The Time of The Renaissance

jacksonc Humanities , 0 Comment

Welcome back to another blog post! We just finished up another project, and this was one that I really found myself enjoying. We did a project on the renaissance and I focused on the most significant part of it, Leonardo da Vinci and his work. The first thing that we had to learn is how to tell if something is historically significant or else we wouldn’t be able to tell what is the most significant. Once we knew why our thing from the renaissance was important we had to explain why it was in a paragraph. We then had to put down our ideas in a triptych digital gallery. This was all to answer the question “What significant developments emerged from the past and how do they impact us today?” 

The first thing that we had to learn was how to tell if something was historically significant. The main way to tell if something’s historically significant is by using NAME. NAME stands for Novelty, what was new about this, Applicability, how is it similar to modern events, Memory, how was it remembered by different parties of people, and Effect, how did it have an effect on people. For something to be historically significant it had to be as many of those thing as possible. 

Once we knew if our thing was actually historically significant, we had to give reasons on why if was in our paragraph. We learned about the proper way to write a paragraph and all the different things that must be included in one. 

My Paragraph 

The final thing that we did was put all of the research down in a triptych. Our triptychs had to have a panel for an art piece and an innovator, a panel for an invention and a societal change, and the final panel was for our own modern versions of all this. I heavily based my triptych on Leonardo da Vinci because I think that there is just so much that he accomplished and that we can learn from him. 

So, what significant developments emerged from the past and how do they impact us today? Well, is something is historically significant then we learn from it and we’re more likely to remember the lesson it teaches us. Like you can see in my paragraph, just one renaissance man impacts the past and present in so many incredible, and new, ways. You can also see in my triptych’s middle panel, some of the things that have come out of past things, like inventions evolving, new movements, and even new innovators. So in conclusion, the renaissance was a very important time, because of all the things that we got out of it. 

Loon Lake Advance

jacksonc Other , 0 Comment

Hi! Welcome back to another one of my blog posts. Recently, we got to go on our first ever Field study to loon lake. This is a pretty big thing because one of the big things that you do in PLP is travel, but because of Covid we haven’t been able to yet. We went for 4 days with PLP 8 and 9. When we were there we did many fun activities and had a lot of good food, something that made it a lot more enjoyable. 

What is Loon Lake?

Loon Lake is a place for group retreats. It has a dining hall, a field, cabins, a gym/basketball court, a lake, and a few other spots. You could also take a rope fairy across the lake to a forest with a few trails. Everyone there was also in an advisory group that would meet up once or twice a day to reflect on how everything’s going. This was important because, as we say in PLP, you don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on experience. This was also an amazing way for people in PLP 8 and 9 to get to know each other better. I know that many people got to know new people or even just got to know people better. If you want to know more about our loon lake trip, you can check out my book on it here!

DI Time

jacksonc Other 0 Comment

Hi and welcome back to my blog! Today I’m going to be talking about the biggest project that I’ve been working on. This is Destination Imagination. DI is this contest between a bunch of schools. In DI you are tasked with solving a problem with your team using a limited amount of supplies. You have a price limit of $190.30 to spend on supplies, a time limit of 8 minutes (including the setup), and a space limit of 8ft by 10ft. Every team has a different and unique challenge where you have the chance to impress the judges and score points in different areas. This project is still in the works so I can’t reveal too much of our solution. 

Our team was tasked with the challenge of creating a story that takes place in the Microworld where the characters have to discover a mysterious object. All that I’m going to reveal about my story is that it involves bacteria and some scientists. Our story is going to have some scene changes and some music and stuff to keep the story going. 

So far we have done a lot of work with the story and some of the background parts. I have also started working on some of the music that is going to be on in the background. The main reason that I’m making the music is so that is feels more original and because it can get us more points under the team choice element part. A team choice element is something that we add that shows that audience a bit about out team. I have to do about three songs that all have different feels to them, like sad, excited, and calm.

The set pieces that we have mainly been working on are some microscopes for the start and end of the play. They have to be large enough that you can see them from up to 25 feet away and they have to be able to fit one or two people behind them. These are going to play a vital role in telling our story. 

Another big thing that our group has been working on is our instant challenges. The instant challenges are a bunch of, more or less, mini DI challenges. In the challenge you have a couple minutes to use a few objects to write a story and perform it to some judges. You are then scored and compared to the other groups, who all had to do the exact same challenge. 

So far I think that my group has been doing pretty well. I think that our group is where we need to be with the work. We do have to start on our mysterious object because that is going to be the hardest part. I think that we are going to be ready for the first of the dress rehearsals, which are coming up in a few weeks.

My Group

Owen

Kadin

Caden

Susan

Callum

Naomi

How I’ve Done So Far

jacksonc Humanities, Maker, Scimatics 0 Comment

Hi and welcome to my mPOL. Before I even get started, I’d like to make the mPOL declaration. “Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.” Now that I’m done with that, lets get into the mPOL. In this first semester, I have changed and grown a lot as a learner. Because of my PLP classes, Scimatics, Humanities, and Maker, I have learned new ways to learn. 

The driving questions for this mPOL are “How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year?” And “How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year?” I’m going to be using past projects and my learning plan to show how I’m doing now and what I want to work on in the second part of the year. 

Learning Plan

Some of the things that I put in my learning plan are different to what I am doing now. One of the things that is different is a bunch of the Scimatics stuff. I actually feel that I have followed my learning plan, at least with the growth section. I found that with the more recent work and project we’ve been doing, I’ve really been working on the science portion as well as the math. This was a big thing for me because I found that when I put more work into the part that I have a bit more trouble with, I have some results that were a lot better then before. I actually would have added this in my strength section now. For the other subjects, I feel that, for the most part, it is pretty accurate for me right now. 

One thing that I want to work on with my learning plan to reach some of these targets is to really work hard on building the habits that I talked about. The ones that I think are the most important are the ones where I talk about having set time for work and working on things that aren’t due for a while. I’ve for sure gotten a lot better with these things, but I still find myself getting distracted. I really need to start taking these work times a lot more seriously so I don’t end up doing all the work at the last minute. If I do these things, then I think that the outcome will be work that is done a lot better and that I’m a lot happier with. 

Maker

The first thing that demonstrated my learning growth was actually the first project that we did this year. This project was the Me as a PLP Learner project. The reason that this demonstrated my growth as a learner is because, going into this, I knew almost nothing about PLP and the way that I would be learning. In this project I learned how to properly use apps like basecamp and showbie. I also learned things like why it really is important to apply what you are learning to the real world and why it’s important to reflect on your work. The reason that it’s important to reflect on your work is because, if you don’t reflect, the work wont stick with you and you wont really learn because, as we learn in PLP, you don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on experience. Another big reason that this showed my growth as a learner is because of my Big Life Journal. My BLJ made my think about who I am and where I want to be. This really got me Thai king about the work that I have to put in to get there and it motivated me to work harder then what I was before.

The other Maker project that I’m going to talk about is the Constructing Creative Communication project. In this project I learned about a lot more amazing tools and apps that I have access to. I also learned that there are many different ways that I can express myself and my learning. The reason that this demonstrated my growth as a learner is because, going into this project, I would sometimes have trouble expressing my work and this project really helped show me some ways to do that. The reason that this is important is because, if the work I do is more fun and memorable then it will stick with me a lot better. 

Humanities 

The humanities project that I’m going to talk about is the medium is the message project. This was the project where we worked with local businesses to create advertisements for them.  This demonstrated my learning growth in a number of ways. The first way is that I started learning why it is important to revise your work. I learned that the client, your team, the teachers, and even you wont always be happy with the work you did so you have to learn to take constructive criticism to improve it.  

Scimatics

The scimatics project that I had the most learning growth with was the laser laws project. This was the most recent project we did in scimatics. In this project we learned about the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection and how we can use them. For the end product we made a big laser display to prove the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection. This showed my growth as a learner because I found that, with this project, I actually learned a lot that I didn’t know about science and math. Normally, when I go into a new project or subject, I have at least some idea of what I’m doing from past things, but I had absolutely zero idea what anything was. By the end of the project, I knew how to do these things easily. I think this really showed my learning growth and it had some really cool outcomes. 

In the end, I think that I have grown a lot with my learning. I think that the examples that I’ve given, with my different subjects, has shown that I have really changed since the start of the year, and that I’m still changing and growing with my learning. I think that since the start of the year I’ve really improved even with things like my teamwork, my responsibility with my work, and the way that I revise/look back on my work. I think that to sharpen my learning plan I would have to do a lot more work having specific times to get work done and what work I’m doing in that time. 

Pristine Poetry Book

jacksonc Humanities 0 Comment

Welcome back! We’ve just finished up another project in humanities. The project we’ve been working on has been quite interesting in a few ways. We’ve been doing poetry. We have done a lot of work with learning different poem terms, learning how to properly read poetry, learn how to write poetry, and dissecting poems. This has all been to answer the driving question, “How might I construct text that shows who I am right now?” We also worked towards doing a live poetry reading. 

The first thing that we did was start learning some different poetry terms. A poetry term is a thing thing that you can include in your poems. Example, a rhythm scheme is the pattern in which the poem rhythms. For this we created a note page of sorts where we had the term, what it means, and an example for every term. Close to the end of the project we even had a test on this. If was a fairly simple test where we had a few multiple choice questions and we had to dissect a poem. The poem test was a good insensitive to actually put in the work to learn some of these terms because I most likely wouldn’t have bothered to learn some of the less common otherwise. 

The next thing that we did was start working on the poems. This was sort of in two parts because we had to learn to write and read poetry. We had to learn how to write about 9 different types of poetry to put into my book, more on that later. There are also a few reasons why we had to learn to read poetry properly. The first being that we were going to have to present our poems later on. The second reason is because poems can change depending on how you read them. If you don’t read the poem right, you could end up getting the wrong message across. Sometimes, how you read the poem is more important than how it’s written.

 

The final big thing that we did in this project was creating a book. We made books about all the poems that we wrote. For every poem we had a complementary text, like a photo, and a voice over explaining the poem and what it’s about. We also made an about the author page. On this page we had a photo of us, some writing about us, and an about me video. Once we were done with the book we actually had to present poems on a zoom call. Some people read poems from their books but everyone was put into a group and had to write a new poem. Every group had a different type of poem that they had to do, my group had experience poem, and we had to work together to make a poem about our worldview and also make a background image. 

In the end, this was a pretty good project. Even thought I don’t love poetry, I had an ok time doing all this. I learned that there are many ways to construct text that shows who I am right now. There are all the different types of poems and everyone is unique. I learned the importance of how you present the poem, as well as how you write it. I also learned how to use some new tools and apps to enhance my final learning. 

Check out my poetry book here!

Laser Light Show

jacksonc Scimatics 0 Comment

Welcome back to another Scimatics blog post. Lately we have been working on a project that I have really enjoyed. We’ve been working with lasers, the law of reflection, and the Pythagorean theorem to answer the driving question, “How can we test the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection.” These are important tools to have because they are used in the real world a lot, for example if you are building something. To test the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection, we did a number of things. We did a mind map, read a story about the Pythagorean theorem, used online light/laser simulators, and even played laser tag. Then to end it off, we made a laser display. 

The mind map is something we do at the start of almost every new Scimatics project. I did a section for questions, thoughts, and examples. At the end of the project I went back and did my best to answer some of those questions and add more thoughts and examples. 

Another thing that we did that I found important was the book. The book was a story about Pythagoras as a kid and how he discovered the Pythagorean theorem. I don’t know about everyone else but this really helped me understand the Pythagorean theorem better. This is because the book used examples of how it’s used in the real world and I find that makes things easier to understand. 

One of my favourite things that we did in this project was laser tag. We didn’t do traditional laser tag but what we did was somewhat similar. We had two teams that put a target somewhere in the class and the other team had to try and bounce a laser off of a mirror to hit it and vice versa. The lasers started in one spot and we weren’t allowed to move anything until the lasers were off. The first round my team won by hitting the target on our second try. In the second round we did class against class. We set up our targets in our class and we had to shoot the laser down the hall, into the other class, and hit the target using two mirrors. To make it harder we also had to keep the lasers in our class. Our team actually won this by hitting the target first try. 

Another big thing that we did was the laser optics simulator. This is where we started planning out what our big laser displays are going to look like, at least the triangle. We started getting used to working with lasers and reflections, which we quickly found out is very finicky and precise. We then did a bit of a lab with our newfound knowledge. In the lab we had to use the law of reflection and the Pythagorean theorem to make a right triangle. 

To end off this project we did a laser display. We were put into teams of 4 or 5 and we built a laser display. My team did a very large triangle with an ocean theme. We did our best to prove the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection but there were some flaws. We did prove that with the law of reflection, the angle of incidences and the angle of reflection will be an equal distance from the normal. The problem was with the Pythagorean theorem. Our measurements weren’t adding up with our calculations. This was most likely due to an error in our measurements. We were off by 0.66cm from a perfect triangle. Once we were done building our projects we had a morning where everyone set up their projects, we turned out the lights, and we put smoke on them all. The smoke made it so that we could see the lasers and it made for a really cool effect. 

At the end of every project we do, we have to do a self assessment and say how we think we did. The rubric that we were following had three parts to them. The first part was how we used our class time. I think that I am at the proficient level with this. I don’t always do the best with using my class time but for this project I was actually getting a lot done in class and I was using my time well. The second part is the knowledge part. This part is about how well you know the Pythagorean theorem, the law of reflection, and all the work leading up to it. For this I think that I may have actually done pretty good. I think I was at more of an extending level with this for a few reasons. The main reason is that, even though my measurements and sometimes my calculations were a bit off, I could always figure out where the source of error was. The third section on the rubric was about how well actually built our project and how well our team worked together. I think that the way the project turned out was at a proficient level but our  teamwork was at more of an emerging/developing level. The reason I say this is because there was only like one or two people working on it while the rest of the group didn’t barely did any work. I think that if everyone did more equal work, then the project could have turned out a lot better.

In the end this was a really cool project. We did work with lasers, both in real life and online, mirrors, and we even played laser tag. To answer the driving question, I think that the easiest way to test/prove both the law or reflection and the Pythagorean theorem is to just make a right angle triangle. If you make the triangle right, you can easily prove both of them. 

If you want you can check out my group here!

Judah

Kai

Caitlin

Etiquette on the Trails

jacksonc Maker 0 Comment

Welcome to another one of my geek out blog posts! Today I’m going to be doing 4 things you should know about mountain biking trail etiquette. I would recommend reading this if you are new to mountain biking because if you don’t know this, it could make some people really mad.

Thing #1

The first bit of etiquette that you should learn is to get off the middle of the trail. Say you are waiting for someone to catch up, or you are stopping to look at a feature, you should always make sure that you, and your bike, are off the trail as much as possible. This is because if someone was coming down the trail, you don’t t want them to crash into you. Even if you crashed, unless you can’t, you still want to try to get off the trail as quick as possible so you don’t cause more people to crash. 

Thing #2

The next bit of etiquette you have to learn is on two-way trails. These can be tricky, especially when they are skinny, so to make it a bit easier the person that is going downhill should always go slower then normal and let the people going uphill have the right of way. The people going uphill can do their best to help get out of the way, and they shouldn’t take up the whole trail, but it is really up to the person going downhill.

Thing #3

The third thing you should know about bike etiquette is not to snake. This applies a lot more to jump trails and dirt jumps, but it is good to know no matter what. Snaking is when you cut in front of the person in front of you. This will really make people mad. The best way to avoid this is to ask the people in front if they are going. This is a really easy way to avoid making anyone mad. 

Thing #4

This isn’t really biking but it’s definitely something that you need to know. If you are hiking on a trail that’s made for mountain biking, you have to get out of the way. People on bikes are going to be coming down there fast, and you don’t want to get in their way. If you are hiking on a biking trail, stay off the trail as much as possible. The best way to avoid this is to just not hike on trails that are meant for biking.

Well, there you go. Hopefully, with this knowledge, you wont make people mad on the trails. If you want to see some more things on bike etiquette you can check out this website. 

Photo Time!

jacksonc Maker 4 Comments

Welcome to my geek out post #3. Today is a bit different because I’m not going to be talking as much about biking. Today we had to take a photo or drawing of our thing that we did and talk about it. 

The photo I’m using is a drawing that I did of mountain biking. It’s based of a photo of my on some local trails. One small thing to note with this is that the bike I drew is actually my old bike. My current bike is a newer version of a Santa Cruz nomad, while the bike in the photo is a Rocky Mountain. The trail is one of the many, many local trails that are not on the map. It’s a trail that has many rock rolls and steeper sections. If you want to see some of the other local trails, then click here! 

The Original Photo

I’m pretty sure that for my next post I’ll be able to get back to talking about mountain biking. I’m most likely going to do a post about some sort of comparison or maybe even a Q and A.  

The Different Ways to Ride

jacksonc Maker 2 Comments

Welcome to part two of my geek out blog post! Today I’m going to be doing a bit of a comparison. As you may or may not know, there are quite a few different types of biking. Every different type of biking has a different kind of bike, style, and terrain that goes with it. In this post I’m going to cover the main ones that you should know about.

The first kind of biking, the kind that I do, is enduro. Enduro riding is where you ride your bike up the mountain then ride down technical trails, sometimes with more climbs thrown in there. In a racing scenario the starting uphill is not timed but the second you start the actual trail it it timed, every if there are uphill parts on the trail. In every enduro race there are multiple stages with different climbs and trails. You do not get timed in between the stages. Enduro is a pretty common type of riding, especially in places like the North Shore where there are little to no shuttle services. This forces riders to climb and ride in a more enduro way. The kinds of bikes that you use for enduro riding is pretty cool. Enduro bikes are very light and easy to use on uphill but they are also made to go fast and take big impacts on trails. 

The next kind of biking is downhill. Downhill biking is actually pretty similar to enduro except for a few main differences. The biggest difference is that with downhill, you don’t climb. You get shuttles up or you can take chair lifts, if the mountain you are riding on has one. With races, there is no climb at the start, or on the trail, and you only get timed on the downhill. The downhill bikes are the strongest and heaviest of all the bikes. Downhill bikes are built for pure speed downhill. 

The final kind of biking that I’m going to talk about is slope style. Slope style is very different from enduro and downhill. Slope style is a kind of biking where you only do tricks. The trails will normally just be a series of big jumps and drops where riders can get a lot of air time and do some very insane tricks. Instead of races there competitions where they are not timed, but they are given a score and rated by judges. The bikes are very small and are built so you can do bigger tricks, like backflips and tail whips, a whole lot easier. 

There are still many kinds of biking that I didn’t cover, like cross country and free ride, and I’ll try and cover them as soon as I can. I love the fact that there are so many different kinds of riding so there really is something for everyone. 

How I became a Mountain Bike Geek

jacksonc Maker 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome back to my blog! After an extended winter break, were right back at it with new projects and, of course, new blog posts. The current project that I’m working on, this one, is going to be quite a bit different. Instead of doing a project then a post, this project is to write blog posts about something that we “Geek out” about. Over the next few weeks, you will be hearing a lot about a thing that I really love. The thing that I geek out about is mountain biking.

 

For those of you who don’t know what mountain biking is, it is more or less the most fun adrenaline rush that you can get. Mountain biking is when you ride a special kind of bike, that is built to withstand rocks, roots, and big impacts, on different kinds of trails/terrain. The trails can be steep and technical, smooth with jumps, and everything in between. The kinds of trails that you ride can also depend on the kind of riding you do. 

You may be wondering how I got so into mountain biking that I’m now writing blog posts about it. Well, about 4 years ago I moved from Toronto to Vancouver. Before I moved, I had never even seen a mountain and I could still barely ride a bike. My dad has a friend out here that he hadn’t seen since college that is an extreme mountain biker. So, when we moved here my dad and his friend reconnected and my dad’s friend took him on a bike ride. When my dad got home he started telling me about the crazy trails and how fun it all was, then proceeded to buy a mountain bike. With how much that my dad was talking about it, I knew that I had try it. So I started saving money and soon enough I got my first bike. From the second that I took it to my first trail, I knew that I was hooked. Ever since I’ve been biking every chance and I just recently sighed up for my first bike races. 

That’s the story of how I was introduced to mountain biking. Over the next few weeks more posts like this will be coming out with more information on mountain biking. If you want to see what some of my classmates are geeking out over, then press here and select a student in grade 8.