Month: June 2019

For the final school related blog post of this year (I hope to make a few blog posts this summer.) I will be talking about the spring exhibition or more specifically blue sky. Just to start off I have to say blue sky was one of my favourite projects this year.

Now its time to actually start talking about specifics. When we first started this project we were given a launch journal to keep track of everything we had done. I found this quite helpful because I knew we would have to make this blog post and I also knew that the launch journal would make that a lot easier. 

The first thing we had too do in this project was the section look listen learn. In this section we had to do a few tasks. The first one was we had to come up with a few things that bothered us that we wish we could have changed ex. The biggest issue facing our school is vaping. The second task was we had to come up with some other challenges that face our earth for example seniors fall victim to tech support scams usually because of lack of knowledge. The final task was we had to come up with some products for example you can modify a sphero to make it a kind of dog toy.

The next part I actually forgot to do so I’m just going to skip to the how might me for how might we we had to make a statement then answer it for example How might we fit all of the electronics in a ball that’s small enough for a dog A: I plan on modifying a sphero which already has the right sized electronics to make what I want.

For the next page of the launch journal is the ask section. For the ask section we had to do two things a need to know chart and an action plan. For the need to know chart we had to say what we needed to know and how we would find that out for example does it have to fully work then the next step would be ask the teacher. For action plan we had to look at all of the steps and things we had to finish and put a date we wanted it done by for example I will put my chart right under this.

For one of the most important parts but my least favourite because we had to do a ton of writing drum roll… the pitch form. For the pitch we had to to explain seven things those are  an introduction, rationale, research, materials, plan, exhibition, and client. If you want more specifics here’s the actual pitch form.

For the understand section we had to do two things our primary sources and secondary sources for that I did a survey and looked at some tool. What I learned from that survey is people and I kinda agreed about the idea which was that the ball would go fast it would be bright coloured ext. here’s the survey.

This part of the book was the thing we had to do just before we got approved to create. For this section we had to bundle all of our ideas then sort through them I sorted mine into my ideas ideas from the survey and then there was another section for after I got rid of ideas that wouldn’t work which was called ideas that survived the culling. After I handed in this page I had to make a few changes before I was ready to create.

Once I was ready was ready to create I had to do the create stage of our launch journal where we had to do two things rapid prototyping and live prototyping sadly due to being not smart and screwing up I didn’t get the second part done but I can’t dwell on that. For rapid prototyping I made a 3d model of what I wanted to make which was a shell for a sphero to make it more dog friendly. The second rapid prototype was the actual code to make the sphero move around random so the dog can chase it. 

Now for the part you have all been waiting for the actual exhibition the first thing we did for this was we were put in groups I was in a group with Emerson, Sam, Jason, and Lauren. The first thing we actually did as a group was come up with what snacks and where everybody would be in our Area I was in the back. Also around this time I actually struggling with finishing my project because I wasn’t able to 3d print the shell and it was too close to the day of the exhibition so sadly I wasn’t able to finish my project. Now back to getting ready for the exhibition I was in charge of bringing kook aid and some props for our area.

Now the night of the exhibition was very fun I talked to tons of nice people and it sounded like they liked my idea. Throughout the night I also looked at tons of other peoples stations where I saw cool products my favourite was a slide that you put on your stairs. After all of that it was time for cleanup this is a video of that made by a person in my group Jason. Ps. Here’s the full launch journal in case you want to see it.

For this blog post I will be talking about the project we have been working on for the past month which is a tableau version of the tempest with a twist. The twist was that we had to use the tempest and the history of New France to stage a dramatic tableau to help an audience understand the lasting effects of colonization. If that sounds a little weird that’s because I basically just took the driving question and pasted it down to explain the twist. 

How we were introduced to this project was pretty fun but it was also a surprise. So what happened was our teacher ms.Willemse told us that we were going to be working outside which was a surprise because we hadn’t done it before but it kinda made sense because well it was a nice sunny day. When we got out and down to the designated outside work area we were told to read a short Shakespeare play and make still image with our bodies to represent it. After we did that we did a few other things and she told us that this was our new project we had to make a Shakespeare tableau after that the day ended the next class we start the first part of the project.

Now I have to be honest I’m a little iffy on the first two things we did so I’m just going to say what it says we did. The first thing we did was  using ethical judgement we had to create an explain everything about the early colonization of Canada. The second thing we did was we had to think critically about Shakespeare’s the tempest during pre and active reading activities.

Now for the things I do remember the first of the things I do remember is starting to pick what scene and how we would represent them. For the first part of this we had to get in groups I was in a group of two with one of my friends Brenton. We were given act 3 scene 2 and had to summarize it in a short video this is that video.

The next day we were given a new person in our group meg who kinda saved us later on but we will get back to that. The main thing we did that day was wright the first draft of the script which was fun after that we fixed it and had to work on our backdrop which we had to re-record after the video was to shaky after we had it recorded I added in a few special effects.

Now that we had everything done we had to do costumes and rehearsal but that’s kinda boring so I’m just going to skip to the night of the show. We practiced a bit then it was about 5 minutes before the show and people started arriving and I was super nervous but that went away after I did my first act.

Overall I learned a ton and it was a fun night if I were to do it again I would probably do less

Over the span of this year I have improved a ton in many different ways the really big one is I have started looking into things and checking sources more which is really important because it really easy to come across fake stuff on the internet. 

Now we should get to specific classes the first class I will be talking about is Maker because I have improved so much in that subject first of all I have gotten much better at working in teams which is really good because that has always been a struggle for example even though DI was  a struggle it was one of the best projects I have done with a team this is because even though we argued we worked together and made something good. At this time I can’t think of anything just due to the fact we haven’t done to many different projects.

The second subject I will be talking about is humanity’s I decided to put this second because it was my second best improved subject. The big way I have improved is my writing skills even though I still need to work on them they have gotten much better for example I used to be able to write a decent blog post in around three hours but now it only takes me an hour to make something of equal quality. One thing that holds me back though is my issue with procrastination and I’m sad to have to say that because that was the thing I was supposed to to work on and I hope I can improve a lot by next year.

For the second last subject science I feel I haven’t improved as much as my other subjects but I have still learned a ton. One of the big ways I did improve is my research skills for example for my spring exhibition telescope project where we had to research a telescope and how it works. The big thing I need to improve which I have been struggling with since the mPOL which is getting distracted which Leeds to me not finishing work and getting a bad grade. I plan on working on this over the summer so hopefully when I get back I am ready to focus. 

Now for the final subject math Over this year I feel my math skills have gotten better but it still needs some work. For example if you asked me last year to solve an algebra question I would’ve said that I can’t but now I can. Along twitch science I really need to work on my focusing in this class to because not focusing can lead to not understanding something and that leads to getting bad marks.

For this blog post I will be talking about destination imagination provincials which happened around two weeks ago. Leading up to provincials we made some changes to our performance.

 The first change we did was Liam made a new backdrop during spring break that was stronger that the last one which was very important because our last backdrop broke pretty early on.  The next thing we decided to change was one of our team choice elements that team choice element was originally a song made by our team but we decided to change it to a monster themed mural like you would see at a coffee shop. We first came up with what we were going to paint and someone in our group made the rough sketch. After around a day we started to paint and in two days we were done and in my opinion it looks pretty good. Now the final thing we changed was we made some changes to the script to make it funnier. To be honest we also probably made a few other small changes but I having trouble remembering.

 

 Any now onto the the day of provincials for this year provincials was held at Callingwood. We had to get there pretty early because there were a ton of teams that had to present and some of them were made up of young kids so they didn’t want it to last to long. 

When I first arrived at Di I couldn’t find my team so I was hanging out with some other people but like five minutes later I found them after that we unloaded all of our stuff but we didn’t have to present for like two hours so we watched some of our friends performances and had some pop but most importantly we rehearsed. 

After all of that it was time for our instant challenge which we did very well in. Now lets just skip to check in time so we grabbed our structure and went to check in. Checking in was pretty easy after we did that we did one more full run through. Now finally we moved our stuff into the room and did our performance. It went pretty well but we were way too quiet and that was our main downfall. 

After that we saw a few more groups then it was the award ceremony which was very fun every team in plp did place except for one. Our team ended up coming first for the instant challenge in our category and third in the main challenge.

 Overall this was super fun and one thing that I would change next time would be not drinking coke out of the cup because the cup had a leak in it.

For this blog post I will be talking about my latest project the PGP time machine. For this project we had to make something that represents everything we learned in PGP this year that would help our past self. Originally I wanted to make a book but I screwed up and mis read some big parts of the project and thought it could be sent back to any point in time but you can’t so in simple terms I screwed up but that comes later so let’s start at the beginning. The first thing we had to do was make a pitch form after I did that we had to be approved I was not this is that pitch form.  I was a little confused and got distracted and forgot about it skip till about a week before it’s due and one of my friends reminded me about it and I talked to the teacher about a new idea a podcast and got started. The first thing I did was do a mind map to try and figure out what I was going to talk about. After that I started to work on the script  which wasn’t too hard then it was the hard part which was recording because it took a ton of editing to fix all of my mistakes. After that Was finally over I got the intro music put it together and was done. Overall this was very fun but there are lots of things I could have improved on for example I don’t think I followed the instructions quite right. Here is the script and the actual podcast