Monthly Archives: November 2021

Herzog: taking photos with an iPad

Hello! This blog post is the summary and story of my latest Maker project. This project is divided in two parts, Carr and Herzog, so this is just the first blog post for this project. I was assigned Herzog first so that is part of the project I are writing about today. Herzog was all about learning how to take intriguing photos and how to edit them. The driving question for this project is why is it important to use technology to further improve our ability to communicate and to think creatively? The reason we are learning this is because communication and creativity will be in almost all jobs by 2025 if not already and PLP wants us to prepare for that. The adult world connection is the understanding that we develop as we do the project, not exactly what we are working on specifically.

The big thing we learned was how to actually use the camera app in more detail. We learned how to make silhouettes by tapping and turning down the brightness and how to take Live Photos and edit them. We also learned what a panorama shot is and how to take one. Another key part of this project was learning about different camera angles. Camera angles are ways and directions to take a photo. I first learned about basic camera angles; Bird’s Eye, Worm’s Eye, Close Up and Long Shot. A Bird’s Eye camera angle is when you shot from above, while a Worm’s Eye is when you shoot from below. As you would expect a Close Up shot is one that is close up, while a Long Shot is one from far away. After we had all “mastered” those, we moved onto advanced camera angles. These include Eye Level, High Level, Extreme Close Up, Extreme Long Shot, Medium Shot and Canted Perspective. If you really want to learn about those click HERE. That link shows what those camera angles are. As well if you want an in depth look at basic camera angles click HERE.

Another thing we did in this project was… take pictures! I know right crazy! Taking pictures in a project about photography! Well we did. The first picture I remember doing is a silhouette one of DANIEL. CALLUM was also in my group. How we made a silhouette was by backlighting the subject, then tapping before you take the picture and bringing down the brightness. After that you edit and mark it up and you can colour in the background so it looks like a true silhouette. The next photo we did we did in the RAIN! We walked down to this beach near our school and then took some photos of the landscape. I had some help from CAMERON and KAI. I do actually really like taking landscape photos. I think they can be quiet beautiful. The last photo I am going to talk about is one we did for homework, manufacturing Moods. The mood I got to manufacture was tired. In my photo for it you may think I’m acting. I’m not. Well, maybe a little but my arms were tired from raking.

A big part of this project was learning how to use apps to edit photos. The first app we learned to edit in is Camera, the default taking and editing photo app for iOS. In camera you can crop, markup, choose the genre of photo and edit the fundamental things of the picture. Let me explain what those are. Cropping photos is when you cut some parts out. Marking up your photo is when you draw on your picture. Choosing the genre is choosing an option and changing the whole photo to do with that. Some examples are Vivid, Dramatic and Mono. Editing the fundamental things (this is not what its is officially called. I don’t know what it officially is) like the contrast and shadows. We also learned how to use Snapseed. In this app you can do all those things and more! As there are so many things you can do I’ll just tell you my two favourites, Healing and Head Pose: Smile. With Healing you can take out part of the photos and it puts there what it thinks should go there. It can get cursed very quickly. Head Pose: Smile is something you can do to force the a person to smile. This also can get very cursed fast. The final app we learned about is Pixelmator Photo. This app costs money! My favourite features in this app are Healing and ML Super Resolution. You might be thinking “but Mr. Judah, we already know what Healing is.” And to that I so no! Well yes, but here’s the difference: in Pixelmator Photo it… works! (Better) Now ML Super Resolution is it making it so it has, as in its name, Super Resolution! It can actually do quite a bit of work.

All together I did really like this (part) project. I think I did good and I’m content with my level of work. I did like taking photos and editing them, for some pictures can be really beautiful. My 

See ya around and goodbye, Judah G!

Survive the Plates

Survive the Plates

Hello! This blog post is the summary and story of my latest Scimatics project, Tectonic Chances. This project was about learning about the tectonic plates and making a game about them with probability. The Driving Question for this project was “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design?” 

The first thing we did for this project look at the launch and start draft an idea of what we wanted our game to be and its rules. I knew from the very start of the project I wanted to have a game where your trying to outlast the other players playing the game. I talked with Chris if there should be cards to make it so you attack other players so they would have to defend against you AND the catastrophes. He thought I shouldn’t so I decided not to. Looking back on it, it was probably a good idea because that can really make some feel bad situations. In this stage we also started a Mindmap about our game and the project as a whole. Launch done, on to building knowledge.

The first thing we did for building knowledge was learn lots of scientific vocabulary about plate tectonics. We did this by reading textbooks. This was super interesting to me not just because the subject was interesting, but this was the first time I used textbooks. It was cool being able to go at your own pace but all finish by the end of class. While taking notes without falling behind! Textbooks are not as bad as there cred would suggest. Also we did workbooks about the information in the textbooks. For anyone who doesn’t know what workbooks are they are textbooks except with questions.We also did some quizzes on Khan Academy which was my first time using it though I had heard of it. Something about the quizzes that confused me was that you were allowed to do them multiple times and give the highest result for your grade. Does not make sense to me. Building knowledge has been built now onto Develop and Critique.

In Develop and Critique we started building our games and editing according to feedback. I chose to build a card game so I started working on the designs in Canva. Canva’s an app that is used to make things like posters and logos. Before we knew it we started working on our final rules draft! This was big so we couldn’t screw it up. I worked on rules all class. Though about balancing, checked spelling, did calculations. I’m just kidding it wasn’t so bad. The criteria for it was have calculations about how probability is used in your game, a drawing of how the game, and of course the rules themselves. The next thing we had to do was build it. The only thing I had to do was design more cards and print them out. I worked on lots of drawings and got feedback for them. People really liked my goofy way of expressing the catastrophes, so that was good. Next I had to print them out and cut them. I got some help with my dad and it was actually really nice spending some time with him doing something’s that he’s really good at. With my game build and having critique in hand we finish Develop and Critique.

In this next part I learned that my game is genuinely fun to play. Personally I don’t think it’s amazing but it’s at least a little interesting. The people that I got to play my game with were Luca, Hayden, Caitlin and Kira. Luca is defiantly the one that knows the game the best since he has played the game the most. Hayden, Caitlin and Kira were the next people who played my game. Caitlin actually drew on one of my cards with a marker. After they all finished my playing my game they got the chance to fill out a rubric and give me an artificial grade. Now that that’s done we can write our blog post… which we’re doing right now! How these things tie themselves up!

All together I did find this fun because what we were learning was interesting and we got to make a game! I found this a great learning experience and I do find myself still remembering about the things we learned. I favourite part of the project was probably doing this experiment with different temperatures of coloured water.

See ya around and goodbye, Judah G!