This is an exciting blog because it is my final one of grade 8. To end off the year, all of PLP had our spring exhibition. In the exhibition, we were working with the grade 9s to show the different aspects of what makes a PLP learner. Every aspect had a different room with a group of people in it to show the aspect the best way possible. The aspect that our room was focusing on was outside the classroom work. For outside the classroom, we were focusing on the loon lake field study that we went on, as well as the advertisements the grade 8s did and the grade 9s showed some interviews that they did.
Our room was decorated to look like a forest, representing loon lake. We had the room setup so that when people walked over to it, they would get an introduction at the door. They would then walk through in a bit of a circle, while getting to check out all of the different things that we had setup. Once they walked out the door, they would get to the station that I was at, the rope ferry race.
This is it while we were still setting up
We decided to make a rope ferry race because at loon lake, there was a rope ferry that we would race against the time while setting new records. It was an amazing team building exercise that we had a lot of fun with, so we did our best to recreate it. We used skateboards tied to rope that me and some of the grade 9s were holding. The people would then pull themselves along and race to the finish line.
The other thing that I was doing was showing people QR codes to some of our DI videos. This was a more minor job that I was doing but I do thing that some people enjoyed being able to watch some of the videos of our hard work. I think that the QR codes would have attracted more attention if we had gotten all the grade 8 and 9 DI videos because we only really had a few.
In the end, I think that this spring exhibition was a fun way to wrap up the year. Our group did a good job with showing the PLP work that we do outside the classroom, with it still being fun. Since all the exhibitions are things that happen every year, I am looking forward to the next one.
Hi, and welcome back to my blog. Lately, we’ve been working on a big humanities project that we presented for the winter exhibition. Me and my group worked hard towards the final goal of making a tableau. Throughout this project we have learned about the outsiders and how they lived. We also did a lot of work with worldview and how it affects us. This was all to answer our driving question of “What can the Outsiders teach us about worldview?”
The first thing that we had to learn was what is a worldview. This is important to know because, other then the fact that it was in our driving question, we are exposed to it everyday, every if we don’t know it. A worldview is more or less just a way that we see the world, or our view on things. Many different things can make up your worldview but there are 7 main aspects that do. These aspects are geography, time, beliefs, values, society, economy, and knowledge. These are the main aspects mainly because all the other smaller ones can fit into their categories. These aspects change the way that you see the world, for example time. The time period that you live in, or grew up in, will make you think differently then someone from another time period.
The second thing that we did was learn about the book. We had to learn about the setting, timeline, and we had to get to know the characters. We learned about how they lived their lives being either rich and a Soc, or poor and a Greaser (there are a few other poor gangs but they are not as vital in the book until the rumble). These gangs never got along and were always fighting and jumping each other. We went along with the characters as Ponyboy and Johnny avoided the law, when people died, and when the rumble broke out. My favourite part of the book was probably the rumble because it’s the climax of the book.
The final thing that we did was learn about, and preform, two tableaux. A tableau is more or less a still play. Me and my group had to work together to use our bodies and a set to recreate a scene from the book then for the second one, how we think it would go in a modern setting. The scene that we had to recreate was the scene where Johnny kills Bob. For the first one we recreated this by having a few of us being Socs and “drowning” Ponyboy in a fountain while Johnny sat in the back getting ready to stab Bob. This was the version that was in the book. For our second one, the modern one, we had it so two Socs were pining down Ponyboy while Bob, me, was beating him up. We also had Johnny about to punch Bob, instead of killing him, and another person in the back filming the whole thing. While working on the tableaux we had to include a few different things. Those things were that you had to be able to tell what’s happening, it had to include different levels of height, it had to include different body shapes, it had to use your space well, and we had to have strong facial expressions.
In the end, this has been our longest project yet. We did a lot of work to answer our driving question and, as a bonus, we preformed our tableaux in our first ever PLP exhibition. We ended up performing our tableau about 30 times for it. So, time to answer the question of “What can the Outsiders teach us about worldview?” This is an easy question to answer because the different characters worldviews are very obvious. This book really shows that things like economics and society can decide who you choose to be with and things like time decide some of the ways that you act.
Welcome back! Lately, me and my scimatics group have been hard at work with our latest project, Tectonic chances. In this project we have been using probability and Plate Tectonics to create an unique and fun game. Me and my group, Makai and Magnus (you can check out their blogs here. MakaiMagnus), worked together to create Disaster Island.
How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? This has been our driving question throughout the project. To answer this question we dove into game design to see how it’s done. There have been many changes made to our game, I’ll talk about soon, and many things that still could use changing. To help with our understanding of probability we did a lot of work with dice and fractions.
To start off this project we had to start thinking of game ideas. For this one, our groups weren’t finalized so we also had Cameron B. Our original ideas were similar to later on but much too complex. In the original it was much too hard and time consuming to get the keys, the extra life, and the wheel spins. Another difference was that some things, like the wheel spin, were optional. This made it too easy because, unless you went for these things, you wouldn’t even have a chance of getting the bad option.
At the end of this project we started to finalize the game rules and then we had fun. We got to spend a bunch of time playing our game with other people, from our class and the other one, and we got to play other people’s games. This was a fun experience that further helped us understand how we can use thematic and mathematical elements in game design by seeing how other people did it.
Another important thing that we did was the mind map. We did a mind map at the start of the project to see some examples of what we know, think, wonder about, and some ideas for our games. As the project went on, we added more and more to it so we could see how far we came with our knowledge about plate tectonics, we also answered some of our questions.
Throughout this project we have learned a lot about game design and the effort that goes into it. We have done a lot of work with tectonic plates and how they work, with them moving on top of the mantle and causing many things to happen. We also did a lot of work with probably and fractions using dice rolls. So, how are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? Well, many games use some form of mathematical equations to help determine the outcome. Sometimes it’s using probability with dice, cards, or a spinner, and other times it’s using simple math like adding/subtracting or dividing/multiplying. Some games, like Monopoly, will use multiple of these things to make the gameplay more exciting. In the end, this project has taught me a lot about how thematic and mathematical elements are used in game design.
In this project we have done a series of things to answer the deriving question of How Do I Build And Strengthen The PLP Learning Team? This driving question is more or less asking what makes you unique in a learning environment and how can you apply that to the PLP team. This project was sort of our right of passage into the PLP team. It gave us an understanding of what future projects will look like. This project was also used to show us three things that we will need to know for the rest of our time in PLP. These three things are how to use our iPads to grow knowledge, how to become independent thinkers with PBL (project based learning), and why/how we are connecting our learning to real world experiences. To help us learn this we had 4 main things, the Big Life Journal, the User Manual, the Team Member Contract, and the keynote guided tour.
Big life journal is a journal that is asking us questions about who you are as a person. You need to know this because if you don’t know who you are and what your life goals are, then you have no chance of discovering who you are as a learner. Is you know what you love and want to do you can transfer that over to your learning. Later on in this project we had to pick our three favourite parts of the BLJ to improve and put into our keynote presentation (more about that later).
Our user manual was a way of telling other people about you, as a learner and a person. For the user manual we had to take our mentor text (the user manual that our teachers did) and make ours look as close to it as possible. The user manual had to include a lot of facts about ourselves like our age, some of our settings (different ways we act), warnings about us, and ways to maintain optimal performance, aka how to keep me happy.
Another thing that we did was the team member contract. The team member contract is a page that we made on our learning portfolios that is a promise to all our future team members. In it we talk about how we work as a team and what we will and wont do while in the team. Mine was mostly talking about how I organize people and take charge, a nicer way of saying that I am bossy, and the promise I made was that I would do my best to listen to everyone and not only use my ideas. Link to my contract
The final, and biggest thing that we did was the Keynote Guided Tour. Our task for this was to take everything that I just talked about, plus a few more things, and put it all into a presentation that we showed to all of the PLP 8 parents. Aside from the things I already talked about, I also included my physical representation and my I Am things. With my physical representation I had to pick one of three boxes that was filled with random things and I could only use that to make something that showed who I am as a learner. For this I made a little person holding a list and with a lightbulb. For my I Am WordPack I had to put down things that people should know about me, while with my I Am statement I put down something that people know about me just by looking at me. Once we had put together this whole presentation we showed it to that PLP 8 parents by setting up a themed area with our table groups. Me and my group (Cameron, Ronan, Kate, Julia, and Luca) had a sport themed area. The way that it represented our learning was that we work as a team, like a sport team. After presenting our tours we received feedback from our parents and then we were officially PLP learners.
With this project I have had a lot of different strengths and stretches. My strengths throughout this project have been being able to use my iPad in a way where I can really start to make things look really cool. I think this shows with my keynote tour because I was able to navigate many different apps in order to make it look the way it does and be original. Some of my stretches in this project have been the team challenges and even ushering my learning portfolio. With the team challenges, a bunch of random challenges we did with our table group to get us used to working as a team, my team would do good on a few, but I feel that with most of them we would end up with a mess on the floor. Most of the time when we didn’t do so well it was because we got cocky towards the end and messed something up. The reason that my learning portfolio (my blog) is a stretch is because I’ve really not gotten the hang of it yet and I sometimes find myself struggling with it.
To answer the driving question, how do I build and strengthen the PLP learning team, I’ve had to learn a lot about myself. Ive learned that the way that I strengthen the PLP learning team is by being the person that will organize elements of a project and enhance the team’s performance, making everything run smoothly. In the end, this has been a really fun introduction for the PLP and an amazing way to discover who I am.
