Month: March 2020

Louis Riel ethical dimensions

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Recently we did a massive project about ethical dimensions. The driving question for that project is How can we present past actions and decisions through images to help us make decisions of what is fair or unjust? For this blog post, what I’m going to be talking about what I think are the three most important milestones. Those milestones are 1, 2, and 4.

The first milestone I’m going to be talking about is milestone one what we had to do for milestone one was we had to find an event within the last 30 years involving indigenous peoples and write a one-page paper explaining the who, what, when, where, and why. For my paper, I talked about what was going on with the Wet’suwet’en barricades and protests. Overall this was an exciting assignment, which I enjoyed because I had already done some research into this topic since it was super interesting.

The second milestone I’m going to be talking about is milestone 2. What we had to do milestone two was we got our groups (mine was me and meg), then we had to pick a topic ours was the Doukhobors. The next step was to do a worksheet that we would fill with the research we had done on our subject. Overall this was a significant milestone that I think was very important because it helped build our understanding of our topic. It was just really interesting to learn more about the Doukhobors (they protested by running around nude).

The last milestone I’m going to be talking about is milestone 4. What we had to do for milestone four was after finishing the images, we had to present them to the class in the form of a keynote presentation. I could have done better in my presentation if I had practiced more. The reason I say that is because I was a little unsure what to say in my presentation, so I felt like I was Stalling in between my words. Other than that, I think we had a good presentation, and our images turned out well.

In conclusion, this was a very interesting project, and I enjoyed reading and learning about Louis Riel and the Doukhobors. If I were to do this project again, I probably would have had better communication with my partner. I would also have helped more with the images because I felt like it wasn’t enough just doing one image. Now finally, the competency’s connect and understand ethical dimensions. I think I meet the competency connect because, throughout the project, I looked at the textbooks and the graphic novel we read through other points of view to help me understand how other people and I understand the texts. I think I meet the competency Understand Ethical Dimensions because I have shown my ability to decide if actions and decisions of the past were fair or unjust. I showed this through my active role in the debate where the discussed if Louis Riel’s execution was just or unjust. I also demonstrated this competency through all of the writing we did about if he was a hero or villain.

Rube Goldberg science

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Recently we had to do a project about Rube Goldberg machines and circuits. More specifically, we had to make a machine that showed the scientific method then make a short video explaining it. For this blog post, I’m going to be talking about what I believe are the three most essential milestones milestone 1, 4, and 5.

What we had to do for milestone one was first we got our groups mine was me, Ciara, and Jude. After getting our groups, we had to make the start of a project mind map so we could see what we already knew about the subject. The reason why I found this milestone so important was because it helped immerse myself in this project and figure out what I already knew about the subject.

The second milestone I’m going to be talking about is milestone 4. The reason I think milestone 4 is so important is because it is when you first actually put your Rube Goldberg machine designs on paper. What we had to do for this milestone was to make a blueprint for our Rube Goldberg machine that had measurements. We had to do this in two parts. In part one, we had to make a draft for what we wanted the machine to look like. Then we showed it to our other group members. After showing it to our group members, we had to start part two, which was making the final blueprint.

The final milestone I’m going to be talking about is milestone 5. What we had to do for milestone five was finish building our machine and make our video. I think this was probably the most critical milestone because it marked the completion of the two most essential parts of this project.

In conclusion, this was a very interesting project. If I were to change one thing that I did, I would probably have gotten the video done on time. I think I met the competency’s in this project.

DI Regionals

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For this blog post, I’m going to be talking about one of PLP’s yearly traditions DI. What is DI? DI is a student lead challenge wherein small groups you are tasked with something like building a drone, and you have to complete that task then present your solution in the form of a story. In this blog post, I’m going just to be talking about what I think were the three most important stages of this project. Those stages are 1, 2, and 3 I picked these because I believe they helped me and will also help me show you what we did and what I learned.

For stage 1, what we did was we got our groups (mine was Fin, Ryan, Grace, Owen, Kia, and I), then we got our actual challenge mine was technical. Then finally, we started learning about what we had to do for our challenge, which, in my case, was to build an invention that solves a real-world problem. Overall I think this was a significant milestone because It helped develop our understanding of what we would have to do for this project and helped get us into the mood of problem-solving. If I were to have done this stage again, I probably would have spent more time learning about my challenge because we made a few errors in our design phase.

For stage 2, what we had to do was start generating Ideas for our story, invention, elements, etc. The ideas I generated were for our invention, which was an automatic fridge door closer, which sounds pretty interesting but really isn’t. Other than the invention, I didn’t come up with any other ideas, although I did help some people come up with ideas. Overall this was probably the most or second most important stage we had to do for this project. If I were to do this again, I probably would have spent more time and picked a different idea because the one we went with ended up being hard.

For the final stage, I’m going to be talking about stage 3 what we had to do for stage 3 was we had to start planning for what materials we were going to need. We also had to do a ton of sheets for planning what we would do if things went wrong, for example, if our invention didn’t work. Finally, we had to finalize what our deliverables were going to be (an example of a deliverable would be our invention.) Overall this wasn’t the hardest stage, but it did take a lot of work mostly because it required doing a lot of forms. If I were to do this stage again, I would spend more time on the risk management forms since we ended up having a problem with our invention that I didn’t cover in the risk management sheet.

In conclusion, even though DI can be very stressful, it’s always fun. Overall when we ended up performing lots of things went wrong, for example, our invention didn’t work, and the door of the fridge fell off, but I still think it went pretty well. One really good thing was that this isn’t our last chance to do this show. We have one more tournament to try again (the other tournament ended up being cancelled because of COVID-19, although we are still presenting just to our class.)