Drawings in Scimatics

Hi!!!! We recently just finished out last scimatics project of grade 8. In this project we learned all about cells, viruses and how they interact with each other. The end goal of this project was to create a comic about cells and viruses that was accurate but also fun to read.

Milestone 1: Project start mind map 

Just like almost every project in scimatics we started with a mind map. In my mind map I wrote what I already knew, my questions where and examples of diseases. Here is my mind map…

After the project ended I updated my mind map and added the things that I learned.

Milestone 2: Wanted poster

At the beginning of the project we had to choose a disease that we wanted to research (this would later be the villain of our comic) and make a wanted poster on it. The disease I chose was Malaria. Here is my wanted poster…

Milestone 3: Research 

For our comic we had to do lots of research so alongside it being fun to read it also had accurate information. Here is some stuff I learned…

Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic cells 

A prokaryotic cell is a very simplistic cell. These cells don’t have a nucleus and don’t rely on much support from the body (minimal nutrients and water) so if there was an exciton of animals and plants these would be the cells to survive because they don’t need many nutrients and rely a lot less on have a living structure to be in. A eukaryotic cell is not as simple as a prokaryotic cell. Firstly a eukaryotic cell has a nucleus and also has a very complicated structure. These cells are usually 10x the size of prokaryotic cells and rely a lot more on a living structure for nutrients and water.  

Malaria 

Malaria is a life threatening disease caused by parasites that are transited to people by the bites of infected mosquitoes. Malaria is neither a virus or bacteria, it’s a parasite called a Merozite. We first discovered Malaria in the 1800’s and it was a huge problem in African countries and Asian countries like The democratic republic of Congo, Uganda and India. 

Milestone 4: Comic story board

Before making our comic we had to plan it out on a story board. My story board only had 12 slides and my final comic had 18 so I definitely had to add more detail to my project. Here are some pictures of my story board.



Milestone 5: Final Comic 

I was very proud of my final comic. I was able to get 17 scientific words into my comic (10 was the requirement) and I feel that I was able to make really good drawings that fit with the style of the comic. You can read my comic here Comic cells.

Thanks for reading my last post of grade 8 :D. Hope you have an amazing summer☀️!!!!

 

🎉Grade 8 exhibition🥳

Hiii!!!!! We just finished our grade 8 summer exhibition. In this exhibition we didn’t focus on a specific project to show we tried to show our progress of learning. There were 3 different rooms for grade 8. The first room showed the process of learning, going from launch to critique and reflection. The second room showed learning out of the classroom like Loon Lake. And the last room (which was my room) was the technology room where we talked about the importance of apps and technology for our learning.

My presentation 

Me and Jessie worked together on our section of the exhibition. In our room we had about 20 people and each person or pair had to show some part of there learning. Me and Jessie talked about our project called construing creative communication. In this project we learned how to construct pictures and photos to show emotion, perspective and worldview. We made out presentation interesting and interactive by adding buttons about different things we learned so the audience could choose what they wanted to hear about.

How we use technology to advance our learning 

The main reason that I think technology helps our learning is because we have access to lots of useful tools like google, pages, keynote and lots of other useful apps. Also something that the Ipad has that really helps me is autocorrect because I usually have a lot of trouble with spelling and autocorrect helps a lot.

Collaboration and Communication 

These are 2 of the main competencies that I wanted to work on this year and this project really helped me with both. We had to communicate with our groups to figure ideas and plans to set up our room and make it a fun interactive experience for our audience, we also had to collaborate with our groups a lot get our whole room set up especially because we had the biggest room to decorate.

What I learned from this experience

The exhibition was very fun and it was a great experience. I got to collaborate with a group to complete a big goal which I usually am bad at so it was good practice and I got to share some of my learning with my parents. I also learned how to be interactive with an audience because I made my keynote interactive to keep an audiences attention.

 

You can visit Jessie’s blog here to see her perspective on the exhibition.

Tpol

It’s finally the end of my first year in grade 8 and I have learned so much over this year. I have definitely improved and enjoy this year so much and I’m excited to tell you about what I have learned

“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.”

Writing 

I have learned a lot about how to improve my writing, at the beginning of the year I had so much trouble writing and spelling but over this year I have definitely improved. I always had very good ideas but I never could figure out how to put them down on paper. A project that really helped me improve my writing was the renaissance project. For this project we had to make a triptych about the renaissance but we also had to write a paragraph. The paragraph we wrote had to be about what we thought was the most significant invention or piece of art. I choose to write about the printing press. The reason I say this project helped me with my writing is because we learned about how to construct complex sentences and paragraphs.

Core competencies 

Communication: Communication was something that I I have struggled with a lot this year. I’ve never really been good at communicating but there were definitely some projects that really helped me get to know my classmates better with in the end helped me communicate. One of these things was Loon Lake. At Loon Lake we got to do lots of activities to help get to knwo our classmates better which was fun.

Collaborating: Over the year we have done lots of projects were we had to work with groups to meet an end goal. DI was definitely won of the biggest collaboration projects we did. We had to communicate with our team constantly to come up with its creative solutions and figure out how we were going to present our solution. 

Creative thinking: I have definitely improved on my creative thinking over the course of grade 8. I am now able to come up with creative ideas to improve my projects unlike I was at the start of the year.

Critical and reflective thinking: I am definitely improving on being able to reflect on my learning and use feedback to make my work better. This is one of the main things PLP helps me learn.

Favourite projects

I had 3 favourite projects this year. The first one was definitely medium is the message. the reason I choose this as my favourite project is because one day I want to start my own business, and I also want to go into the field or design/advertisement. So being able to pratice interviewing a client and creating and advertisement was fun and useful. My second favourite project was the ultimate design challenge in scimatics, I really enjoyed this project because it involved designing and as I said before I want to work in the design/advertisement field so this was definitely a project of my interest.

Why I think I’m ready for grade 9

I think Im ready for Grade 9 because Ive made so much progress with my learning this year and Im excited to learn even more next year.

Goals for Grade 9

My main goal for grade 9 is to get better at my communication and collaboration, Ive definitely made progress on communication this year is I hope I can make as much progress in grade 9. Another goal that I have for grade 9 is to get better at my writing/spelling, over time I’ll definitely get better but I just hope that next year I can practice by writing lots of paragraphs.

 

Thanks for reading about my reflection and I hope you have a great day!

New beginnings (The History of Canada🇨🇦🦫)

Hi!!! We recently just finished our last humanities project of Grade 8. In this project we got to learn about New France and The history of Canada.

What Is New France?
New France was basically when the French and British found Canada. The french allied with  the Indigenous group called Ouendat and the British allied with the Indigenous group called Haudenosaunee.
What would they trade?
These groups would trade beavers and other animal furs/pelts for supplies like string, kettles, foods and tobacco. The reason that the French and British traded with these Indigenous groups a lot was because beaver fur was really popular back in Europe and you could make a lot of money selling it. Almost everyone had a beaver hat or a beaver coat.
What were the affects of trading pelts?
As beaver pelts got more and more popular back in Europe more and more beavers were being killed which lead to rapid decline in the population of beavers, which had a negative affect on the ecosystem of Canada. Also because of the low numbers of beavers
The Project
In this project we created 2 images representing the good and bad sides of a topic we got to choose. The topic I chose was fur trade because it was an essential/important part of New France.
The first image depicts…
Kettle and Food – I choose to draw a kettle and food because indigenous groups would trade fur/pelts for goods like kettles,tins,foods,string and tobacco. Wolf pelt- I drew a wolf pelt because mainly they traded beaver fur but sometimes they would trade furs like minks,rabbits,wolves and otters. For my image I chose to take a picture of a wolf hence the wolf pelt. Flags- The flags I drew were the Ouendat flag, the Haudenosaunee flag also know as the Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy, the old French Flag and the old English Flag. This represented the alliances that fur trade created between Europeans and Indigenous groups.
The second image depicts…
Dead wolf- The dead wolf represents the decrease in different animal populations (mainly beavers but other animals to). Because of the huge popularity of furs back in Europe there was excessive hunting which led to decreased populations of lots of animals. Revolver/gun-I drew a gun because once the Europeans introduced guns to Indigenous groups it became an essential item to have and so it became very valuable and worth a lot of pelts. 2 people fighting- Fur trade caused a lots of disagreements between people because of prices and quality. There were lots of negations, fights and even wars caused because of the Fur Trade industry.

Here is a picture of my image…

Thanks for reading. Have a great day!!!!

Scimatics Design Challenge!

Driving Question: To design an object for maximum surface area or volume.

Milestone one

 In milestone 1 we chose what we were going to design and how we were going to maximize surface area or volume.

My object

I decided to design/make a Catamaran. A Catamaran is a boat with 2 skinny hulls in parallel with each other. In this design I decided to maximize surface area because of the flat base of the boat, the large sail and so it could travel faster.

Milestone 2

In milestone 2 we designed our objects using an app called Tinkercad. The shapes I used in my design were 4 rectangular prisms,1 triangle, 1 pyramid, 8 triangular prisms and 2 cylinders. I used mostly rectangular and triangular prisms because these were the shapes we had learned  formulas for.

Formulas 

The formulas I used were 

Rectangular Prism: 

Surface area= 2(lxw) + 2(wxh) + 2(lxh)

Area= lxwxh

Triangular prism: 

Surface area= 2(bxh) +(lxs1)+(lxs2)+(lxs3) 2

Area= (bxh)xl

Cylinder:

Surface area= 2πr2 +(πdh)

Area= πr2xh

Pyramid:

Surface area= The formal for this was insanely complicated but basically you find the area of the 4 sides using bxh/2 then find the area of the bottom square and add them together

Area= lxwxh/3

Catamaran model    

Milestone 3

Milestone 3 was doing the calculations of every object and finding the total surface area/volume of your design. Finding the total volume was fairly easy because you just had to add all the shapes volume up but finding the surface area was more difficult because you had to subtract the sides of shapes that were touching other shapes. Here are my calculations.  

Did I achieve my beginning goal 

As I said in the beginning of this post my goal was to have a higher surface area than volume, mainly for faster speed (which is what catamarans are designed for). In the end I didn’t achieve my goal, but I was close. I had an ending surface area of 48,117.90 and an ending volume of 50,428.98cm which means my overall ratio was 1.05:1, volume to surface area. I was very close to my goal but to fully achieve it I think I could have made the sail bigger and the cabin smaller.

Conclusion 

I had a lot of fun doing this project and getting to actually design something. One day I want to become a designer so it was cool learning how to use design software. Thanks for reading! Have a great rest of your day 🙂 . 

 

DI (the final presentation)

A couple months ago I wrote a post about something called DI (Designation Imagination). We have finally finished this project and presented it at the DI convention last weekend. We were put into groups of 6 or 7 so you can check out one of my teammates blogs here, to see there take on the experience.

Recap 

As written in my other DI blog post our challenge was to overcome 3 different hazards (that we built ourselves) with 2 devices we built. One of the devices could use electric and the other one couldn’t. We also had to create a story to go along with our devices that was creative and worked along our robots completing the hazards.

Main challenge:

Our main challenge definitely did not go as well as I would have wanted but we still worked well as a team. Out of the 3 hazards we only were able to overcome 1 (the tunnel) but we still had a good story plot and we also showed out team choice elements well. You can watch a videos of our performance here.

IMG_1385  IMG_1386 IMG_1385

Team choice elements 

For the team choice elements we choose to do art and the costumes. To show how our everyone on our team enjoys doing art we all drew/painted on the ramp we created to show our artistic abilities. For the costumes (which I made) I bought 4 white shirts and soaked them in tee water to give them a dirty colour then I put rips and blood to make the shirts look more zombie like. 

Hazards

There were 3 different hazards we built a tunnel, a ramp and uneven terrain, I built the tunnel and the ramp. For the tunnel I made a wooden frame, like a table and then I staple a piece of tarp over it. For the ramp I also made a smaller wooden frame the I took 3 pieces of cardboard 1 for the top two for the ramp, then I duct taped the edges so it was foldable. Lastly for the even terrain we hade made a wood frame and put a piece of tarp under it, to make a kind of bag. Then we filled this bag with gravel. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Story

Our story was basically about a group of kids who our doing an online class on zoom. In this class they were leaning how to make a stuffy into a friend/pet. But the zoom call glitches and the kids accidentally but sea salt instead of regular salt which turns the stuffys into monsters. The kids decided that to lure the monsters away there going to build robots that the monsters will get distracted by. After this doesn’t work Kennan (on of the kids) runs super fast so the monsters chase him and not the others. in the end the kids learn that if they put maple leaves on the stuffys heads they turn back into zombies. The story went fairly well, it was something we did better in the performance. The judges said we had good creativity with our story but we could have made it clearer to understand.

What I learned 

During this huge DI project I learned a lot about how to work as a team and how to communicate better. Im definitely not the best t communication and Ive had trouble with it in the past but during this project I was able to talk and share lots of good ideas to help my team progress. In the end Im very proud of how our team came together and was able to show what we did. Ive also learned that next time we do DI our team should definitely meet up more and start building way earlier.

Thanks for reading about my DI experience, hope you have a great day or evening :D.

Coding with science :p

We recently just finished one of my for sure favourite scimatics projects. In this project we have to code a small game/applet in scratch about atoms. And add information explains how the KMT works.

Milestone 1: Project start 

Just like every other project we started with a Mind Map were we wrote our questions, what we knew and terms that we learnt. When we finished the project we added a section to answer our  question. You can see what I wrote down below.

Milestone 2: Building Knowledge 

For milestone 2 we drew different atomic models. The different atomic models were

Atomic model – 1808 (John Dalton)

-All matter is made up of small indestructible atoms

-Atoms cannot be created or destroyed 

-Atoms of different elements can form compounds 

Plum pudding model – 1904 (J.J Thompson) 

-An atom has no electric charge 

-In an atom both positive and negative charges are equal 

-An atom is a sphere of positive charge with negatively charged electrons inside inside like a blueberry muffin 

Nuclear model – 1911 (Ernest Rutherford)

-Atoms are mostly made up of empty space 

-Most mass in an atom is in the centre in one tiny dense positively charged core called a nucleus

-Electrons are located outside the nucleus 

Planetary model – 1913 (Niels Bohr)

– Electrons orbit the nucleus 

-The energy of an orbit is related to its size.

-Electrons move to different orbit shells when gaining or losing energy 

Quantum Mechanical Model – 1926 (Erwin Schrodinger)

-Electrons don’t move around the nucleus in orbits they move around in a cloud of electrons 

The models drew were The Dalton model – For sugar, The Plum pudding model – For sodium, The Nuclear model – For carbon and the planetary model – For neon.

Milestone 3&4: Designing and Planning  

As you know the final product of this project is a small applet/game that we code in Scratch about atoms and the KMT (Kinetic Molecular Theory). My plan/design was to create a game were you were a water molecule, and you had to dodge all the other molecules as they changed states (stared moving faster or slower).

 My first plan was definitely different to my final game. I had planned to make eight levels were the molecules slowly speed up, but then I needed up only making 3 levels each a different state. I also planned to add different types of molecules that you could play to my game but I only ended up having the water molecule.     

Milestone 5: Developing the game 

You can play my game by visiting this link, https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/658542456

Your goal is to get through the 3 different levels without touching any of the water molecules as they speed up. The programming for this game I found to be fairly difficult because I had barley ever coded on scratch before, but I was able to find some tutorials and YouTube videos on coding in scratch.  

Curricular competencies

There were 3 main competencies this project. The first one is Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. I feel like I did well on this because I actually really liked this project and I learned a lot of new cool facts.   

The second competency was Scientific communication: communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies. I also feel like I did good on this because I was able to use my iPad to find information to help me on my project.

The last competency was Reasoning ad Analyzing: Use logic and patterns (including coding) to solve puzzles and play games. Lastly I definitely did best on this because I was able to grow and learn how to code on scratch.

In the end I learned a lot about atoms and how kinetic energy works. This was an amazingly fun project, hope you enjoyed reading :].

The renaissance and its importance.

The renaissance was a revolutionary time period in human history. Before this project I barley knew anything about the renaissance, so this was a very interesting topic for me.

For this project we had to choose a piece of art, an innovator, an invention and an event from the renaissance and compare it to modern times.

What I choose

Piece of Art- The piece of art from the renaissance I choose was the “Mona Lisa”. The Mona Lisa had a great impact on art culture of the renaissance. It now sits in the Louvre museum and is one of the most famous/well known pieces of art.

Innovator- The innovator I choose was Galileo Galilei. Galileo was a famous astronomer and philosopher who invented the Galilean telescope, hydrostatic balance, thermometers and compasses.

Invention- The invention I choose was the printing press because it was definitely one of the most impactful inventions of the renaissance. It was the first way to mass produce media/books, before it was invented each book was handwritten and only priest, popes and royalty had access to them.

Event- The event I choose was the shift to humanism. Before the renaissance the main religion was Christianity/Catholicism until people had access to the bible. Some people after reading the bible interpreted it differently which lead to the split of Christianity into Catholicism which then lead to humanism and freedom of religion.

We then made a collage to show how the renaissance relates to modern times using an app called SuperimposeX which is a photo editing app. This is what I made…

I compared the Mona Lisa to a piece of art by Banksy called “Crayon for Closure” because Banksy is a famous modern graffiti artist and his art is widely known around the world like the Leonard de Vinci. I compared Galileo Galilei to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, planetary scientist and author. He studied at Harvard university for 3 years and he was a research associate at Princeton. Neil deGrasse Tyson has written 17 books including Space Chronicles, Star Talk and Cosmic queries. I compared the printing press to technology/iPads because back during the renaissance the printing press was basically what technology is to us today. Lastly I compared the shift to humanism to the array of religions we have today. Instead of just having one religion (Christianity) we have hundreds including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism.

For the second part of the project we had to write a paragraph about what you thought was the most important thing/event/person. I choose the printing press. You can read my paragraph down below.

The printing press revolutionized human kind as we know it. The reasons printing presses were such an important part of history are that they revolutionized communication allowing for better educational opportunities for men, and allowing the splitting of Christianity into separate sects. The printing press led to wide access of a variety of information for all levels of society. This has continued today in the form of the internet which allows people worldwide, regardless of income, access to the same information. This had both good (everyone has access) and bad (false information) affects. Previous to the printing press eduction was limited to priest, popes and royalty. As printing made information (books) more accessible learning became more common among the general public, which also led to questioning of societal structures. Once Gutenberg invented the press people were able to spread knowledge and books worldwide. One book -The Bible- was printed widely which gave people the knowledge to have their own opinions about religious and political ideas. As you can see the printing press is responsible for the spreading of knowledge leading to political and religious changes and ultimately to the world we live in today.

Sources: 1,2,3

What I learned
I learned all about specific events in the renaissance that I didn’t know before. I also learned a lot about photo editing, like masking and layering which helped me make my collage. Lastly I learned a lot about writing paragraphs, creating topic sentences and strong opinions about a topic.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day! 😀

Learning at Loon Lake :D!

We recently went on a trip to Loon Lake in Maple Ridge for 4 days. We got to learn a lot of amazing things by doing something outside of the classroom. I made my second book this year about Loon Lake and reflected on my experience there. You can visit my book here.

What I enjoyed 

I enjoyed meeting a bunch of new people and getting to know my classmates better. I also enjoyed all the fun actives we got to do, including fort building, laser tag, battle archery and watching Back To The Future. 

What I didn’t enjoy

I found that some parts of the trip to be quite stressful, especially on the first day when we were just getting settled in. Also I found it fairly difficult to sleep so for the last 2 days I was pretty exhausted. 

What I would do next trip

On our next field study I would definitely try to take more photos, because once I started working on the reflection book I quickly learned that I didn’t have enough photos and videos. I would also work on going to bed earlier because by the end of the week I was super sleep deprived.

What I learned 

On this trip I learned a lot. First I learned to communicate better with my peers. Once you getto know your classmates it’s definitely easier to communicate. I also learned a about organization, on the 3rd day we had a lesson from one of our teachers about how to stay organized and on top of all your work. I found some of these tips useful for helping me now, especially when I’m swamped with homework.

Meals

On our trip we got to eat a lot of delicious food. Some of my favourite meals were burgers, waffles, lasagna and fajitas. I also got the opportunity to try new foods, like before this trip I had never really eaten coleslaw (which is a type of salad), and I don’t think I had ever had fajitas before which I enjoyed quite a lot. 

Exploring the forest 

We got to explore the forest around Loon Lake a lot. On the first day we got to go on a nature walk around part of the lake. We also go to do fort building in the forest, which was really fun. The best thing we did in there forest was either capture the flag of laser tag. We got to lots of fun stuff while also living in the nature around us which was awesome. 

Conclusion 

Loon Lake was definitely an amazing experience and Im very glad that I went. I learned lots of things that will help me later on in life which is one of the main reasons I joined PLP. I had so much fun getting to know my classmates and doing all the fun activities. Thanks for reading my blog, have a good day.

 

 

DI (Doing technical stuff :p)

Hi! This blog post is about a project we’ve been working on for a couple of months called DI. DI stands for a program called Destination Imagination. In Destination Imagination we get put into a group of 6 or 7 students and given a challenge we’re we have to find a solution and present it. 

Our challenge 

In this year of DI I got assigned to the technical challenge. In this challenge your goal is to build 2 robots (one using electricity and one using a different form of power) to overcome 3 hazards that you design and build. You also have to create and present a story about why the robots you built are going over these hazards and present the story during the presentation.

Instant challenges

The other section of DI is the instant challenges. An instant challenge is a random challenge (that you don’t know beforehand) that you usually have 2-3 minutes to complete the challenge that they give you. The reason they put this in DI is to see you how well you work as a team to come up with a solution and how creative your ideas are.

Planning skills 

DI takes a lot of work so Ive learned a lot about planning skills. Like for example making timelines to know when you want done by a certain date, to stay on schedule. Especially when this is such a big project in a little amount of time. Another good skill is being able to spread out the roles so all the work isn’t down to one person while everyone else is doing nothing.

What I enjoy about DI

I really enjoy that DI has given us the opportunity to strength our teamwork and building skills. Most projects in school are just written assignments where you aren’t in control. I like how DI is a very hands on project and you get to control your solution. You can make anything you want to solve the problem.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed.