This year I participated in the Destination Imagination tournament.

If your wondering what Destination imagination or DI is, its an educational experience that has project-based STEAM Challenges that use creative process to be successful.

 

The STEAM Challenge categories are science, technology, engineering, arts, or mathematics based. These challenges change every year.

My challenge is arts based and my team members are Lucas, Sofia, and Robbie. This year the arts challenge is called Change Of Tune which requires you to create a two act musical that includes a change of plan.

Teamwork

When we first got our teams for DI we were given a challenge to create a iMovie horror trailer using any of the trailer templates but scary. This tested our teamwork because we had to use creativity and produce a trailer in little time.

This trailer actually turned out great and we really did work well as a team. Our teamwork has continued to grow in DI demonstrated in our success of the instant challenges.

Preparation

In each category there are multiple requirements for the set team choice elements and story that if completed well will get you points.

To understand our challenge, we prepared by doing the Project Management steps. We kept the work we did, as well as the script, in a shared google docs with our team.

Grade 10 Fine Arts (Change of Tune)

For our musical we needed to get our costumes, and create our script,  music, set (with a changing background), and instrument.

With all of this to do stayed on task by splitting up the jobs and work outside of school (which we did multiple times).

In every challenge you need two team choice elements this can be anything that you think shows your teams best capabilities and isn’t apart of the central challenge. We decided to make our team choice elements Robbie’s pants that we designed, and a home made 3 drum bongo.

Research

Our theme for our musical was all about the 60s music and hippie revolution.

We presented our knowledge of the 60s in the set (was a tie die background), music and lyrics, dance moves, and especially in our groovy costumes.

 

Presentation

This year DI was hosted at our school Seycove so we didn’t have to move our set and equipment. Our presentation went great we and successfully pulled of our spectacle. The judges really liked our 60s theme and our music so we were very confident on how we did.

Next it was time for our instant challenge. In class we did a lot of preparation for this. For this instant challenge we got a high score and the additional 30 bonus points.

After everyone finnished there challenges it was time to see how we did. My team, Ending on a High Note, ended up being first in the regionals competition for secondary level fine arts. We won the central challenge and the instant challenge

Regionals was a success but let’s see how provincials goes

Have you ever wished that math was fun… me too

This term while learning about algebraic equations, polynomials factoring, and expanding we created a board game incorporating these things.To help us stay on task throughout the project we had clear criteria.

My partner Isobel and I had multiple days to brainstorm ideas for our board game rules.

Math board game rules

Our first draft wasn’t very clear and needed to incorporate factoring and perfect square more obviously. So we took this feedback and created our final draft.

final math board game rules

The last part of this project was to create a video playing and explaining the game.

Hope you enjoyed.

California trip 2018, feb 2-11
The PLP California trip was a really amazing experience that taught me a lot about Silicon Valley, education, multiple unique professions, and myself.

In this blog I’m gonna take you through day 1-10 of what we did and saw during this trip.

Day 1. First we took two planes to San Diego. Our first day we took in a breath of California seeing the beautiful Torrey pines national reserve and La Jolla cove.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Torrey pines national reserve is home to some of the last Torrey pines and is keeping them from extinction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 2. We spent most of the day at the San Diego Safari Park.

Here we saw:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also went on a hot air balloon ride that is apart of the park

At Safari park I learned that the most common factor that leads to animals going extinct is deforestation and habitat fragmentation. This disruption is what caused the three band armadillo to get be near endangered. I also learned that zoos work together to end extinction and decide the best place to put an endangered animal. The Safari park adapts the environment for different animals need and keeps them well exercised.

Day 3. Today we went to the USS midway and enjoyed the audio tour, listening to the interns who worked on the midway, and the very life like manikins.

At the midway I learned that it was full of determine young adults 17-19 who ran the ship. It’s amazing to think these young adults went on the large voyages in harsh conditions but still managed to do there job well.

Day 4. On day 4 and 6 we went to High Tech High. We got paired up with grade 9 students from high tech high, and got to experience what a school day for them was like.

Day 5. The final day at HTH we interviewed and said goodbye to our buddies.

I had an amazing experience at high tech high and learned so much from the teachers, students, and the school.

After we left HTH we took a flight to San Jose

Day 6. Today we went to google, Apple, and intel

Day 7. We spent our day at the computer history museum and at Stanford University.

At the Computer History Museum we saw examples of how technology has been creating huge disruptions throughout time.

Later we had dinner with tech giants Scott and Brendan who shared with us what being an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and working in tech companies is really like.

Day 8. Today we had a private tour of Twitter headquarters

This tour was really cool because we saw how modern and relaxed this work environment was. It looked like a place that you would want to be and encourages you to be creative and share your ideas.

Next we took a bus to the Golden Gate Bridge and then to dinner.

 

Day 9. We started off our day with a Wild SF walking tour.

This was a really great tour because it talked about a lot of things we have been learning about San Francisco:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was really cool to learn about how all of these great movements started in San Francisco because of the 1906 earthquake and fire. Because of the earthquake and fire the area became poor and had low population so the hippies were able to move in to the cheap houses. From there on San Francisco has been a place that people were free to go against American values.

Day 10 . This last day we took one last ride on the cable cars heading to the airport we’re our California journey ends.

 

riding the cable-cars

going back home

It was sad to leave the California sun but after a week of activities everyday it would be nice to see my dog and relax on my bed

In humanities instead of focusing on war or a particular movement, we focused on one word that includes that and more…DISRUPTION!

It might seem that disruption is a scary thing that causes problems but disruption can actually be a great thing and change our world for the better.

 

The word Disruption can be complicated because it has multiple definitions

• disturbance or problems that interrupt an event, activity, or process.
• to change the traditional way that an industry operates, especially in a new and effective way

This term we discovered disruption innovation and other types of disruption fit in to our (California trip) and how it effects our lives.

 

Our assignment for California was to choose one of the places we were going to go to and find examples of disruption.

This project could be a video, podcast, board game, photo essay, or the all time favourite puppet show.

My partner Willa and I chose to do a podcast on High Tech High.

After lots of research on the school we decided to focused on how HTH gives all students a chance to experience there great school by accepting them through a lottery system.

Thesis: High Tech High gives a variety of students, with different capabilities, an opportunity to learn and become educated innovators and critical thinkers.

I was really happy with the thesis Willa and I created so this project was on to a good start.

To further prepare for this project before we left for California we created a list of questions we could ask people at HTH

High Tech High questions

Next step once we were in California we got interviews from two teachers and a few students on HTH and the lottery systems impact.

Because willa and I split up to get the interviews it was hard to put them together at the end while staying on topic. I enjoyed learning about High Tech High and love how unique this charter school is. This school cares or every student and focuses on teaching them in away that is engaging and meaningful to them. No matter who you are or what your skill level is this is a place where you can succeed.

Reflection

This podcast had some amazing interviews and was strong. I thought we could have done more with the interviews by splitting them up into topics instead of having the questions all over the place. I think if we were to do another draft it would be stronger but I still think this podcast is good.

 

Once we came home our last assignment on disruption was a synthesis essays that was based on the topic question: How has technology acted as a disruption throughout history? This essay included a interesting novel we read over winter break, Little Brother by Correy Doctorow, which you can read more about here.

We also had to choose 2 or more other sources to include in the essay as well as some other requirements.

Synthesis Essay Outline

This was a in class essay that was done in the two humanitie classes that were given. Before writing the essay we did a lot of preparation and research.

Synthesis Essay preparation

My final thesis statement turned out to be: Technology is an amazing tool that can put your ideas into action to create a positive change.

Throughout the year we have been working on thesis statements and making them more specific

For my sources I used:

Little brother: how the main character used his knowledge of technology to create a change when no one else would

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak: there creation Macintosh was the most successful useful personal computer that made a huge disruption.

Welcome to Silicon Valley: young entrepreneurs using the reasources provided at Silicon Valley to make their ideas reality.

Going into this essay I felt very prepared and had a sheet of paper with quotes from my sources. In the first class we had time to write I finnished half of my essay. Then during the second class I had just enough time to finish my conclusion and read over.

Disruption in Technology final essay

I thought my essay proved my thesis statements and followed the requirements. I really enjoyed writing this essay because disruption in technology is such a interesting topic that could be taken in many different ways. What I could have done better on is referencing my quotes. I should have looked back on the work we did referencing quotes earlier this year because I think a few times I made mistakes.

Recently, my PLP class went on our trip to California.

After a couple days of enjoying the sun, seeing some beautiful beaches, and going to the safari park, it was back to school. But not our high school Seycove an Americain charter school, High Tech High.

A charter school is a school that is independently operated but receives funding from the government. Charter schools provide educational approaches that are different from regular schools. HTH has a community of elementary, middle, and high schools. The school that we spent our time in was High Tech High Media Arts.

HTH media arts focuses on having a college-going culture supported through a strong liberal arts and sciences foundation.

Now that we learned about charter schools and HTH we get to have a inside look by experiencing two days following a student throughout there classes.

 

HTH Media arts

The first thing we did was go on a tour of the campus with our high tech high buddies. I was super lucky to get two awesome gals Mui and Blanca.

When you walk around high tech high you can tell it’s not a normal high school. There are amazing student creations displayed all over the school and very open classroom.

We attended our buddies math class, media arts class, and socials class.

In socials we learned about how education should be the great equalizer and how American and Canadian schools are different.

In the media arts class we debated on current events today. Unlike how I have done  current events in school before this was completely student lead and you didn’t have to prepare an essay before. I thought this was great because we talked about a variety of things from school shootings to Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy.

Finally in math we did a interesting riddle. The riddle is called the Locker riddle and independently in groups of three we tried to figure it out. After lots of redrawing the problem out and using what we know we surprisingly solved the riddle.

At HTH we also got to interview our buddies. First we prepared questions to ask them.

I thought this interview went really well I enjoyed talking to Miu and Blanca because they had a lot of cool things to say like how high tech high has given them great opportunities that there parents could have benefited from, and what they like and dislike about San Diego.

What didn’t go well for this interview was the sound quality because we did the interview outside. Because there was an airport nearby HTH and the elementary school was walking around, a lot of the good information I got you weren’t able to hear.

Reflection

HTH believes that education should be the great equalizer. The school is devoted to giving everyone an equal chance for a great education by taking in students from different parts of San Diego no matter there skill level . This creates disruption because many students that wouldn’t normally get a great education like hth provides now are more likely to going on to college. These students have a chance to become intelligent future leaders and have a powerful impact on society. Another way HTH causes this same disruption is by encouraging and preparing the students to go to college. They have after school programs and praise every student that gets into college. The two main things I would love to bring back to Seycove is debates on current events. I think this would be great to bring back because sometimes we are so focused on our projects that we don’t take time to discuss the major issues happening right now. I also think that we could focus more on helping students with thinking about college and preparing for it. My oldest brother found that the grade 12 grad trans did not help him in any way moving on to college as it should have. Finally I also loved how HTH created this amazing environment by letting there students paint the walls, and furnish and decorate areas however they wanted. I thought this was very cool because it connects to how we saw technology companies like twitter and google create a place that people want to be. Just like Scott said at dinner, if you are exited about a problem it makes it seem like less work. I believe if employees and students want to be working at their job or school, it will radiate positive energy and reflect on the work that is produced.

This blog post may look like a ordinary blog post but you are mistaken.

This blog post is not about a book, or a project, It’s about Reflection

So let’s reflect on these amazing past 4 months, and go back to my first blog post Why did the War Start.

Not only was this blog post extremely vague,(being about 300 words) but I felt it didn’t show much of my learning. The blog post also had zero links. Which proves there was little or zero effort. (Or I didn’t know how to link, but besides the point)

What I did like was the difference between my first video draft, and the second. Isobel, Sofia, and I took a chance trying to use the green screen last minute, and it didn’t work out.

https://youtu.be/vbyDlVJNbjk

Though, Ms. Maxwell was fine with are video, we decided we wanted to create something we were proud. This is always my biggest goal because I set high standers for myself because I know I can succeed.

This project would have been much stronger if we planned out our time better and used sound effects or any effects in general. Overall our video was creative, and could have been strong but was not executed well.

Now I’ll take you…

And share a project I am proud of, my latest blog Everyone has a Story. Comparing these two projects I think show a good example of my growth, and what difference it makes when I’m enthusiastic about the project and use my time better.

Already in this blog I used a technique we learned, which is to draw your reader in by asking them questions: We all have personal stories, but if you were asked to open up and share one would you? What story would you choose? And how would you tell it?

Something that I demonstrate in this blog is that I improved in, and still can improve in, reflecting and showing my knowledge.

After every story I shared my favourite part of the interview, what went well or didn’t and what I learned.

In my family story I shared how this interview was the hardest because I wasn’t very prepared with questions and I stated:

“I found it inspiring to to hear how my mom stood up for what she believed because she could have chosen different god parents for James but she didn’t. This interview really taught me that you always can learn from the people around you.”

I have become much more confident in my blog post and projects but I can still work on organizing my time better to produce quality work for every draft.

Moving on to science I decided to share my project Identical or Just Similar I think for this blog I showed good understanding of the subject, (DNA and genetics) by referring back to the previous work we did like the table. Kate and I weren’t that exited for this project and it showed in our first draft but once I added some sound effects and fixed the audio it turned out to be good.

I decided to compare my two math blogs because they were strong and week in opposite ways.

In my trigonometry project I think I showed the most understanding of my learning for this subject (soh cah toa) in my blog post and the attached keynote. For this project I didn’t pay attention as muc to the astectics of my house unlike I did in the other project about the golden ratio

This years mPols there’s a twist. Instead of answering questions at the end, we get to ask a question. I decided to ask a question that I would love to know. I’m not sure what my future will look like and I’m very undecided on what my plans are. What I do know is I still have growing to do as a person and as a student.

If I was leaving high school now, what is some advice you would give me about what I need to spend more energy on to become a more skilled learner?

We all have personal stories, but if you were asked to open up and share one would you? What story would you choose? And how would you tell it?

For this project we told and shared other people’s stories. Over the past few months, before winter break, we have been creating a series of podcasts based on StoryCorps.

Story Corps is public radio show that also makes podcast.

Story Corps mission is to preserves and share peoples stories aswell as building connections between people.

Learning about Story Corps taught me the value of having someone share there story and experience. If we don’t tell our story it will vanish and we will never be able to learn from it.

 

My Mission

My mission was to affectively and efficiently tell the stories of 3 people.

1. My grade 12 partner Brianna, this episode is called “Seycove Stories”.
2. A family member, “Family Identity”
3. A stranger whom I will meet and record during the Winter Exhibition! This last episode is called “Everyone Has a Story”

Before we jumped right into interviewing people we learned how to affectively do an interview with Steve Inskeep.

5 steps to success

1. Ask what question, stay away from yes or no question
2. Listen, let your interviewee finish there thought
3. Follow up in your own words
4. Repeat events back
5. Use silence

Next we listened to short Story Corps podcasts. It was amazing how only 3 minuets stories can be so powerful. We listened to three podcasts and talked about them in this activity:

 

Seycove Stories

 My first interview was very successful. The hardest part was probably coming up with a theme because my grade 12 student, Brianna, didn’t have a specific story. We decided to focus on how her confidence changed through high school. I thought this topic was great because everyone can relate to this.

To help us out Story Corps has a bunch of sample questions that was easy to change to fit our topic.

Now that Brianna and I were ready to record, we looked for a quite place in Seycove. We recorded all the interviews on ferrite recording studio. I was very happy to see that the recording didn’t echo because I have found that can happen in parts of the school. I really enjoyed interviewing Brianna because we were both very relaxed which made it easy to talk. We had a couple days to edit which also was done on ferrite. The app was challenging at first but once I got the hang of it, it was very useful.

My favourite part of this interview is when Brianna told me about how she remembers her grandma telling her when she was little, “dance like nobodies watching”, because it’s a really sweet story and made me think of my grandparents.

Family identity

I decided to interview my Mom about why we aren’t a religious family. My Mom, James and I have always believed in god and followed Christian believes, but only a few years ago my mom and I went to a church. This interview was probably the hardest. Though, this was a interesting story, I found myself having to ask a lot of follow up questions because my mom wasn’t as comfortable doing a interview as Brianna was.

I found it inspiring to to hear how my mom stood up for what she believed because she could have chosen different god parents for James but she didn’t. This interview really taught me that you always can learn from the people around you.

Everyone Has a Story!

This final podcast was a little different then the rest. Not only did we get out of our comfort zone and interview almost strangers who came to the Winter Exhibition. We also looked at a different aspect of an interview. Instead of interviewing people in empty classrooms we made them comfy!

Its very important that your interviewee is comfortable while you do an interview because, they are much more likely to want to talk and share personal stories. Sydney and I shared the foods room together. We moved all but one desk and put a nice table cloth on it. We also put a couch and a couple lamps in our room. Finally we had snacks ice tea and our recording equipment.

Our grade 12 parntner found people who wanted to share their story and brought them to our interview room.

To get prepared for doing multiple interviews I had a list of questions to look back on in case I got stuck.

The best Interview I had was actually with Brianna’s mom, Susan Teegen. She was very comfortable and had a great story about traveling and her experience scuba diving for the first time.

I think this interview went well because I was interested in her story and was able to ask a lot of questions. My favourite part of this interview, is when she told me to not wait till I’m done all my schooling to travel because life gets busy and if not now, when?

For my first draft of this podcast, I got a peer critique from Brianna.

The audio was very choppy because there was a lot of background noise and when I cut the clips you could hear it. Brianna also suggested to change the ending and add a conclusion to wrap it up.

I really enjoyed this unit and learned first hand that everyones story is is worth telling and if you take time to hear it you never know what you might come across

Oh brother another blog post. Just kidding, but this is another book blog post about Little Brother by Doctorow, Cory. 

Little Brother was a great book that teaches and describes simple coding, programming, and hacking. It was also powerful to have a young boy stand up for his country against the government that was threatening and imprisoning innocent people.

But I’m not just here to talk about how good this book was.

In class a couple of days ago, we picked a topic that focused in on one aspect of the novel. We did this in “lottery fashion” which resulted in not getting my top choice, but still a good topic about the American Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The Constitution establishes America’s national government and fundamental laws. It also guarantees certain basic rights for citizens. The constitution was signed on September 17, 1787.

Later, in 1791, the Bill of Rights (10 Amendments ) was made to ensure that no part of the government had too much power over its people. It guaranteed basic individual protection such as, freedom of speech and religion.

In Little Brother, after the bombing of the Bay Bridge, the freedom was taken away from the people of San Francisco. Everything Marcus Yallow, the main character, had learned about his rights had not mattered anymore because the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) had taken over.

I think the fourth Amendment relates to this book the most because in chapter 3 of Little Brother, Marcus stopped a military car trying to help his friend who was severely wounded. Without hesitation the men pulled their guns on Marcus and his friends. “The faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level. I didn’t even breathe. Van was screaming something and Jolu was shouting and I looked at them for a second and that was when someone put a coarse sack over my head and cinched it tight around my windpipe, so quick and so fiercely I barely had time to gasp before it was locked on me”(pg. 29).

Later, Marcus was held in a secret prison and questioned for multiple days. The military was ordered to do this by the government, which is against the fourth amendment because his property was searched without a warrant and he was forced to testify against himself.

I admired Marcus because the DHS and many others like his peer Charles were against him, yet he still stood up for himself. When Marcus was debating against Charles in class, he cleverly pointed out something he read from the Declaration of Independence:

“I wanted to read something,” I said. “It’s short. ‘Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness” (pg. 104).

 

This was a very important part to the story and he used this many times against adults who believed in the DHS.

 

The American constitution was created more than 200 years ago.

Hmm more than 200 years… back then there were no cell phones or computers just the newly created typewriter.

It’s amazing that even though our world has changed so much, the Constitution has proved to be stable and flexible enough to survive and remain effective today.

The Constitution is used both as a legal document and as a set of ideas in our society today.

Recently, a Supreme Court case debated whether “Obama care” was justifiable in the Constitution under the Commerce Clause. The Constitution was also used by gay rights activists using the idea of equal protection and personal freedom to achieve their goals.

Though the Constitution and Bill of Rights is still relevant and useful, the internet and technology has caused many problems that go against it. As previously mentioned, in the book Little Brother, the DHS was taking control and disrupting everyone’s life. Using technology, the DHS was easily able to track Marcus and find him when his guard was down.

In his own school, Marcus was also being watched by th administration because they instaled gait recognition, “Gait recognition software takes pictures of your motion, tries to isolate you in the pics as a silhouette, and then tries to match the silhouette to a database to see if it knows who you are”(pg. 32).

In our own lives today, our phones have our every location and every message, and if someone really wanted, they could get all of that. The Constitution agrees that we deserve privacy, however, we could be searched right now without even knowing it.

Sources:

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Office%20of%20Citizenship/Citizenship%20Resource%20Center%20Site/Publications/PDFs/M-654.pdf

https://i2i.org/the-relationship-between-the-declaration-of-independence-and-the-constitution/

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/inventions-that-changed-america-1790-1850

https://home.ubalt.edu/shapiro/rights_course/Chapter1text.htm

https://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-constitution-amendments/bill-of-rights/

The golden ratio 1.618 is everywhere. It’s in old Iphone’s, buildings, plants and even Donald Trump

 

 

 

 

The golden ratio has also been found in many ancient art pieces because it is astecticly pleasing and is often used in spirals and rectangles. You can see the golden ratio multiple times in:

Da Vinci’s “Last Supper”

And Giovanni Bellini’s “Madonna in the Meadow”

We learned about numbers, exponents, and radicals in this unit. The golden ratio is equal to 1.6180339887… This is a Irrational number because the digits keep going on without a pattern. It is believed that the golden ratio is the most irrational number.

Earlier in the year we also learned about trigonometry and I figured out that the Golden Ratio is also equal to 2 × sin(54°)

For this project I decided to focus on the golden ratio in art because I love to draw whenever there’s a chance in projects. I decided to draw a snowy scenery because Christmas is coming up and when we started this project it was starting to get snowy on the mountain.

the fist thing I did was come up with ways to show the golden ratio in a snowy scenery. I found out that you can demonstrate the Fibonacci sequence in a tree.

 

As you can see, the number of branches in each row add up to the pattern of the Fibonacci sequence. But how does the golden ratio relate to the Fibonacci sequence you might ask.

The Fibonacci sequence is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, …

When you divide each number by the previous number This is what you get:

1, 2, 1.5, 1.666…, 1.6, 1.625, 1.615…, 1.619…, 1.6176…, 1.6181…, 1.6179…

as you can see it gets very close to the golden ratio

I also decided to use the golden ratio 1.6 to 1, in a circle. I first was going to have a moon and a sun but later decided to have the ratio in the moon and the shadow

Lastly I placed my tree and moon accordingly to the Golden ratio spiral

 

There are a million issues going on in the world like terrorism, bombing, and poverty. Though, a single person can’t fix the world, we can make a difference in our community.

For this project we focused on social injustices that have occurred in our cities history around the interwar period, and that are still going on today.

To get us thinking we did an activity. One side of our classroom was “yes I agree with this”, the middle was, “I don’t know” and the other side was “no I don’t agree”. Our teacher told us to choose what we think, and not what our friends think. We got asked questions like, “do you think we should build the  Kinder Morgan pipeline?”, or “should there be a ten year limit to welfare?”. I liked this because we got to debate why we were on one side of the room and see our fellow classmates honest different opinions.

To kick off this unit, we went on a field trip to the Museum of Vancouver! We focused on the City on Edge exhibition that was based on events that shaped Vancouver history.

While we were at the museum we had to think of which 3 injustices for our podcast that we were most interested to us. A few of the options was environmental,labour rights, city growth, immigration, and more. The topics I was super interested in was labour rights and human rights. I took photos on important information I saw ate  the museum that I could potentially use as reasorces.

 

Once we got back and handed in our top picks we were all exited to here what topic we got, and who was in our group. My topic was Human Rights and I was in a group with Ruby, Robbie, and Isobel.

Once we had our groups, we needed to focuse on a specific topic. My group struggled on this. First we were thinking about focusing on woman’s rights, but later decided to talk about homelessness in Vancouver.

What gave us this idea was a issue in Marpole Vancouver that Isobel heard about. Though, this area is in need of a homeless shelture, many people are against it. The shelter would be put up next to Sir Wilfred Laurier Elementary School, and is feared to be dangerous for the kids. Just like the community in Marpole my group have a conflict of opinion on this topic. So we thought it would be great if we made our podcast in a round table format.

Next we made our script on google docs so we could all easily edit

We tried to get two interviews, one with the principal of Sir Wilford Laurier school, and one with someone who cares for people who are homeless. After calling around I got a interview with Tannis Fraser a registered nurse that works a lot with homeless in vancouver. This interview went great she had a lot to say about why many homeless don’t feel safe in a shelter and how it effects there health. I also liked that she had a different perspective then the people of Marpole have on the shelture being built

Our first draft went well with only a few critiques and suggestions such as balancing audio, talking more casual and making our conclusion stronger.

We went through all of the criteria she gave us and double checked the audio till we couldn’t edit no more. Overall I was pleased with our work. I thought our podcast sounded pretty professional, but we could have made it more interesting and creative. I gained so much leadership skills during this project and kept my group members on task. I also learned better time management skills and how to split up work efficiently.

I sent Tannis Fraser, the nurse we interviewed, our finished product and she was very pleased.

 

Book Club

While we were creating our podcast we also did a book club that was about our topic. My group read two books, Persepolis, and The Bite of a Mango. Both were greatly insightful books that showed the lives of two very different girls. The first book we read Persepolis, was about a young girl struggling with identity through the cultural revolution. The second book The Bite of a Mango was about a girl in a small village in Sierra Leone till her life drastically changed when the rebels attacked. While we were reading our books we did 4 reading logs to show our understanding.

Reading response 1

Reading response 2

Reading response 3

Last reading log

Finally our last assignment was to use all our knowledge and write a letter proposing a change to Terry Beech. Each of my group members wrote what they wanted to change for the homeless ppl in Vancouver

My thesis was: We need to be setting up safe homeless shelter shelters where needed. Many of the people on the streets have mental conditions, nowhere safe to go, no family to help them, and are being attacked.

The main criteria I had was to make my proposal more specific which I tried to do in my essay.

 First Homlessness in vancover essay

My first draft of my own essay had great information and ideas but I spelt shelter wrong every single time I wrote it. Though, I edited and had a peer edit, I still missed that a missed spelled the same word over and over again. I will not make that mistake again.

Fixed essay

The next step was to put all of our essays into one. We split up our main topics into three, the Marpole debate, Medical needs, and needed changes in shelters.

Final Terry Beech Letter -2im6jbm

Throughout working on our own topic for the project we also did learning on each other’s.

We watched a video called The 8th Fire that was about First Nations culture. People don’t want to talk about how the First Nations were treated because of how horrible and dark it was. It’s still very important for us to know what it was like for them and have there perspective.

We also learned about immigration and how it has changed throughout the interwar years. We each made a infographic and discussed them in class

While we were exploring the museum and creating our podcast, we made a fun behind the scenes montage. Hope you enjoy