Have you ever wondered how some of your favourite places got there name? Well if you haven’t I guess this post is not for you.
Last week it was history week so each of our previous podcast groups made a video about the history and namesake of places like Gastown, Mt Seymour, Lions gate bridge and many more.
Ruby, Isobel, and I decided to make our video about Stanley Park.
Our assignment was pretty straight forward:
Title (introduce your place)
Location (including map!) and images
Description of the area or site
History of namesake
Myth or facts? – Include any stories you came across about the area – real or made up
Bibliography (minimum 2 sources)
Just to make sure your not confused, here’s a example on the history of Grandville Street.
Though, for our projects we weren’t going to get an expert and our video is only 3 minuets, this gave us ideas of video techniques to add like stop motion.
Next we made a script on google docs so we could all edit throughout the project.
To make the work load easyier on us, I did the recording, and Isobel and Ruby made the visual on explain everything.
This first draft needed work. I was not happy with the audio in this, so that’s what I focused mostly on in our final draft.
I thought this project went pretty well and I definitely learned a lot about Stanley Park. One thing I would change is the music could have been more up beat and interesting. I thought our visuals were still intersting and well done but If we had time I would have liked to film at Stanley Park.
Every molecule in there body is a exact copie. Sounds impossible right? Though, at one point we thought this was the case for identical twins. How similar are twins actually ? We know that there finger prints are different but what about DNA and genetics? Well you came to the right place because we learned all about DNA and genetics in this unit.
What do you already know?
In class we made a mind map about what we already know about DNA and genetics from previous learning. Here’s what I came up with.
After we refreshed are brain we got started on the first step to understanding genetics. Through out this unit leading up to the project we did reasearch and investigations on the website teacher collaborate that easily guides students to understand DNA and genetics. Throughout the learning we filled out tables from the information we gathered from videos and websites.
After we looked at what our own phenotype and genotype was we got to make a paper family. The parents are both heterozygous wich means they carry two different allele like Ee. This makes it so offspring has a chance of having the dominate or recessive gene. To figure out what gene the kids have you can flip a coin, tails= recessive gene heads= dominate gene. Here’s one example of a potential offspring.
This gave me a understanding of how your genes can be random. Instead of flipping a coin we learned how to use a punnet square.
Something I liked about this unit is that everything we did connected to helping us be able to make a informed decision about the topic for the unit project:
If two sets twins from different families each had one baby could the offspring be identical?
Once I figured out that twins aren’t identical it seemed predictable what the answer was though, I still had to figure out how to explain it. So here it goes:
Kate and my project is to explain our answer in a podcast. We used the notes from all of the activities to make our script.
Though our script wasn’t very creative we added a few sound effects into the podcast as well as trying to add a little character by having me be a expert.
For this project there was only one first draft. Our fist draft had troubles with the audio. Some parts of the talking was louder than the others and the music was to quite.
I took that feed back and made the quick changes to make this final podcast.
Spilling hot oil, hand caught in pizza machine, and even being chased by a forklift. These and many more incidences are all things that could go wrong if your not trained properly.
What are the rights of a worker? Today in class we learned all about work place safety like that you have the right to refuse work.
We started off doing a simple quiz about us as worker. Because I haven’t had a real job I only could answer 3 question
Next we watched the video Lost Youth which showed us real examples of horrible things that can happen if your not trained properly. We learned that you have a right for proper training especially when using dangerous machines like a forklift. One of the examples is that a girl wasn’t properly trained to work a pizza machine and put her hand in it wich resulted in her losing some fingers. After that video I’m not gonna get close to a pizza machine.
Then we did an activity which taught us a little bit of what rights you do have and what you don’t.
A few things I learned About safety
have two feet on a ladder
Be extra careful with your position when stacking things
Don’t carry a box that is to heavy or covers your face
Make sure the area you are working doesn’t have stuff everywhere
Most importantly don’t operate a machine without proper training
Lastly, we had to make a visual to show our learning. When I was younger I loved the pictures where you find the difference between two photos. I decided to create my own version of that called Find the Untrained. Below this there is a picture of untrained teens, your job is to count up their mistakes.
The war was a massive event that had massive details you need to know to fully understand. In this unit we looked at all of those details from alliances of countries to an actual soldier. You now may know from my last post why did the war start, that the war started because countries felt pressured to fight to keep their power. There were also events that added up to the war starting, like France furganans death.
Many countries joined the war because of the alliances that were already set up like the British and Canada.
The English Canadians felt I tie toward the British unlike the French Canadians. This brought up unresolved tension between the French and English Canadians that even the “Great Compromiser” couldn’t fully resolve. There were also restriction for who could join the war, medical exams required a potential soldier to be at least 5 feet 3 inches tall, and between 18 and 45 years old. Good eyesight, arched feet, and healthy teeth were also essential. Early in the war the minorities like black and Asian Canadians were also banned from joining the war.
How did WWI shape Canada’s identity as a nation?
The Canadians had a huge impact in world war 1. There was so much enthusiasm to go to war and I can say with no doubt that Canadians proved their great capability in world war 1. In the battle of Ypres April 1915 Canada showed their fierce determination even when in bad circumstances when the Germans threw a poison gas attack and Canadians managed to still hold there line. Also in Vimy Ridge the corps were brought together to take over the ridge which was done in three days. The ridge was firmly under control by the Germans and many tried to capture it but failed until Canada. After learning about this unit i was more proud to be a Canadian.
Who were these soldiers that gave Canada its reputation. In class we read a short novel called shattered ground. This novel gave us a inside look about world war 1 as it has many interesting photos of the men in the war. One of my favourite photos from shattered ground was a picture of men waving goodbye to there injured buddies.
After reading and discussing shattered ground I got a much better understanding of what actually was happening during the war. Now I was ready to find my soldier.
We went on to a website that lets you find Canadians that fought in World War 1. After much searching I found a very interesting man named Frederick Hobson.
The site had a digetal collection of primary sources about the soldiers. Here’s a few cool things I found on Fredrick Hobson.
War Journal
Form signed by Frederick
Information and Award Citation
Plaque about Frederick Hobson from Ontario
From the information on the website I had a understanding of Fredericks story that is, though it looked bad he single handedly held back the enemy with a Lewis Gun, which was a machine he had never been trained to use. Sadly he died that day but because of his bravery he gave his crew time to get reinforcements.
How does Fredricks story tie into our driving question. Soldiers just like Fredrick had courage and determination even when times were ruff. Because of this Canada now was looked at as a strong nation when before Canada was looked at as subordinate.
My first script draft
The main feedback that I got for this script was to explain my ideas for the podcast more, have a bigger connection to the driving question, and make the story less fictional. I made sure to go over the feedback that was given before making the first draft of the actual podcast.
Making the podcast
For my podcast I used garage band to make the music and record my audio. This was a little tricky because if you make all of your audio in one file it’s hard to keep it organized and you have to keep lengthening your track or it will cut your recording off. I decided to instead record and edit the audio in different files in garage band, and then put them together in iMovie.
The feedback I got back on my first draft I completely agreed with. I still needed to add more detail about the driving question, music was loud, and there was a echo at the start of the podcast.
To help us focuse on being more creative and making our podcast sound more professional we had to listen to 30 seconds of ten podcasts and write about what made them interesting. After we were supposed to use what we learned from the podcasts and make our own first 30 seconds. I was overall happy with my first 30 seconds with only needing to turn down the volume of the music.
Final podcast
Though I did love this project it was such a relieve to have all the work I put in editing the audio and changing the script done! So here it is, enjoy.
Reflection
I really enjoyed learning about World War 1 though, this was a huge unit that usually would have of board me to death. I don’t know when the battle of Somme’s was but I now do know that this was one of the first important battle for Canada being joint with the British in the war. I was able to learn this because instead of doing question in a textbook and taking stressful tests about each detail, we looked at the important facts of each aspect in interesting ways, like when we read shattered ground.
Soh cah toa. You may remember learning these terms in school but is this useful. In this project we used trigonometry to find the ideal angle for making the best possible solar panel. Seems like a straight forward project right?
First i had to search around the internet because I don’t know much about solar panels. Next I wanted to find what angle is the best to get maximum sunlight. To do this you have to put a few things into consideration like, weather and where you live. The website solar power is the future said that to find your angle you take the latitude of where you live and in summer you take away 15 and in winter you add 15.
Winter: The latitude for North Vancouver is 49.2827 + 15= 64°
Summer: The latitude for North Vancouver is 49.2827 – 15= 34°
To help us understand this concept we did a lab on how to find the ideal angle. The materials Kate and I used for this project was a voltmeter, a source of light which we used the lights in the classroom, and test dividers which is blocks and flat pieces of wood. We wrote down the angle, length, height and volt meter reading each time we raised the angle withe the blocks.
As you can see the highest voltmeter reading was 1.54 which was when we had a angle of 21.5. Next we took a photo of the best angle and labeled it in notability. Kate and I struggled trying to find the angle that the sun is hitting the solar panel because it wasn’t and exact 90° angle like my project ended up being.
After the lab I was ready to continue with my project. For my model I used the angle I got for summer 34°. To get the side lengths I decided the hypotenuse was going to be 18cm and then used Soh to get the opposite and the adjacent sides.
Once I had my side lengths I was able to measure them out on my model of a building. I cut out the length for the hypotenuse and the opposite on a piece of cardboard and taped them together. To personalize my model and I spray painted it gold in my garage. After I stuck the side lengths on the model i used a protracted to make sure it was the correct angle. Then I added the side lengths and angle on my model as well as a sun.
Once I was done completing my model I decided to make a keynote presentation of my solar panel.
Hi I’m Hannah Bontinen and welcome to my blog. This blog is to show my learning and development starting this year! I joined the PLP program this year because I felt like I couldn’t possibly meet my fullest potential when all day I would be sitting at my desk reading text books. Frankly, this way of learning just wasn’t for me.
The PLP program is different from normal school for many reasons. The main three reasons is the use of technology, field schools (this is when we get to do a lot of hands on learning), and lastly that it’s project, and performance base learning.
In this blog I hope to share my creativity and add personality through all of the projects we are assigned.
What do I believe in?
Well, I believe in travel. I believe the best way to find yourself is to simply get lost. It’s important to take a step back from your life and stress to remember who you are as a person with out the people and things that are apart of your everyday life. I believe when you travel you can get important life ulturing experiences that you could never have had if you stayed in your comfort zone. Lastly I solely believe I am ment to travel even if it means I have to leave things behind because,
“The world is big and I want to have a discover it before it goes dark.”-John Muir
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLeOHjAKu0
This is one of the examples of projects we do in PLP. The project was to pick a meaniful quote about what you believe in, choose a photo that represents that quote, and finally add music and a voice recording of the quote in the background.
First class it took me much longer than I imagined to find my quote but I was very happy with it in the end. The photo I chose was my own picture of a poloroid of me in Tofino. Though I didn’t travel very far I loved it there simply because we were exploring some where new. Next we had to sketch the photo out on a very cool app called sketches pro. This was the first time any of us tried this app and I think we all found it pretty challenging at the start but thankfully by the end started to get the hang of it.
Finally, it was time to make music on garage band. I love making music on garage band because you’re able to start with a base of something simple and then add a variety of sounds to go with it. I also like using garage band because it allows you to edit your sound so you can make it exactly how you want. For my song I used a flute, pipa, and glockenspiel which are instruments that you can all find on smart piano. I used a pipa because it is from China which is one of the places I would love to travel to. The very last step was to put it all together in iMovie and voila.
In science we learned how to be safe in the lab. Many of the cernarios we learned about were common sense but a few I didn’t know like no earphones in the lab and to waft chemical away from your face.
Our project was to make a humorous video showing what not to do in the lab. My group members were Willa and Ruby. We thought of three different cenarios we could demonstrate that each had to be at least 15 secounds long. We tried to add humour by having people slip on chemicals in slow motion which was probably my favourite part of this project.
Camp Capilano was my first small but experiencial PLP trip. From the start I was already intrigued when we were shown our first assignment. I could tell after that we all were exited to get working. The first assignments was to make a reality Tv intro. Sydney, Izzy, Spencer, and Kate were in my group for the first two projects. Our reality tv show was called gone wild which was about celebritys stuck in the woods. This assignments taught me a lot about how it’s important to use your surroundings to there fullest potential, how audio is as important as the visual, and that it’s important to write your ideas down and plan before you get right into the filming. I also learned from all of the projects that it is helpful if you split your time and the jobs amongst your group members to create the best project possible in the amount of time you have.
When we got to the camp after a quick hike we had lunch, then watched the videos. We got criteria on our videos and overall we didn’t do as well as we should of. Then we were on to the next project but this time there was no visuals so you had to work harder to make the listener understand the story your trying to portray. This time my group planned and focused on how we could make the audio more interesting. Sadly this project still wasn’t very good. The last project we did was making a podcast on identity. We had to think of something that happened to us that made us who we are today. Unlike the other two projects we got to pick our parntners. Me and Claire split up the work, discussed and wrote down ideas, had clear nice audio and music, and edited together till we were happy with the work we had done. Finally this project was a success and we both could be proud of our work.
I thought camp Capilano was a great way to start off the year and helped me learn what the teachers are looking for in my future work this year.
Today in class we learned about smart goals and how they help you get a better understanding of how you are going to achieve your goal. The three goals we had to create was a learning in school goal, character growth goal, and lastly learning outside of school goal
My first goal was about my school learning. This year I want to get a A in math. This goal is important to me, because I have always struggled in math and end up being behind. To prevent this I am going to do two extra questions on each topic, or as many as I need to fully understand. In my video I drew a picture of me having trigonometry, what we are learning in math right now, going into my head. This represented me fully understanding trigonometry. I can track my grade by keeping a record of assignment marks and having a tally of my current mark throughout the year. I showed that by writing down each mark and adding it up and hopefully like it shows in the video I’ll get 86%
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tpNdmy-GBjg
My second goal was to learn how to be a better leader and really build more confidence something that I have struggled with for a while. This year I am going to take charge in project and, as you see me holding a mega phone, make sure my voice is heard
Finally my last goal is something I have been working and dreaming to do since grade 8 which is to complete my intermediate ballet exam. I am going to practice at vanleenaf and go over the exam criteria at home and at the studio every Tuesday and Saturday. With hard work and patience I should be able to complete this goal by February.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rzl0ZycewJk
I learned how to make those simple unrealistic goals into smart goals by making them specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. By making my goals smart goals they become much easier for me to actually follow through with. This simple lesson will be something I’ll use forever in my daily life.
There are many good ideas of how the war started. I think underestimatation of what this war could do and the fear of losing power or worse is what caused the war to unfold. I thought professor
G. Herchfeld and J. Remack
Both had good points on why the war started. At this time there had never a dealt with a war so big so know one knew the destruction that could come from this war. The war rapidly grew because of the alliances that were already in play even before any of this started. The main two alliances was the Central power: Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire and the Allies: Serbia, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium and the United States.
The alliances were one of the most inportant fracters in my mind. The alliances were known by all of the population of Europe. Everyone was trying to scare one enother hoping for the outcome to be victory
My first draft of the Why Did the war start we tried using a green screen which for many reasons didn’t work out. Our audio was not as well done as hoped. There was noises in the background like at the start it sounded like clicking, and the music was to loud. Though, I was happy with our creativity in this project and we had grood information.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vbyDlVJNbjk
Even though we did ok on this project we decided to make it even better. This time we didn’t use the green screen so the visual already looked better. We decided to dress up as our characters,(mine was G. Herchfeld), to make it a little more interesting. I was much happier with the final results of this project and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8L08NKzf_HI
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