This is a post where the left and right wing on a political spectrum is explained as well as the values of a variety of ideologies. Pretty much we had a mini boot camp where we practiced taking notes as well as enriching our knowledge on ideologies and the political spectrum. I can vote pretty soon so this lecture was needed for me! Whether you find the political spectrum too confusing and give up it is a significantly important diagram to understand, especially for voters it is important that you understand the values and ideologies of each party and wing.
For this boot camp we were given a pretty big lecture of all the different ideologies which transferred into the political spectrum. During this lecture, we were required to take some form of notes. Taking notes is a KEY skill to take to university. That being said, it is important that you know what technique for note taking fits you ahead of time, I chose the standard style.
Before this lecture I didn’t know too much about politics, I always got confused which ideologies fall left or right. Before the lecture we took a quick quiz about ideologies on the political spectrum. I’m just going to say that I failed the quiz, that to me was a wake up call that I need to enhance my knowledge in politics in general and get familiar with the different terminologies! Our teachers ensured us we would never forget this new information by taking a quiz each day to test our knowledge. Everyday my mark got higher and higher and interestingly it was an experiment for our teacher to see what format of quiz works the best. We had the same questions each day but in a different form (visual, multiple choice, verbal).
Finally it was time to look where I stand on the political spectrum. It’s not so black and white where you land on the spectrum take a look:
There are two extreme sides, communism which is far left and fascism which is far right. In between these two extremes lie multiple more ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism, etc. One side leans to more a community and social equality perspective whilst the right side is more about having someone in charge, hierarchy and authority. A way our teacher told us to look at it is the owners vs the workers.
Once we had an idea of how the political spectrum works, we took a test to see where we fall on the spectrum. Basically there were six pages of questions and it took me a while to answer because some of the questions weren’t so simple. Anyways this is my outcome:
I fall more towards the left and Libertarian side which is what I predicted from hearing about the ideologies in the lecture. Libertarian means you value freedom (political, freedom of choice and individual judgement). As I mentioned earlier, the left wing supports social equality and rejects the idea of social class. I agree with both these statements.
Finally we had the opportunity to extend our knowledge by either creating an info graphic of the political spectrum or creating a short video about one specific ideology. A classmate (Sofia) and I decided to make a short trailer about communism. Pretty much our movie represents the fact that Communism is all about an equal society and there is no separation of classes. In the video we managed to use a cloning technique to show that in communism every one is equal. Enjoy!
Time to wrap up another unit! from my previous posts you can tell that our unit this term is horror. This unit involved examining some of the most famous horror movies and literature and creating our own movie/trailer.
Driving Question
Why is horror such an effective way to reflect and comment on our society?
This is how we answered the question as a class, (this is our final project for the unit, a class horror movie/trailer)
Horror movies aren’t just about murders, blood and gore, they have so much more to them! Our unit started off with a field trip to Seattle. On this trip we visited the MO POP museum as well as a haunted house!!! During this trip, our goal was to identify what makes a horror movie scary and why people are scared of certain things. To add to that, we had to discover why people like horror. For example, after we went through the haunted house (Georgetown Morgue) everyone wanted to go again. The haunted house was terrifying, every kind of fear was in the house! For some reason I wanted to go again, and by the end everyone was full of adrenaline.
In class we watched a short documentary, “Why Horror”. The documentary touched on the main aspects of why people enjoy horror movies. Something that was interesting was the aspect of a safe flight, meaning you know that you are not in danger. It also depends on your culture, what bothers them and how they approach life and death.
The MO POP had an excellent horror exhibition that answered many of our questions.
I had never thought about how many factors of horror there are (the unknown, unseen, unconscious, etc.). The factor that scares me the most would have to be the unexpected, you expect reality to function, something shatters our expectations and we feel shock and distress. This factor would fall into the category of the element of absence, the other element is the element of presence. This includes categories such as helplessness, urgency and pressure. Out of these helplessness is for sure the more unnerving, simply because you have a lack of power and can’t make your own choices. It’s the feeling of isolation, the only one left and can’t call for help you literally feel helplessness.
After taking the time to analyze other horror movies such as Get Out, Halloween and Frankenstein, as a class we discussed the continuity and change and what societal issue the movie reflects. For each movie we wrote a post answering questions about the continuity and change as well as the filming techniques and dialogue. Watching these movies was crucial in order to really depict what we wanted to include in our own movie and how to tell a good story with not just dialogue but using foreshadowing, symbols and actions of the characters. Halloween used some really interesting techniques that told the story from different points of view (POV) from the murderer and the victim. From watching these movies, we were also able to discuss the social issue that the movie is reflecting on. Go check out my posts about the horror in each of those movies!
One of our first major milestones was reading the novel Frankenstein. This novel was a great introduction to our horror unit. What I found so interesting about the book is how many perspectives Mary Shelley represented. By having so many perspectives gave you a better insight of each character making the novel more engaging. In this story it is not so clear who the monster truly was, some people may think it’s Frankenstein’s creature and others could think it was Frankenstein. In THIS post I explained who the monster is in my opinion.
Moving on into the movie/trailer, for this horror unit our project was something very different compared to our previous assignments. Just like our Winter exhibition in Grade 11 this project was a class production. The reason I called it a movie/trailer is because originally our class was assigned to create a horror movie but with a short timeline we were only able to make a trailer. We had to use the knowledge and resources we were given and apply them to a final creation. I personally really enjoy class projects mainly because everyone has unique ideas and different talents and when we put all the ideas together we can create something pretty cool. Obviously working as a class can also be a challenge because there are so many ideas and we had to stick with one and I think that is what was the most challenging as well as producing a schedule where the majority of the class were available.
I did not realize how many different roles there are in a movie production!! Our class followed the format and assigned many roles to make this movie possible. Within the roles we had a key creative team that consisted the director, producer and story writer.
I originally put myself forward as director because I had a certain vision for the movie but I was then assigned to the script team where I could contribute to the story line. It was also good for me to be in the script team mainly because it made me step outside of my comfort zone. The script certainly took the longest, it involved writing and consulting with the class and then revising, it was a long process but eventually we developed a decent script!
We decided to focus on the issue with stereotyping teens and the issues that lead to that. We had decided it was going to be about a bunch of teens staying after school to clean up a prank they pulled, an angry janitor ends up taking revenge on the teens. The script for sure took patience and it taught me the importance of critique and how to take it in a positive way. During filming I was also assigned to the lights along with Calum. Our role was to collect the lights and set them to the appropriate setting as well as transporting them to the scenes.
Sorry for the bad quality
We all as a class were dedicated to this movie and worked after school and on weekends. To ensure everyone was updated on the filming days detailed call sheets were created.
There were many ups and downs with filming but overall it was a super fun experience. I learnt so many lessons about working with a vast team. Our movie was never finished and it simply came down to communication. We had to work with a short timeline and we couldn’t quite get all of the shots done in time. We also didn’t take into consideration how long it would take to get from scene to scene with all the props, lights and camera operators. The editors did what they could with the footage and created a really good trailer instead.
To conclude, I learnt so much from this whole project from looking at issues in society, analyzing horror movies and their deeper meaning, but most importantly how to work as a team and manage time and communication. These skills are for sure transferable to future projects or even future jobs.
Imagine living with the fear of a nuclear war arising, making everyday feel like your last. This is what it was like to live in the sixties. The world was literally on the brink of a nuclear war.This unit really made me realize how lucky we are today. Sometimes it may not feel like a peace era, we have to deal with small issues but nothing compared to what living was like in the sixties. I could never imagine living with that kind of fear. In this unit we looked back at the sixties to learn and understand how the world was on the brink of destruction. This unit we got to write an essay arguing why we thought the world was on the brink.
How the world was on the brink politically
The trust between the government and the CIA is such a significant relationship. The two work together to come up with solutions towards world problems. However the president will always get the final say. JFK an inexperienced president, was blind to what the CIA’s priorities were back in 1961. The past exemplifies that breaches of trust between few individuals with a position of power, can steer the world to the brink. Some may have said it was,“The brilliant disaster”(Feinberg &Richard.The Brilliant Disaster 2012). It is the flaws that were made in the past, that influence our views today.
With Cuba being only 90 miles away from the coast of Florida, on going conflicts between the Communist government in Cuba and Capitalist government United States, tensions inevitable. The Bay of Pigs was an invasion to remove the Communist Castro government from power in Cuba. At this point, John F Kennedy (JFK). was new to his position of presidency. He was inexperienced and young “But he was so young!”(Feinberg & Richard. The Brilliant Disaster, 2012), implying that he was easily persuaded by his Central Intelligence Agency(CIA). Basically JFK had pressure to make a decision that could either make or break America. It is important to realize that by sitting around a group of experienced members of government with the tendency to invade, would have swayed JFK’s overall opinion. Being confused by his wise advisors telling him one thing, he let his inexperience shadow over him. So what would you do if you had to make a decision that you knew was morally wrong, but your advisors were telling you different?
The decision to invade the Bay of Pigs, was up to two of the most powerful influences in America, JFK and the CIA. When you have individuals with an abundance of power, they have the capability to steer the world to the brink with one decision. In this case it was a biased military approach that brought the world to a tipping point. It may have been “the worst foreign-policy decision of Kennedy’s administration” (Feinberg & Richard.The Brilliant Disaster 2012) many people would have recalled it as. Nevertheless surly it isn’t fair to push the blame onto JFK for a decision that was shaped by the CIA.
At the time JFK was the president of the US, and had the overall final say. Although this may be true, as I mentioned earlier the CIA had a huge impact on JFK’s views. By putting all of JFK’s trust into the CIA made them have control over the operation “the CIA drew up these plans”(The Bay of Pigs, JFK Library). JFK was like a puppet on a string with the CIA constantly shadowing over him. This breach of trust lead to the invasion of the Bay of Pigs which brought the world to the brink.
The invasion caused destruction in Cuba and made America look inadequate as a nation. A key strategy that the CIA imposed, was to try and cover up America’s footsteps, by recruiting Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro’s government. The CIA believed that the invasion would lead to a rebellion inside the country, “Efforts of the US State Department to hide the involvement of the CIA”(The Bay of Pigs Invasion, Central Intelligence Agency, 2016). With this in mind, there was a lot of information that JFK wasn’t aware of involving the invasion. Reports said that the CIA should have told JFK the mission had changed strategies. A once tactful plan soon turned into a war, “[Castro] assumed it was just the start of a war”(Bradlee & Benjamin C.11.22.63, What Was Lost, 2003). This was not JFK’s intent, to result in a war.
Following the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis became JFK’s priority. His approach to the Cuban Missile Crisis was completely to opposite to the Bay of Pigs. From his previous misjudgment in the CIA, he resolved this problem by following his own instincts and morals. Like in the past invasion, the CIA were adamant to go with their militant approach. If JFK followed along again with the CIA, the world would have passed the tipping point and a nuclear war would have occurred. JFK’s instinct was acted upon and he was able to avoid a nuclear war.
All in all, trust between the government and the CIA have grown apart. JFK’s decision has been recognized by many other members of the government, which makes the government second guess the CIA’s judgments. To steer the world to the brink it doesn’t take much, just a poor decision made by someone with the position of power. So the real question is, if a new president were to trust the CIA’s militant approach, could history repeat itself and have another crisis?
Using our past knowledge of the Cold War, we started this unit off by learning about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cold War was significantly different to a war such as WWI and WWII. I soon learnt that the reason the Cold War is called a COLD war as a pose to a HOT war is because there actually wasn’t any physical fighting involving a battle. The Cold War was essentially a war of fear. With two powerful individuals with very powerful weapons is enough to start a war but with no contact.
Something that I noticed, is that the Cuban Missile Crisis was just a few individuals (JFK, Castro and Khrushchev) with a position of power fighting like children. The ideologies between Communist Cuba and the Capitalist US were very different. The fear of communism spreading, shadowed over the US and caused major tensions between the two nations. I didn’t quite realize that one small disagreement could lead to something so serious.
JFK: Capitalist Castro and Khrushchev: Communist
In class we watched a movie called Thirteen Days. This movie was all about the tense 13 days where everyone was in panic mode. It was interesting to watch a movie instead of a documentary. I think it has its pros and cons. For example, the movie was good in a way that the important events were highlighted, and it was more dramatic. However, with a movie some things could have been left out or over exaggerated events.
Anyways, the movie definitely gave me a better understanding on the behind the scene on the political side. Within the government there are two approaches to these types of conflicts. You can either have a militant approach and just invade, or think of the picture. Think of a solution that won’t end up in a worse conflict. John F. Kennedy (JFK) was the president at the time. I was pretty surprised how well he dealt with the situation. Instead of letting the CIA task over and invade Cuba, JFK went with his instinct to compromise instead.
JFK’s decision may have been for the best, and I was surprised that such a young president would stand up to the CIA. However, something that I realized is that the reason he ignored the CIA in the Cuban Missile Crisis, is because of his past mistake or trusting the CIA.
This leads us to our essay/ project for this unit. This term we went into depth with English. We discovered different writing techniques and just practiced writing. You could day we were on a writing boot camp. This writing unit I think really benefited me! I learned a lot about my writing which was one of my goals from last year, to find my own writing style. By knowing my writing style I was then able to improve it and make it stronger. I stepped out of my comfort zone you could say when we wrote an essay using imagery and metaphors.
Topics we had to chose from:
Marshall Plan,
Iron Curtain,
Berlin Blockade,
Bay of Pigs,
NATO,
Warsaw Packed
Korean War
Berlin Wall,
Truman Doctrine,
League Of Nations (United Nations)
Something that really sparked my interest was the Bay of Pigs invasion, and how different the approach was compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
The purpose of the invasion was to remove the Communist Castro government from power in Cuba. Castro had signed with Khrushchev and proclaimed himself a communist and had formally allied Cuba with the Soviet Union. With America only being 90 miles from Cuba, the fear of communism spreading shadowed the US. This fear resulted in a invasion that lead the world to the brink on a nuclear war.
To put it simple, the Bay of Pigs was one heck of a disaster. It was one of JFK’s worst decisions. The Bay of Pigs was in my opinion the closest the world came to being on the brink politically.
That was the political side of how the world was on the brink. To get a different perspective of how the world was on the brink, we looked into the social perspective. We watched an episode of the Sixties to get a better understanding of the social issues. I decided to go in depth into the environmental issues.
How the world was on the brink environmentally:
Back in the Sixties, there were multiple factors for how the world was on the Brink. Today everyone is aware of major environmental issues. We have the technology to discover new cures, climate change patterns, etc. Back in the sixties, health and environmental issues was a new idea to society. It was a concept that people weren’t prepared for. There were so many things people were doing, using or eating in their everyday lives that turned out had a negative side affect. An example is synthetic pesticides. Synthetic pesticides are what help food grow, and they are located on many different kinds of food. It was only soon after people started to get sick, scientists discovered that the pesticides can cause cancer. In fact, Rachel Carson, a marine biologist was a “game changer” she passed away due to cancer. She was a legacy whom wrote books and other writings to try and advance the global environmental movement. After she passed away, people were left with a fear of, will it be me next? Many other environmental factors lead the world to the tipping point. However the synthetic pesticides were individuals priority.
In my argument I mention Rachel Carson. She wrote a book named Silent Spring. It was her most important contribution to the world since it launched the global environmental movement today.
The big take away from the whole unit is how easy it is to tip the world to the brink. It can start from the smallest disagreements between individuals with power, to something the has escalated so much that change is inevitable.
Work Cited for environmental argument:
Lear, Linda. “Rachel Carson, The Life and Legacy.” Rachel Carson, The Life and Legacy, www.rachelcarson.org/.
“Rachel Carson.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 May 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson.
It’s that time of the year, mPol season. Our mPols are a way to show our growth of a learner. We do them twice a year, in January and May ish. Our driving question is, how are you going to progress as a learner before the end of the school year?
This year we have been introduced to a new way to think about learning, PGP which stands for Personal Growth Plan. In PGP we learn skills such as goal setting, timeblocking, and productivity. Something that I have gotten better at is time management. An app for that we were introduced to is Things. Things has helped me so much with getting things done. I use it to set goals, track my homework etc. You can set due dates which is a huge benefit to me because since we have so much going on its nice to see it all laid out.
Timblocking has also helped me with time management, I can plan out my day so I get everything done. Here is an example of a day where I had a lot of work and I needed to timeblock to help me stay productive.
With in PGP we were also introduced to curricular competencies and to habits of mind. “Curricular competencies are skills, strategies, and processes that as a student you develop over time”. Every project we do in PLP strengthens one or many of the curricular competencies.
A curricular competency that I think I have improved on is speaking. This is from practicing presentations, I am enrolled in DLSC and I oftern have to talk in front of an audience about problems in the schools. Even though I have improved, there is always room for improvement. For example I could work on voice tone, not speaking too fast etc.
Next for PGP, I’ll talk about my work habits. For the most part I am very good at getting my work done, and I never hand in work late. However sometimes I can procrastinate. From using my new PGP skills, I have set goals to stay on track and not procrastinate. Something I have started doing is when I get home take an hour break from school work, and then start studying. I have found for myself that I need to take breaks in between studying and then I can be productive. I even did one of my Crucible posts about procrastination. I was very proud of my Cricible posts, I spent a lot of time working on all three of them.
A huge part of PGP is setting goals. I read What do I really Want? and even took some note of key quotes that stood out to me. While we were reading we had to fill in forms. I did pretty much all of the forms and completed my dream board. From reading the book and doing the forms I now now ish some of my goals for this year, long and short term. I had a lot of fun creating my dream board. I included dream job (architect), sports, what I care for etc.
Something I said last year that I want to improve is my leadership skills. Last year in a group project I wouldn’t be the one to stand up and become the leader/DRI however, I think this term I have demonstrated that role of a leader. To start off with, in my Hanford project and the Exhibiton I took a leader role. For the Hanford video, I became the DRI. I was making sure my group members were on track.
I think that the Hanford video is my best work this year that I created with Alex and Robbie. With the video, we used all of our previous skills such as videos, interviewing, audio and script/story writing. I also learnt so much so much about the Manhattan Project and I demonstrated that in my Hanford post.
Another example is the Winter Exhibition. Within the main DRI’s we have smaller DRI’s for each section of the project. For example, hair and makeup, script and set design. I put my self forwards as DRI for set design. I was in charge of making sure everyone had a job, getting the building done, also I had to clear everything before we built. From being a DRI of two projects I feel more comfortable taking that role. As always there is more room for improvement from example I didn’t feel ready to stand up as the main DRI for the Winter Exhibition.
I am also very proud of my post I did for the exhibition. I spent a lot of time reflecting what went well and what didn’t. I also demonstated how much I learned from that experienc. I learned so so much about the 1950’s!!!!!! Out of everything we have done in PLP this year, the exhibition was my favourite. It was an amazing experience especially working with the whole class. Surprisingly when we put our heads together we can produce some pretty good work.
As always there is room for improvemnt. However, there is no such thing as “failing”. If anything its good to make mistake because you will learn from them. Something that I really want to work on is staying positive and motivating myself to do homework. I think this is so important and it can help me with all of my classes. To motivate myself I can set more goal and award myself. Form completing the forms I set some goals and ways to award myself, I think that is a good place to start. Also having a more positive attitude will make my work have better quality.
The first exhibition of the year. Every year we have two exhibitions that demonstrates all of our learning we have done. Take a look at my exhibition from last year (Part 1)!
This year we focused on the 1950’s which is a very busy period in time. It involved, the Korea War, the Cold War, the baby boom, communism vs capitalism, a new life style including suburbia and consumerism etc. We also studied The Crucible which tied in communism vs capitalism. Basically our exhibition had to cover all of those topics and themes. All the other exhibitions I have done, have been either a partner project or an individual project. This time it was a class project and we had the whole gym to present our work. The goal was to turn the gym into a walk way and some student would guide the guests around while the others act out a story. It was kind of a test to see how well we could work together and surprising I would say our class did an amazing job, especially since our teachers weren’t there to guide us. We also learned a seance of independace since we had to come up with the ideas all on own.
To rewind, to create our exhibition there was a lot of research and thought put into the final product. We started off by looking at life in the 1950’s. Post WWII was the time where husbands were coming home from war to their family’s, which lead to the baby boom and the idea of having a nuclear family. After WWII, North America experienced a spike in birth rates. This generation of Baby Boomers was the result of a strong postwar economy. In fact around 40% of the population now are baby boomers.A nuclear family is simply a family with a husband and wife and their kids.
From there new concepts grew such as consumerism, people were by new fridges, blenders etc. People were also able to buy houses in the suburbs. Families left the cities and into the suburbs. All the houses looked identical with the typical white picket fence.
This video that we watched really opened my eyes to what a nuclear family is. Before I hadn’t really heard of the term.
We also went into depth with President Eisenhower. Eisenhower was a war hero and had a eight year presidency. This help him with his presidency techniques since he knew how war worked. Eisenhower was played a significant role in our exhibition. In fact our first scene was one of his speeches. Eisenhower understood the Americans needs for security.
Communism vs Capitalism
Communism vs capitalism and the McCarthy Trials were a huge concept in the exhibition. The Americans were very anti communist and considered them their enemies.
There were revelations that spies inside the US atomic program had passed secrets to the Soviet Union which set off nationwide panic that communist spies might be infiltrating American institutions. In this unit we talked about what injust means. We were able to connect that concept to the Crusible. The fact that it is injust to accuse innocent people!
Check out my MindNode I created all about the McCarthy Trials!!
A huge concept of this unit was The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The Crucible is a play that was written in the 1950’s about witches and the witch trials. While reading the book we made connections to history and modern day. We also learned about the different themes and how they connected to our unit, the 1950’s.
We did a separate project for The Crusible. Here is an example of the one I think is the best out of the three we did.. The main plot was to get rid of all of the ‘witches’. They would accuse innocent people and punish them if they were the slightest bit guilty.At first I was a little confuse on how this connected with the ideology of communism vs capitalism. I was soon mind blown to find out that Arthur Miller was referring the witches to communists. All of the witches being on trial was a metaphor for the communism trials. The whole theme was one big witch hunt. This was an important theme that we could include in our exhibition.
From the concept of a witch hunt, we could connect it to modern day, Donald Trump. I think the Crusible a highlight for my learning because it had such an important theme that we were able to connect to modern day and historical events.
The Exhibition
Now to the exhibition. Sadly I wasn’t going to be able to attend the exhibition so I helped with the planning and put my self forward for DRI of set design. To make sure we would get work done we had two voted DRI’s that were in charge of everything. Within the group we divided each section up and each section had a DRI. We had set design, costumes and makeup and the script. Overall I think that system was very effective and we got the work all done.
Here are the processes we took to come up with a solid plan:
We had to figure what our themes were going to be and how many stations to have etc. Once we had an idea we could start constructing the story line. A huge part of the exhibition were the guides. We needed four guides to guide the guests round. The guide had the most complex role. The guides were Sofia, Claire, Sam and Adam. Everyone else was put into sections and they had to be in charge of making prop lists for their scene and writing a brief script. With the script each group wrote a script and the DRI and the others in script read over them to make sure they we all related to each other.
My role in the exhibition was to make sure we had all the props and to make sure all the building was done. The set designers also had to sketch out a plan for the gym, like were everything was going to be.
Our class room pretty much turned into a workshop with drills saws etc. Early on in the process, we started build props that we new we needed like the white picket fence and a stop sign for the street scene.
The last few days leading up to the exhibition were pretty chaos. We were trying to finish any building we had to.
As I said earlier, I wasn’t there for the exhibition. I was really annoyed because I wanted to see the work put to life. However a classmate filmed it with a Go Pro:
https://youtu.be/Hz4YaRez95w
From the exhibition I didn’t just learn about the 1950’s, I learned a lot of different skills. These skills were storytelling, bringing all of our knowledge together and creating a story. I’m sure if I was there I would have practiced public speaking and acting. From doing this exhibition, I really got a good idea of the 1950’s. From creating a story around the information, I connected with the learning a lot better, and know so much about the 1950’s. All of the work we did leading up to the exhibition, all helped us execute a story connecting all of the events together.
This will be my final Crusible post, and we have officially finished reading the play. You can check out my first post and second post. The themes of the Crusible include, revenge, witchcraft and more. The This time I answered the question, how to spot___(A witch). The main plot in the Crucible is the ideology of witchcraft. In the play everyone accuses everyone of being a witch. Even if you have the slightest bit suspicious, they will call you a witch and put you on a witch trial. Either way the result won’t end well.
I chose how to spot a ski intructor. I am currently teaching on Mt.Seymour and there are many ways to spot one. Here is a book I created, after you read it you will always be able to spot an intructor on the slopes.
You have an assignment due in a month, how are you going plan ahead, or are you and leave it until the last minute?
Recently we have been creating these post that are related to the Crusible. If you have no idea what I am talking about, check out my lastest post that explains the task. In this post I will be talking about guilt. In the Crusible guilt was implied when the girls were caught doing sinful activities in the forest. These girls felt guilty knowing they did all these sinful activities.
My example (procrastination) isn’t as big as doing a sinful activity. However, some may consider procrastination is a sin to yourself. I’m sure everyone is guilty for procrastinating. It could be for studying for a test, writing an essay, you name it. All I can say is everyone is a procrastinator, and in education this can affect your grades and work ethic.
For example, your are given an essay to write. The rationalize decision will plan out how you will finish the essay. Then you have the other half of your head saying NO we want easy and fun. This can result in guilt from knowing you should have been working than watching Netflix.
This is what happens when you let the “monkey” take control:
If you are a procrastinator you may want to take a quick look at this post. Believe it or not, procrastination can turn into guilt. Guilt is the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime. In this case procrastination is a crime to yourself, yet people do it anyway. The guilt follows soon after, when you realize you got nothing done and now feel guilty that you didn’t accomplish anything.
Lets have look at what goes on in their head:
As you can see there is the rational decision maker that is in charge of planning and looking at the big picture. Then of coarse there is the “monkey” that causes the procrastination.
To conclude, I think that it is fair to say that procrastination can fall into guilt. When you know the reason that you failed a test is because you watched nextflix, you will look back and wish you had just got the job done. I mean who am I to say don’t procrastinate. In fact I found the idea to do procrastination procrastinating because I found an article about it!
Now you may be wandering by the title, why I am talking about isolation. Currently we are reading The Crusible by Arthur Miller, a play set in 1953. It is a story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692/93.
In this post I will talking about something more personal. I’m sure most people have dealt with this at some point in their life. This is isolation. The google definition of being isolated is having minimal contact or little in common with others. This could be to do with anything, but for me it was being a “cripple”, and how I was isolated in my house for days unable to go to school or even see my friends.
I will be talking about a time when I have felt isolated. This has been a very recent event, when I got surgery on my ankle, I won;t go in depth on the surgery, it’s a long story. After my surgery I was isolated in my house for days with limited mobility.
Here is before I got the surgery:
Apart of this task was to create a piece of media to bring this post to life. I decided to draw an this drawing using Sketches Pro:
An example of when I felt isolated, was when I missed a friends birthday, since I needed to stay home and rest my foot.
Something I found to do was I completes a 1000 piece puzzle in two days (I was pretty proud of myself!). When I was able to get to school, I also felt isolated, I had nothing in common with anyone. Instead of taking the stairs I went in the scary elevator that I got stuck in…. it’s ok I got out!
This post has let me express my opinions and feelings on this topic. Overall I learned a lot about myself and how I felt isolated. I had fun writing this post because it really let me give my opinion on the topic. I know I ranted about my surgery however, my injury is not the worst. In fact I am on the road to recovery and can walk on my foot soon. I feel lucky that I will be able to walk. There are people in this world whom may never recover and never have movement in their legs, making them feel isolated permanently.
You may have read my previous post about the Manhattan Project. This post is all the behind the scenes of the learning and of course our experience on the trip. As much as a learning experience our field trip to Oregon/Washington was, we also had a lot of fun!!!
Here is a short video with clips from the field trip:
Pretty much all of the locations we visited were related to our main topic, the Manhattan Project. In fact we spent two days exploring the Hanford site. We were collecting media, informantion and footage from this field trip for our videos. It was amazing to visit the place we had been learning about. It made all of what we learned come to life. Every location we went to there was always a great opportunity to film.
We set off bright and early and had a full day in the van driving to Portland, Oregon. The first day was pretty fun and relaxed, we explored downtown Portland. The city felt a little bit like Vancouver but with older looking buildings. In downtown Portland we visited Powell’s Books.
This is the largest independent book store in the world, it also took up an entire block! I found it really cool that they also sell second hand books as well as new copies. As always when we visit somewhere, we always have some kind of task. Our task was a find the funniest/ most interesting book to do with our hobbies. I found a book on skiing since it is my favourite sport. I found the cover pretty funny!
Our other task was to find the funniest book in group and reenact the cover. The title of the book we found as a group was “Billion Dollar Whale”
In the evening in Portland, we stopped at the McMenamins Kennedy school. This school was transformed into a hotel with amovie theatre and restaurant. Our class visited the movie theatre and Mama Mia 2 was playing! It was definitely the most impressive old school I had seen. It was covered in art work and looked very different to any other school. We only spent one night at Portland. The next day we drove to Washington however, we made many stops on the way.
We visited the Reed Reactor, at Reed Collage. I found it pretty fascinating that there would be a reactor at a collage. However, the collage only use it for research. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the reactor however, they had a well detailed diagram explaining how it works. Surrounding the reactor is water that is 25 feet deep.
Diagram of inside the reactor
Some fun facts: The water acts as a shield to stop the radiation from affecting the workers and also to cool the reactor. The temperature of the water is 18.5 degrees Celsius. Since the reactor is very radioactive you would not be able to go swimming. Although our guide did say that you could tread water at the top but any lower, would be dangerous (wouldn’t recommend it).
Walking into the room where the reactor was, was pretty impressive, everyone was mind blown. I was very curious about the radiation exposure on the students since they are working with reactor a lot! I found out that the students wear a monitor monitoring how much radiation they get exposed to. It is a very small dose and no one had ever reached the limit dosage.
On our trip we also visited the B Reactor, one of the main reactors used during the Manhattan Project!!!! It was the most impressive thing I had seen in a long time. The B Reactor is located at Hanford and it is where the plutonium was produced for the project. It was world’s first large-scale plutonium production reactor.
A highlight of the trip was visiting Multomah Falls and the Vista House of Art. We stopped at these two locations after a long day driving and we got to sprint up a hill to the water fall. The waterfall so amazing!!!! At the Vista House of Art there was an outstanding view of the Columbia River were my group for the Manhattan Project² (go check out our video!).
In Washington we stopped at the Maryhill Museum of Art. The area was very deserted except for a museum in literally the middle of nowhere. Here is a little bit of background, the house was established in 1907 when Sam Hill bought the 5,300 acres of land. He named his company after his daughter, Mary Hill. The Maryhill Museum is full of his art collections and the museum was open to the public in 1940.
While we visited the museum we had to find something that sparked our interest. It wasn’t too hard since I was curious about all the pieces of art work. While we visited we had to make a short video about a piece of art that stood out to us. Something that I was fascinated by was the chess collection:
As always on our trips we go to to exciting restaurants. This trip we went to Red Lobster, Endless Shrimp ! I had the best shrimp I hav ever had!! They brought you shrimp after shrimp and there was so many different flavours. The goal was to eat as much shrimp as possible and before we left we set our goals. I think I consumed around 50 shrimp. My favourite was the sesame seed and ginger.
Overall the field trip was a blast and a half. I learnt so much and I was able to implement my knowledge into the videos we created. This trip also swayed my mind into think nuclear reactors are pretty amazing. As always this PLP trip was a trip to remember!
Like Destination Imagination, PLP also implements Blue Sky. In PLP we have two exhibitions, the Winter exhibition and Blue Sky. Blue Sky has been around for many years however, this was going to be my first Blue Sky so I didn’t really know what to expect.
Our theme this year was empathy. Basically for our project we had to design something that would help a group of people or an individual. The very first thing we practiced was listening to people and what they need, so we did the lunch activity. This was done in partners, and we had to listen to them in order to design them the perfect lunch.
Moving on, the topic for Blue Sky was the Sustainable Development Goals. Theses are a collection of 17 goals set by the United Nations. The issues they cover are over social and economic development issues including poverty, hunger, health, education, climate change, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, urbanization, environment and social justice. In groups we chose which topic we found the most interesting. My group chose Responsible Consumption and Production. This could be environmentally, for example, reducing plastics, waste etc.
In my group was Hannah, Claire and Sofia. Our group struggled to come up with an idea. Our first idea was to reduce packaging in fast food restaurants. This wasn’t going to work because a huge aspect of our projects this year, was we had to implement them. We kept the environmental theme however, in order to implement our product, the school seemed like an easier place where we could do something.
Our group split in two and I was working with Sofia. We thought a lot and needed to come up with an idea fast!
This is where the LAUNCH cycle came in. The LAUNCH cycle is the process we took to get our end result. So what is the LAUNCH cycle?
L- Look, Listen & Learn
A- Ask tons of questions
U- Understanding the process or problem
N- Navigate Ideas
C- Create a prototype
H- Highlight and fix
LAUNCH to the world!
L – Starting with look listen and learn. This is all to do with listening to your client. This involved research, so Sofia and I asked students what environmental issues they think our school faces. A common answer was the paper towels. In our school we go through a lot of paper towels per day. This was definitely an environmental problem that was attainable to accomplish.
A – Ask tons of questions. Sofia and I decided to base our project around reducing the paper towel usage in our school. To do this we needed to get a lot of information about how many paper towels are using in the school. We interviewed the janitor at our school. He was very helpful and was able to tell us how many paper towels we use in a day/week.
We asked him many other questions about the paper towel they use and what kind it is. We also found out that one box of six rolls costs around $35. This is a lot of money per week for the school. So not only is this an environmental problem but we could save money by using less.
U – Understanding the process or problem. In order to fix this problem, we needed to think of how we could get the school to use less paper towels. On average people use 2.5 paper towels every time they wash their hands. We also saw that by the end of the day, the paper towel bins in the girls bathroom were over flowing. Something else we did was we researched how much it would cost the school if the school bought an energy efficient hand dryer.
From this graph you can tell that the school would save a lot of money by perching a hand dryer. It would also be more environmentally friendly. For the paper towels we had to transport them and to make one ton of paper towels 17 trees and 20,000 gallons of water are used.
N – Navigate ideas. Now that we knew and understood the problem we had to start thinking of ideas for our project. Basically we had to come with a way we could encourage people to use less paper towels. An idea that we came up with was to set a goal for the school. We decided to make a paper towel bin for the girls bathroom that would encourage students to use less paper towels.
C – Create a prototype. To creating our first prototype, we had many stages. The first was designing our product. In this process I was in charge of designing the bin and Sofia did the research about the paper towels. To design the bin I used Sketches Pro.
In the design I decided to cut out the tree and make it clear, was so students could see how many paper towels were in the bin, and you could also easily track our progress. Also this meant I could draw the line of where we wanted our goal to be.
Here are a few messy drawings for the frame:
H- Highlight and fix. The next step was to get feedback actually create our design. We got some feedback on the design and fixed it then we were ready to start building. Sofia and I made our prototype from scratch. Neither of us are particularly engineers although I think we did a really good job making it.
We made the bin out of wood and we needed to figure out how we were going to make the box. To make the bin we used wood, jigsaw, table saw etc.
The first step was to make a frame for the bin. From Rona we had to buy the really long pieces of wood so we used the table saw to cut the wood. This was very difficult with only two people however, I was so proud of us because to be honest I didn’t think we were going to be able to make this.
Something else we had to do was to revise where the goal line was. At the end of a day at school, we poured the paper towels from the over flowing bins into our bin. We drew a line where the paper towels were and labeled it “where we are now”. We then drew a line under it and that was where our goal was. This was hopefully going to reduce the usage of paper towels by 50%.
Here is our finished prototype in the girls bathroom!
LAUNCH!!
Time to launch our prototype! Our final task in the LAUNCH cycle was to implement our product. Since we only made one bin, we decided to put the bin into the girls washroom. We talked to the janitor and he approved. We made two posters to put on the bin so people knew what we were doing. We left the paper recycling bin in the girls bathroom for a full day. Honestly I wasn’t sure if it was going to work however, when we came back at the end of the day, the paper towel line was just under our goal!!! I was so happy that we actually managed to reduce the paper towel usage! After our experiment, we asked a few class mates if they thought our bin was actually reminding them to use less paper towels and they all said it was!
The exhibition…
Finally the day of the exhibition arrived where we present our projects to parents, family, teachers etc. Like I said at the beginning, each group was categorized into UN Sustainable Development Goals. The younger grades also were put into groups. For exhibition night all the grades in the same category we going to be in the same room.
We teamed up to make our room represent our theme. Our topic was Responsible Consumption and Production. All the projects in my group were all to do with recycling and making a more environmentally friendly community. We decided to decorate our room with a forestry theme to represent the environment. This included having plants, lights off, calm music etc. Of coarse we needed to have food for the visitors. Sofia, Hannah and I were in charge of making cookies. We were told that all food and beverages had to be related to our topic. The cookies were homemade (reducing store packaging).
Some pics from the exhibition!
The sign was made by Emily from recycled paper.
To hide the library books, Hannah made a recycling symbol out of recycled paper.
Mine and Sofia’s stand.
Our poster explaining our project.
Overall I would say that Blue Sky was a success, all the groups did a really good job with decorating the rooms and executing their projects! I think Sofia worked really well, and we did a really good job with our project since we didn’t have a lot of time. I also learned a lot about the paper towel usage in our school and I think it is cool that Sofia and found a solution to reduce the paper towel usage. We also figured out that it would be more beneficial for the school if they got a hand dryer.
