Hello, and welcome back to another blog post! In our latest humanities project, we looked at the consequences of European colonization. This project has been focused on shifting our perspective to the other side of colonization, not just how the Europeans were affected by colonization. We have done a number of different activities, all to answer the driving question, and to see colonization from a different perspective. In our first keystone, we took a piece of art that was created by the artist C.W Jeffreys and created a chart to analyze the deeper meanings in the piece, and to take a closer look at the description of the painting to answer the questions Who, What, When, Where, and Why?

In our second keystone, we took a painting or drawing created by the same artist and recreated it to represent a different worldview. The painting that I chose is titled “Madeleine De
Vercheres Defends Her Father’s Fort,” and is a depiction of a standoff between a small group of European settlers and the natives. I changed the painting to show the Native perspective of the event. I altered the position of Madeleine so that it looked like she was behind the gate. I made these changes because I don’t think that the original painting showed the native perspective of the situation. It seemed to show the settlers as victims to the natives, which doesn’t connect to the driving question of “What Did European Settlement Mean For All Involved?”

In our final keystone, we took the original painting and the reinterpreted image and wrote a script to an Augmented Reality video. In our video, we had to explain why we made the changes to the image that we had made and how it related to the project. My AR video was centred around the perspective of the natives, and why they had chosen to attack the settlers. You can find out all about it in my AR video! Here is a link to the finished version:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GKWbmMO38c6BkmLQjgLKyinaYlixYQOp/view

To reflect on the project, I think that I did a rather good job of answering the driving question in my project, and I also just had a lot of fun with the project overall! I think that I learned a lot about European exploration, and how the natives saw the situation. Thanks for reading!

Hello, and welcome back to another blog post! In our latest science project, called Mind over Matter, we looked at the structure of an atom and theories like the kinetic molecular theory. In our first project, we learned about the correspondences between mass, density, and volume. Our final project for the keystone was to pick an object in the science room, and find the mass, density, and volume of the object. I believe that I chose a small metal block that was sitting on the table, and it was pretty east to find each measurement. 

In our second keystone, we looked at diffusion, and did experiments with gummy bears to learn how to create our own experiments and to do them ourselves. This was a really fun project even though we didn’t get to eat the gummy bears, it was very interesting. My experiment was to find out whether a gummy bear would diffuse faster in normal water or in sugar water. Here is my slideshow that I made to see the results!

In our final keystone, we examined the structure of subatomic particles and atoms, and got to make video games using the coding software Scratch. My game was a maze game where you were an atom and you had to navigate through a maze without touching the sides. It didn’t have much to do with the project, but it was really fun to play! Making it was incredibly difficult, but I definitely learned a lot about using scratch! This was probably my favourite project of the three, because I loved the process of making the game, even if it wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever made. Here is my game!

Because you can’t see the instructions for the game here, you have to use the arrow keys to navigate through the maze without touching the sides. There are three levels. Enjoy!

I’ve definitely learned a lot through this project, both creating things online and doing experiments in a lab. This has been one of my favourite overall projects so far, and I’m excited to see what we will do next in science!