Year: 2022

tPOL Final Blog Post

liame PLP, TPOL

Hello! 

Welcome to my final blog post of grade 10 and all of PLP. This last blog post is my tPOL blog post or Transitional Presentation of Learning. This blog post will serve as a background to my presentation and will highlight some of the points that I will make in my presentation. 

The first thing I want to cover is the seven habits of highly effective teens. This book didn’t resonate well with me for a few reasons. The first one being that the book was kind of a bad spin off of the original book Seven Habits for Highly Effective People, I later switched too reading this book after reading the first chapter of the Highly Effective Teens version. I felt like the book was also counterintuitive, the book talks a lot about how you need to be proactive and take action but because the book is so long and all of the workbooks on top of that it really felt like it was just a waste of time and not really a good way of practicing the Seven Habits. I also felt like the summery video was a way more helpful way of learning the Seven Habits and I feel like I learned more from that then the actual book. The information from the book was overall forgettable and just watching the video was an overall better way for me to learn. 

Now I will talk a little bit about what works for me as a learner. The first thing that works really well for me is getting straight to the point I think that it is better then drawing something out over an extended period of time even if it means that you get less time to spend on individual aspects, I find that this makes things less forgettable. It also works for me when I am able to push myself to improve and do something even if I dont feel like it rather then just letting things happen and hoping that I improve. When I am able to improve myself it makes me a better learner. 

Something that I thought was a good way to communicate my ideas was the podcasts. I find that podcasts are easier to get my ideas out and I dont have to worry about things like punctuation and spelling mistakes, which get me stuck and make it harder to write. It is also a lot faster and I dont get distracted very easily. I also find it easier to convey a message by using tone and by also using by using subtleties in speech. 

in conclusion I think that there is both things that I have struggled with. and things that I have been able to do really well in school this year, and I believe that because of all my improvements, that I am able to advance to the next grade level. 

Canada’s Crazy Condo Cost

liame Uncategorized

Shore to The Core was my most recent project in my PLP class. This project was very local to me because it was all about Canada and specifically Deep Cove, this project focused mainly on the start of Deep Cove. For this project I focused on the housing economy which is a big part of Vancouver today being one of the most expensive places to live on the planet. 

now what was the point of this project. In this project we had to write a essay about our topic for a company called MONOVA which would publish our essays on there website. This is a cool experience because I have never really had something that I have written on a website as big as MONOVA’s. Here is what my essay for MONOVA looks like. 

But now lets get to answering the driving question which is “what makes something historically significant?” I believe that in order for something to be historically significant, it has to effect people at the time and in the future and cannot be ignored when looking at somethings history. 

Loon Lake Learning Advance

liame Uncategorized
  • I am in the back left
  • I’m in the blue hoodie
  • I’m in the blue hoodie

 

Loon lake learning advance has made me a better me, let me explain. On this learning advance we got to be the best person that we could be by making goals on how to improve ourselves. My goal was based around how I let my mind get in the way or things that I want to do. I will give you an example. When I was at the learning advance I was wanting to do the ropes course and I saw it as an opportunity to face my biggest fear which is heights. I haven’t always had this fear, I used to climb trees a lot and I used to rock climb all the time. I dont know why I developed the fear but I haven’t been able to overcome it. When I was at the ropes course I was climbing up to get onto the pole so I could start the course, but then before I got to the top I looked down and psyched myself out and wasn’t able to do the course. I have done this a lot where I am determined to do something and then I start to psyche myself out. So because of this my goal was to stop allowing my thoughts get in the way of something that I want to do. Here is my goal written as a S.M.A.R.T. Goal. 

This trip wasn’t just goals though, we also got to do some fun activities like rock climbing, canoeing, archery and the previously mentioned ropes course. Out of all these 4 activities I enjoyed archery the most. This is because I have done archery in the past and used to practice all the time and had a lot of fun doing to again, after so many years of not doing it. But even though I enjoyed archery it wasn’t the best part of the trip for me. The best part of this learning advance, for me it was the meal times, but not just for the food which was really good but for the conversations that I had with other people. Usually I get nervous when talking to people I usually dont talk to, but at loon lake I faced one of my fears and I talked to a lot more people at these times. I feel like I made connections with more people, and that I made more friends.

Overall this trip for me was a huge amount of fun and a good learning experience that I have used to make a better me and to continue to be a better person. 

Yes

liame Maker 10, PLP

Hello! 

I am on the far right in this photo

Today I will be making a blog post reflection on Destination Imagination. This is a tournament where you have a challenge and you need to present a solution to the challenge in the form of a skit. As a team me and my pears Keenan, Nathan, Nya, Ryan and Julien we solved the scientific challenge for DI. The scientific challenge that we needed to solve was that there is a micro world where the characters have to enter it and find a mysterious object that they dont know what the use for it is. Then some time in the story they have to find out the use of the mysterious object. We also had to have 2 team choice elements which could be something like a costume or a skill. You also need to have 1 technical element like a machine. And 1 lighting effect. For my group we Ryan made a hoodie that I used as a costume in the presentation. We also for our other team choice element had Julien make our sound effects for the presentation. Then for our lighting effect we used black light to light up some of the things in the micro world. 

Our solution to the challenge was that there is a flesh eating bacteria vibrio vulnificus that is common in coastal waters and kills a lot of people each year. The scientists then get shrunk into a sample that they got of the water with the bacteria and then find the anti body in the sample and use it too kill the bacteria that was in the sample with them. Its a little bit complicated but here is the video of our challenge so you can better understand it. 

something that I learned while doing this is that it is a lot better to work together as a team rather than too try to do a large amount of work by yourself. I also learned the value of planning a lot before you actually start doing any work. 

In conclusion DI was a pretty good experience. It taught me a lot about teamwork and it taught me a lot about problem solving.

WWII’s Unseen Stories

liame Uncategorized

Hello 

Today I will be talking about the most recent project in my PLP Humanities called “Hidden Chapters of History”, which was all about World War II. In this project we learned about all the different events from the rise of the nazi party, all the way to the nuking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We learned about the War itself and the battles and the political war at the same time. To give a brief recap of what happened, Nazi Germany took over Austria and then derailed a Japanese train and then blamed it on China, Italy sided with Germany and then Japan did as well and Russia allied with Germany. On the allied side it was Britain France America and Canada. Eventually Russia switched sides and then so did Italy after the death of Mussolini. America joined the war after Japan attacked pearl harbour. Eventually the Americans after island hopping in the South Pacific eventually got close enough to nuke Japan twice and after the second bomb Japan surrendered. Hitler had no allies so they were overwhelmed and lost the war. 

At the start of the project we had to read a book that was about World War II. The book I chose to read was Maus by Art Spiegelman. The book focused mainly on the concentration camps and the POW camps during the war. Which I thought was interesting because usually you dont really talk about the POW camps during the war, and mainly focus on the war itself and the battles that were fought in it. I think that this book really helped me understand a lot more about the topics that were a little less known and helped me extend my understanding of WWII. 

In this project we got to make a podcast episode about a specific topic and then combine all the topics together to make 1 podcast with 23 episodes. The topic that I made my podcast on was the firearms during the war. I really liked doing this topic and it was quite enjoyable to do the script for the podcast because I didn’t have to use any sources other than my knowledge when writing it. I found it fun to test my knowledge to see just how much a knew from the topic. Obviously at some point i did research the topic but that was years ago from a few books my dad read to me when I was younger. 

So now I will answer the driving question for this project which was “How might we use stories to understand the causes and consequences of World War II?” I believe that using the stories that we studied with Camp X and in the book Maus we can understand different perspectives of the war and see what kind of consequences happen for different people. 

Romeo and Juliet Variation

liame Uncategorized

Hello! 

Today I will be talking about the most recent project which was about Romeo and Juliet. This project was not just some simple straight forward Romeo and Juliet project because we didn’t perform some play in front of a live audience. But this was a more interesting project because we got to put our own twist on the original play. But in order to make our own version of Romeo and Juliet we had to first know the story of Romeo and Juliet. But again our teacher made this interesting because after each act of the play we watched the act in a different version of Romeo and Juliet. I found it fun to see all the different ways writers were able to make new versions of a story using the same outline. 

The next part to this project was to make an actual spin off version of Romeo and Juliet, and each group that we were assigned to would make a different act my group got act 2. then we would watch videos in order to see the outcome. So me and my group of three other people (Amy S, Erin B, and Ryan U). Got started making our script and video. 

The first thing that we had to do was brainstorm ideas for what the spinoff would keep of the original and what we would add. We decided on making it about 2 people in school one of them is a posh girl with good grades, and the other is a trouble maker kid with not so good grades with we thought was a good way of showing contrast in characters.

The second thing that we did was make a story board of all the different scenes that were in the act. This part is to make sure that we know what we are shooting so that we dont have to just wing the entire video. This is what it looked like:

Then the next part which was the most exciting part was actually filming the video which went pretty well with all the different lighting that we used and the different camera angles and moods to each scene, it was pretty good. 

Overall I think me and my group did a pretty good job of making this short film. I feel like I was able to contribute ideas and solve problems throughout filming and making this video, for example when we had to do the prom scene we thought that we should have some different lights to make it look like it was an actual party or a disco, my group thought we couldn’t do the lighting effects of the prom so it would be good to just use filters in editing, but I remembered that when we used filters the last time I made a video it kind of just took the viewer out of the video they were watching. So instead of making the video look a little more home made I had the idea to use the monitors from the computers in the room we shot the scene in to shine different colours on the actors and the backdrop which in the end made the effect and the scene of them being in a party really worked. 

All in all in all I think that the project went really well. I believe that when my group put our mind to making the video we did a really good job and the results were good, please go check out some of the posts my teammates made by clicking on there names in the post. As always thanks for reading!

Winter Exhibition 2022

liame PLP

Hello!

Today I will be talking about our winter exhibition this year. If you haven’t stayed up to date with PLP we haven’t had a winter exhibition for 2 years. So for the teachers and some students this was a special event. this exhibition was about apology and the history of racism in Canada. we mainly focused on three events.

For this exhibition we only had 1 week to prepare which made all the class time a time crunch and we couldn’t waste any class time in order to get everything done. but before we talk about the actual exhibition lets talk about how we got to that stage. The first thing we did was studied the Komogata Maru, a ship out of India that was basically refused access to Canada because of a law that was passed to stop immigrants from coming to Canada. If you are interested in the details of what happened there you can check out my blog on it here.

The next event we learned about was the Chinese head tax which was a tax that you had to pay if you were Chinese in order to live in Canada. The way we learned this was we went on a field trip to china town to learn about all the hate crimes that accrued and how the Chinese lived through it. we also took a walk through Dr Sun Yat-Sen which is a garden in China town. here are the pictures that I took from this field trip.

The third and final point in Canadian history that we studied was the Japanese internment camps. This event happened during WWII after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. When this happened and America joined the war Canada would make every Japanese Canadian go to internment camps until the war was over, even though a lot of the Japanese Canadians had never been to Japan. We learned about this event by going to a museum and taking a walking tour of Hastings park where there was an internment camp. This event was the event me and my team based our project on for this exhibition, the task at hand was to make a memorial of the event and all the people that lived in it and died in it. The memorial we made was a house which was just a normal Canadian home, but with a clear glass floor and beneath there was the Japanese internment camps and there conditions. here was the 3d model that I made to show what the memorial would look like.