We just completed a project which we have had on the run since February. It was definetly a project which we did more in the background. But I took away a few key lessons.
We studied the 7 habits of highly effective people. One habit which really stood out to me was think win win. I found it interesting that the best way to get something for yourself, was to give something to others. Even though think win win stood out to me all the habits helped me be more effective as a learner.
Over the project we had to do assessment choice boards. These were little assignments which helped us summarize what we learned in the previous section of the book. Below are my assessment choice boards.
Private Victory:
Each of threes animals represents a different element of private victory. The eagle represents beginning with the end in mind. It has one thing in mind when it’s sitting there, food. It is already thinking about how it will catch that fish. The owl represents putting first things first. When it wakes up it immediately gets ready to look for food instead of waiting around until it’s to late. The ravens represent being proactive. This mating pair paired up in February Far before most pair up. They are being proactive to make sure they’re ready for spring.
After completing our first two assessment choice boards we created final assement choice boards to summarize our understanding of the project. I created two, check them out below.
7 Habits Review
With the recent release of the 7 habits of highly effective people products you may be wondering if you should buy it, and while buying all 7 habits would be great it is simply out of the price range of many people. So which habits should you buy? Keep reading to find out.
I ended up purchasing the whole 7 habits package deal and tried out every habit in order to tell you which one to buy. I had two favourites. Habit 1: Be Proactive and Habit 4: Think Win Win. Now why should you buy these two. Habit 1: will help you stay on track and take control of your own actions. I noticed a massive boost in productivity using this habit as well as less stress. It also helps you balance your life better. Habit 4: Think win win will help your relationships. You will notice everyone being more willing to work with you and help you out. It will force you to think out of the box to find solutions helpful to everyone.
Hopefully this short review help you figure out if the 7 habits, especially habits 1 and 4 are the right product for you.
All in all his project showed me some habits I need to implement in my own life to become a more effective person. I have been working on implementing a few of the habits into my own life. I will see how they affect my last month of school this year and if I should stick to them next year.
Two weeks ago we just returned from an iconic PLP experience which we lacked for the past 2 years. Can you guess what I’m talking about? Of course I’m talking about an overnight field study. These are a core part of the PLP experience. If you have been around my blog for awhile, and when I say awhile I mean since October 2019 when I was just 5 foot 4 and COVID didn’t repeatedly torture us all, you would know we went to Oregon on a 7 day field study. This was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had learning in “school”. Anyways we went to loon lake retreat. It is located near golden ears park and Mapleridge.
Location of Loon Lake
So before I get onto the learning which unless you’re my teachers won’t be the most interesting part of this blog post. I want to give you a recap of the highlights of the trip.
The view from 1 minute outside of our lodge
04/04/22 around 11am we loaded onto the bus and departed Seycove Secondary. However we weren’t heading straight to loon lake. We were going to Popeyes for lunch. The food was great but it still didn’t compare to what we did next. We stopped at Raptors Ridge Birds of Prey. This was the highlight of the day and possibly my favourite activity on the trip. I love raptors and spend a lot of time observing and photographing them, especially Bald Eagles and Barred Owls. At this stop we got to see many different Raptor Species including a white morph Gyrfalcon. An extremely rare bird from the icy north of Canada and Greenland. We also got to see a Harris Hawk, the wolf of the sky. We learned many interesting things about Raptor Conservation and why they keep these birds on there property. Overall extremely interesting 10/10 would recommend if you like birds and are in Vancouver. Then we arrived at the lake got settled in, ate and did some learning. I also watched the March Madness Finals, extremely exciting but how did UNC lose. I was so disappointed. Caleb Love was truly awful. Please leave a comment below about March Madness or NBA playoffs. I would love to discuss those.
A Peregrine Falcon at Raptors Ridge Birds of Prey Centre
04/05/22 This was our first of two full days at the retreat (but in PLP we don’t retreat we advance.) This day included 6 hours of outdoor activities. After Breakfast we met up and got split up into our activity groups. My first activity was canoeing. It was my favourite activity of the day and was very peaceful. We learned strokes such as the Forward, Pry, Draw, and J strokes. These are all used to effectively steer a canoe. Something I didn’t realize was difficult or complicated until then. I really loved sitting out in the lake in the cool spring morning as the sun peaked through the clouds. After that we did Archery, it was cool but I already do it quite often while camping. Then after lunch we did high ropes. This was interesting and a great opportunity to push my comfort zone. Finally we wrapped up the day with climbing which was a great workout. Then we set our goals for the rest of the advance. Something I will touch on later.
The Canoes on the dock
04/06/22 This was a day of learning and working towards our goals. My goal which by the way was not a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely), my goal lacked all but relevant. It’s hard to put into words but it was about reflecting on my growth as a learner in order to stay on track towards growing as well as holding myself accountable for other goals. I had some opportunities this day to work towards it. However it was hard to make serious progress to a goal this long term in a day. I think setting a more achievable and timely goal would definitely have made it easier to grow on this advance.
The reflective lake was very reflective
04/07/22 Our final day. We spent the morning learning and packing up. Then we had lunch and drove to the extreme airpark. It was super fun and a great workout. After that we returned home sleep deprived and hungry.
A photo from a little photo walk we did. It was supposed to be a challenge but I would have won to easily so we didn’t vote.
So as previously hinted this trip was about advancing (cause in PLP we never retreat only advance) and you know what I advanced. Not in the way I originally planned to but it was remarkable progress. The two biggest ways I advanced was in my mindfulness and note taking. These might seem remarkably different but they both came as by products of my not so great goal. How you might be wondering? While I asked myself the same thing. But I’ve come to the conclusion it came from me starting to develop my goal while canoeing. Out on the water we practiced mindfulness and it really set the tone for the rest of the day. Then that night I began using our note taking app, craft to reflect on our experiences in the day. While doing this I came to the conclusion that being more mindful led to me having better reflections and notes. Those last two achievements lend to me feeling like I made a ton of progress growing as a learner that day. Now you might be able to see how my goal was linked to these two but I probably should have focused on taking better notes during lessons instead of other goal.
Just enjoy my incredible photography
Loon Lake was definitely a great experience and acted a bit of a teaser for our bigger trip in grade 11 (New Mexico?) It also taught me so much more then I expected and truly helped me grow as a learner.
Since November I have been preparing for a big contest. It’s an event called Destination Imagination or DI. This actually wasn’t my first time competing in the challenge. In grade 8 I competed as well (read post here). However this year my category was completely different and really pushed my comfort zone. My challenge was called Festival Frenzy. Also I would highly recommend checking out my group members posts. Annie, Ethan, Jakub, Logan
Video of our performance
So if you don’t know much about DI you can visit the organization’s official website here. But the quick rundown is, its a challenge where teams compete in various categories. These challenges are centred around teaching youth the skills needed to grow as a learner. Our class competed in 4 categories, Technical, Scientific, Improv, and Fine Arts. I was apart of the improv challenge which is something far outside my comfort zone.
Taking risks is important for learning
I am not typically comfortable with acting and presenting creative work. The strange thing is I am quite comftorable public speaking but not very comfortable acting. It seems kind of strange to me. I am fully okay with talking about a project I made however, the second I have to act I freak out. Anyways getting back on topic. This challenge gave me a great opportunity to grow and become better at acting. It also taught me other skills such as teamwork, leadership, and Flexibility. These are all skills which I am always trying to improve. Overall I found that I grew a lot during this challenge.
Our team photo
One of the biggest points of contention throughout our team was practice. This included both how it should be execute and how often it should be done. Some group members thought we should only practice the actual challenge. Others thought we should try various improv games. This was tough to settle and often ended up in various group members not practicing for weeks on end. Practice was definitely the biggest part of our teams execution of this challenge I would change. Our group should have been more open to trying new things and should have tried more styles of practice. We also really should have practiced more often.
All in all DI was a great learning experience. I improved a lot of important skills and learned a lot of lessons. I think my team should have done some things differently but there’s nothing I can do now except reflect.
It’s been awhile since my last post. No I’m not done with the blog, I have just been taking other classes. The last month has been filled with lots of learning and work. We have been studying WWI and an artifact and telling the story of these with the personal story of a soldier.
Making the final video involved a lot of time, hard work and revisions. We began with being introduced to the project and our artifacts. My artifact was the Canadian War Photos. The creation of any video has to begin with information and ideas. How do you obtain these? Through research, we used the Canadian war archives to find soldiers to add to our videos. We also took deeper dives into are artifacts. One particular activity which helped me was a video call with a curator from the Canadian War Museum named Jocelyn. After researching you must gather media such as photos, videos and audio. All photos and videos of WWI are copyright free so that was very helpful. After this we have to began creating our first draft. For me this was inputting some general photo and video clips over my first draft of my script. Finally we move into revisions. I found these very helpful as it gave me time to see what I could improve in my videos. Through both peer and teacher feedback.
My Artifact a Canadian War Photo
If you’ve watched my videos you already know about my artifact. Some key facts are that it was sent to seycove by the Canadian War Museum. It was one of 8,000 taken by professional photographers during the War. The most useful resource for learning about these was our call with Jocelyn the War Museum curator. I learned more about how the photos were acquired, as well as how they were used during the war.
If you haven’t watched my video by this point in the post I would strongly recommend it. The video provides a lot of key information needed to understand this post.
After watching my video you may be wondering why I chose my soldier. Frank Oxley Button happens to be my great-great-grandfather. All the information about him after the war came from my Grandmother and my Great aunt. They were both extremely helpful in the creation of this video and I would like to thank them. If you would like to check out Frank’s war file you can find it here.
Frank Oxley Button receiving a Certificate
Below here lies the competencies we were assessed on for this project.
Global Collaborator
This competency is all about communication. I think my best example of this competency was my final video. I feel like it used technology to communicate in a creative and meaningful way. I do feel that all video drafts helped me perfect this competency.
Establish Historical Significance
This competency was all about us exploring the historical significance of our artifacts and soldiers. These are the parts of this project I feel I demonstrated this competency the best. When I first researched our artifacts and soldiers. In addition to my screenplay.
Throughout the duration of this project I learned so much! This learning includes both skills and knowledge. Some of the areas I feel I improved the most were video skills, and an understanding of how the war shaped Canada. One area I could still work on would be my time management skill as I often find myself finishing work the night before. After taking all this into consideration I now feel prepared to answer the driving question. “How might we use artifacts and film to show the significance of WWI?” This Project taught me that by exploring past footage and photos we can discover the significance of an event. Additionally we can connect the past to the present and hopefully have a better idea of why the world is what it is today.
It’s been awhile since my last blog post. So what happened was there was Christmas break, and then we did an extra long project, it was TEN milestones in a month! This project was about nationalism during the 19th century and how that affects our lives today. We used a different example every week, on the first week we learned about various examples of nationalism around the world. I focused on American Manifest Destiny. The second week was about nationalism in British North America and the Canadian Confederation. The third and final example was Indigenous oppression in Canada. This included the Indian Act and the Story the Red River Resistance. We also made six videos during these last four weeks!
We began with our driving question “How can an understanding of nationalism help us make sense of today?” My answer to this question was “An Understanding of Nationalism in North America during the 19th century can help us understand why People express their pride in their country through sports and explorations.” I chose to focus on nationalism through sports and travel because not only are those some of my greatest interests, those our the examples of nationalism my mom can relate to the best. You might be asking why do I care if my Mom can relate to the examples of nationalism? To answer that we have to go back to the beginning of the project.
Our very first Milestone for this project was a parent video interview. We had to ask our parents questions about nationalism. Then at the end of the project we had to create a reaction video of them watching our final video. You can check out both of those videos right in this post.
One of the biggest challenges I faced in this project was the high pace of work. I play lots of sports, mostly Basketball and Skiing right now. It was a challenge to balance those with homework. It required me to manage my time. I also had to chose what was an attainable amount of work in a few days. This would often involve me cutting information as I only had time to research a few topics. The time management techniques I learned during this project will help me greatly in the future.
Editing in iMovie
My favourite video’s to make were the second video, an animatic about Manifest Destiny and the final video, the parent reaction. I enjoyed the animatic because I found the content fascinating. I have always found exploration, and industrialization super cool. In the final video I feel like I did a great job in the editing. I used some techniques which I didn’t use throughout the rest of this project. This included multiple angles inter-spliced, and a custom made intro in keynote. Go watch both of those videos, they are linked in this post.
The video I found the most challenging was the fourth video, an explainer video about oppression in Canada. I used the example of the Red River Resistance focusing on Louis Riel. I also found the editing this video in an engaging way was difficult. We never ended up finishing this video as our teacher cancelled this assignment after our rough draft. I used some of the lessons I learned from this video to improve my final nationalism video though. I would like to show the video but sadly the footage corrupted, however I still have my voiceover.
Videos are not just filming and editing though, they include a whole lot planning. We use a movie planner. We use the Know Your Story tab to began. This involves all the research and sources we will need to create our video, we also create a story mountain or story spine. Those our essentially rough plans of our video. Then we move onto a screenplay or script. Which one we use depends on the kind of video. We mostly use the Screenplay as it lets us plan the visuals as well as audio. After that we create a storyboard. Finally we move onto editing and shooting. Creating this movie planner taught me a lot of things, first off videos take a lot longer to create then you would think. For a 4 minute long video I usually spend 2-3 hours on the research, then I will spend 30 minutes on a story mountain. After that It takes me 2-3 hours to write my screenplay. Then a storyboard will take me 1 hours 30 minutes. I find this me most useless step as I generally have visualized my story during the screenplay. After all that the filming and recording will take another 1-2 hours. Then I generally spend 2 hours editing. But I’m not done yet, I still have to upload to Youtube, write a description and cite sources. That can take anywhere from 15-45 minutes. That adds up to 9 hours 15 minutes to 12 hours 45 minutes for a four minutes video! The amount of time a video takes to create shifts depending on the video, the more cuts and clips required the longer time it takes to create.
We were assessed on four competencies throughout this project. There was one Maker competency, two Social Studies and two English competencies. You might be thinking but that adds up to five, you said there was four competencies. We had one competency which spanned two subjects.
Empowered learner was our maker competency. The how might I statement which came along with it was “How might I use technology to construct knowledge.” This competency was present in all of our video milestones. My best example of this competency in my opinion was the final two videos. I feel like I used my editing to enhance the message and improve understanding of Nationalism in both of them. The multiple angles, well timed cuts and captions helped improve understanding.
The competency which spanned both English and Socials was Using Resources/ Use Evidence from various sources. The description of this competency was ‘Have I found diverse sources and evaluated them for their relevance, accuracy, and reliability? The place were this competency was most evident was my Know Your Story Tab of my movie planner. You can also find evidence of this competency in my youtube description. In three of our videos (animatic, tutorial, final video) we had to use cite everything in MLA 8 format. Most of my sources were articles. Why… well I learn the most from reading an article or book vs. watching a movie or video. I favourite websites were Canadian Encyclopedia, History.com and Britannica. I found they all had a wide selection of articles on historical nationalism. My biggest takeaways from this competency were how to cite sources even photos in MLA 8 and what sources I can use for future projects.
MLA 8 citation
Our English competency was Designing Texts. The description was “Have I used writing and design processes to plan, develop, create, and refine engaging and meaningful texts considering purpose, audience, and message? Pretty much how can I design texts (this includes video) to create a meaningful text. My greatest examples of this were once again the last two videos. I think those were my most meaningful and engaging videos. I did this through increasing the time I spent on the planning stages, particularly Know Your Story and the screenplay.
Identify Continuity and Change was our Social Studies competency. “How are lives and conditions alike over time and how have they changed?” For this example I will point to cumulative video. Throughout that video I provided examples of nationalism and life in the past and the same in modern days. My favourite example was the example of Manifest Destiny in the past and how that resulted in the frontier era compared to Manifest Destiny now and how that leads to exploration and travel. I think my example of sports was the most meaningful to my mom though.
I hope you have learned something about nationalism. I would strongly suggest checking out all the videos and film planners linked I worked very hard on them. Now you know that sports and exploration are both parts of nationalism! There probably won’t be any posts for the next couple of months, I will be taking different courses (Science and Gym) in which I don’t use the blog. Have a good day 🙂
2020 is almost over! It’s been a long tough year but we’ve got through it. We just finished our last project of the year. That also means this will be my last blog post of the year as school is out for the next 2 weeks. The project we just completed may have been the most unique project I have ever completed. It was called “The Rise of the Frankenstuffy’s.” Pretty much we cut up stuffy’s and then sewed various parts together to create so called Frankenstuffy’s. We then wrote story’s relating to the Industrial Revolution about them.
The driving question was “How do Revolutions Transform the World. I came to an answer after 2 weeks of non stop work learning about this. “Revolutions transform the world through the change of a system to a more efficient form. This system spreads through both societies and industries. Thus causing a fundamental change in trade, power, and causing mass migration and immigration.” To sum that up it means that the invention of a more efficient form of creating an essential product will result in a large scale change of the world.
This project covered three subjects and five competencies. I think I did a very good job on all them. But the one I came the farthest on in the project was Creative Communicator. This is about using technology to communicate in an interesting or unique way. I went from having troubles with this competency in the previous project to extending on this project! I think I learned a lot from the last videos which I was able to transfer over to these videos. I also did a good job in designing texts. I built upon skills from my previous projects to improve my storytelling. This involved me spending many hours to plan and craft the stories. I don’t think I learned that much about comprehending texts. For my two social studies competencies I think I learned quite a bit. They were about historical significance and cause and consequence which I went over in the previous blog post. I learned a lot when analyzing different elements of the Industrial revolution. One thing which really stands out to me was when we analyzed the effects of the industrial revolution on Japan and China, it just really helped me build an understanding for the industrial revolutions causes and consequences world wide.
From this project I learned many video skills along with working on my time management skills as we had a large work load. I think I learned the most from our various discussions about the industrial revolution. I can’t wait for 2021! More posts will come next year.
I just completed a very complicated project. I had 4 different groups to work with. We had to build machines, write paragraphs, create videos, and learn about the American and French Revolutions. Oh yeah we also read a book called leviathan this was the best book we read so far in PLP.
This project involved us working on a few main competencies. For social studies it was Establish Historical Significance and Analyze Cause and Consequence. Those are two ways you can analyze an event and how it affected history. Using these competencies I was able to better understand the revolutions we studied.
This world cloud really summarizes both of these compatencies. This was not my creation
In English we worked on Designing texts and Discussing, Listening, and Speaking. The latter is self explanatory. I do think I did a good job with this one. I contributed a variety of ideas to my group and listened to other group members idea’s. Designing texts doesn’t just refer to writing though, this applies to video, picture, audio. For this project we focused on writing and video. Throughout my years at school, especially the recent years my writing has improved with every assignment. This project was no exception. I really think I did a good job on our paragraphs even though they were a little long. Throughout this year we will be working on video as a means of communication. Of course I helped with all of our group videos but on one I was the lead editor. I think I did quite a good job with what I had for this video. I also used a lot of iMovies more advanced features for the first time such as cutaways.
In Maker we only had one competency, this was creative communicator. This was all about using technology to create and communicate. I did exactly that this project. Through all the videos I made. Those both communicated an idea and were made using a variety of different apps.
Our project Launch taught us about Crane Brinton’s theory of Revolutions. This was the base for how we would analyze revolutions throughout the project. The theory compared a revolution to a disease through comparing the stages of a revolution to different parts of a common sickness. I really realized that revolutions are incredibly complicated, but all share many common traits. Then we built a metaphor machine which represented a society through a revolution. We also had to create a video of that machine. As this was a launch milestones it wasn’t the prettiest and it didn’t work most of the time. Although I learned a lot of valuable lessons from this milestone which helped make our revisions of the machine work and look okay.
Then we moved onto Building Knowledge. This was where we learned about the American and French Revolutions. We also had to write paragraphs about both. Throughout this area of the project we alternated days, learn about a revolution then build a machine, create a video, and write a paragraph. Of course I learned a lot during this stage, but I also gained experience in time management this was amplified by the fact that it was the start of the ski season so I went up the mountain a couple of times!
Then the Develop and Critique stage came along. This stage got combined with the present and reflect stage as our teacher didn’t think we were ready to do the assignments in this stage. We just made our final video here.
To summarize this project, we built metaphor machines about revolutions which we took videos of and then wrote paragraphs to show our understanding of the revolutions. Plus we read a book. Thanks for reading through. Keep an eye out for more blog post before winter break.
It’s been awhile. I think my last blog post was in late June! Throughout the first 10 weeks of school I wasn’t taking any PLP classes, in which I use my blog. I was taking Math and Band. Band was tons of fun, and I learned a lot in math. But now onto the matter at hand. We just completed an entire project in 3 days! It was called, Running a Remake. We had to recreate a short horror movie called, “Run. “
An empty classroom due to COVID-19
As this a PLP project we had a driving question which we were introduced to at the start of the project. For this project it was, “How might we learn video skills by recreating a short film?” That was really what this project was about learning video skills to prepare us for future projects. In Grade 9 we do a lot of video projects, just like how we did a lot of photo projects in Grade 8. I feel like some of the things I learned in this project will be essential to future projects.
Just a photo of myself editing in iMovie
It all started on Wednesday morning with our project launch. During this phase we were introduced the movie Run, our groups for this project, and our first milestone. It was an introduction video where we had to introduce ourselves and a hobby. I don’t feel like I learned anything special from that first milestone. It felt like a warm up to PLP, that’s fine but I don’t think I need to go over it in detail.
After Lunch break, we started our second class in which we moved onto the building knowledge phase. This was an important phase as this is where we began to learn some of the video skills, we also made our project plan outline for the future milestone’s. This was when we began to work with our groups. I think my group worked really well together, their names were, Julien, Ryder, Erin, and Nathan. All of us did different things, I noted down all the sounds needed, Erin made a story board, and Ryder looked at some camera and cut related things. That was really it for Milestone 2, and the building knowledge faze.
Our shared document which had all the sounds, the storyboard, and the plan for filming
On Thursday morning we began to film our first take of the video and, so began the develop and critique phase. We went out to “Myrtle Park” and filmed our first take of the video. It was a good first try but we missed a couple of things for sure. Some of our camera angles were off and at times our setting didn’t really make sense. The path we were using was also kind of weird and didn’t really. But we learned lot’s of things from this such as how we need to use more exact angles, and we learned a ton about editing.
Then on Friday we re-shot and edited the video. We improved a significant number of things, such as angles, editing, and setting. I feel like we did a very good job for the limited time and resources we had for this project. When you watch the videos side by side you see that the timing is almost identical. Same with the camera angles. I think I learned a ton of valuable skills, mostly in editing, and Production. I also, learned some valuable lessons for the upcoming video projects, such as pay attention to the little details, as Ms Willemse pointed out to our group Nathan’s Bright red shirt which hangs out a little bit really stands out. Overall I was very happy with our final video and think our group worked extremely well together to turn out an amazing product!
Here’s is a comparison video to the original run.
Finally we will go back to the driving question. “How might we learn videos skills by recreating a short film?” I think that throughout this short project we did just that. I learned a lot about using camera angles to our advantage, editing on the software iMovie, and many more little things.
Here’s just our final product.
That wraps this blog post up. This was fairly short project so there’s not that much to write about. Anyways, thanks for reading through the entire post, and go checkout my group members blog post on this project if you want there perspectives on Running a Remake.
If you’ve read my previous blog posts you would know that on February 29th I completed DI (Destination Imagination) regionals, checkout my blog post on that here. But with the covid-19 pandemic DI provincials was not possible. Instead we did our DI presentation on a zoom meeting, we even did an instant challenge! This was difficult though as we left all of our props at school, we also had to figure out how to act and interact over zoom.
An instagram post about PLP’s online DI. That is my group on the featured photo.
We did a great job at regionals but there were so many things to improve. Even though we had to revise everything for this DI we still improved many things, I feel like we did a very good job given the circumstances.
Our Story improved a lot. The biggest improvements were clarity. The clarity was improved through the awesome narration of our group member Annie. We also all did a good job at acting.
Our backgrounds were significantly better then at regionals. We used a feature in zoom called virtual background to quickly switch are backgrounds. We also switched the backgrounds a lot to get more relevant backgrounds depending on the scene. To replace our last team choice element which was a painting on top of our alarm clock box Evelyn painted an amazing depiction of our main character Nate’s room. Finally I created an ending background which we used at the very end.
This is the background we used in all of our school scenes.
This is the amazing background which Evelyn drew.
This was our final background.
We also did some minor improvements on the invention. Although, once again our alarm didn’t work we still revised it. Instead of using the circuit which we used at regionals we used a scratch program which had a timer and would set off an alarm. This failed though, I’m not completely sure what happened but likely my phone glitched out and didn’t play the alarm sound.
After regionals our team made some plans to improve our DI presentation for provincials. We were going to remake the frame of our backdrop with wood to make it less flimsy. We also were going to remake the circuit inside the invention. Finally we were going to improve our impact scenery.
Our plan for the backdrop was to add wood supports to improve the frame. During regionals our backdrop kept on falling over. During the 2 weeks after regionals we made plans to get the wood and attach it.
This was our original backdrop
For the invention we were debating making a new timer circuit and trying to figure out if we could get the parts needed for that, or make a simple machine out of an old cooking timer. If we couldn’t get our hands on a 555 timer alarm.
This is a 555 integrated timer IC
Finally our other major improvement was working on using carbiners to improve the pulleys in our impact scenery. They failed miserably at regionals. During class we figured out how we were going to attach the carbiners to our impact scenery, and we were about to start before spring break happened.
I feel we did a very good job acting on our instant challenge. We figured out how to act in zoom which is very different and can be quite difficult. We also did a very good job at quick thinking.
All in all we did a very good job handling the different challenges which were thrown at us through all of DI, especially the online one we completed on Monday April 6th. I feel like throughout DI are group began working a lot better together and demonstrated a lot of growth.
On February 29 a large event was held at my school, and this post is going to be about it. The event was called Destination Imagination or DI for short. We were competing in teams of 4-6 kids from our class.
What is DI? It involves teams competing at tournaments in which they present a solution to a problem. There are six categories you can compete in. My school competed in 5 of the categories, they were, Technical, Engineering, Fine Arts, Scientific, and Improv. I was apart of the technical team. This year we had to create a technical invention to solve a problem. We also had to make a story which shows how our invention solves the problem. Finally, we had to create impact scenery which demonstrated the impact of solving the problem. Here is a video which explains the basis of our challenge.
The first stage of this project was called, Recognize. We started this project off not building our solution, but understanding our problem. This project had many stages just like the launch cycle, you can check out my post on that here. In order to create a solution, you need to understand the problem. We were given documents to read. We also had to do a lot of research to understand our problems.
The second stage was called, Imagine. This stage involved coming up with new ideas and building on existing ones. We researched a lot during this stage. We had to research elements of our possible solution. We also had to figure out if elements were possible.
The third stage was Initiate and Collaborate. In this stage we had to research how things would work and build them. This also involved lots of collaboration. We created many blueprints. Finally we created our full scale model at the end of this stage
The 4th stage was Assess. This stage included evaluating your models, and figuring out what revisions you had to make. We jumped between assess and Initiate and Collaborate many times.
The Final stage was Evaluate and Celebrate. For this stage we presented our solution to our challenge, and celebrated our successes. Now I will explain our Solution.
Our problem for our challenge was a lack of productivity. We attributed this to not being able to wake up in the morning. We decided we should make a better Alarm clock. My teammates were Annie, Evelyn, Nate, and Indy. Go checkout their blogs! Our alarm clock had a puzzle above it which you needed to solve to turn off the alarm. We had a circuit inside, which played an alarm sound. We included the puzzle, to wake people by stimulate their brains in the morning. We also had a story and Impact Scenery. You can see our presentation below!
The competency we were being assessed on was, Research and Understand. I feel I’ve done a very good job on this competency. At the start of the project I read over the rules of our challenge, and DI in general, to understand them. I also used a couple of methods to assist my research, I highlighted any important rules. Another example of this competency was when we were creating the alarm clock, we weren’t sure how we’d make it, so we researched what was the easiest cheapest way to make it. We ended up bringing in my snap circuit board.
We may have finished regionals, but we are not done DI. We will be heading to provincials on April 4th. Our team needs to improve on many things. We need to improve the circuit inside our invention. This didn’t work on stage. We also need to improve both our Impact scenery (the pulleys), and our backdrop. We will add wooden supports to our backdrop. For the pulleys, we will use carabiners instead of the plastic wheels. Finally we will improve the dance. I personally did a terrible job on the dance and need to improve. The way we will improve the dance is practicing it.
I feel we did well in DI but there is a lot of work to be done. We still have many things to improve. Come back in mid-April to checkout my final DI blog post. Also make sure to checkout my group members blogs.
