided to make an ad.

I chose to use Work Safe BC because it is where we got a lot of our information from. I found that it looked like a pretty official ad except the photo is a bit overkill.

I found that I learned quite a bit from this unit, and I will be using the information at work now. I don’t believe that I will run into any major incidents as long as I do what is instructed and do my job properly.

Russian Science Lab, Eh

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In science class we were doing a very simple unit on Safety. We had to make a safety video in a group. It had to have some humour involved but still get the points across of what to do and what not to do. My group decided to base it off a Russian lab, so one of my group memebers used a Russian accent to narrate the video. I was going to do it but I was the main person who was in the video and we needed to spread around who did what.   Here is the video.

If you don’t know who I am, I’m the idiot wearing the goggles the wrong way. It was a lot of fun and I would do this project again. This is the first time that this blog hasn’t been all canadian, eh.