Star Wars Blue Sky

Hi everyone,

On December 19th 2019 we hosted the PLP exhibition. This exhibition was Star Wars themed. PLP 8 did two main projects. Mazer Tag in scimatics and, Star Wars a Mini Blue sky. In this blog post I will be talking about the latter. 

In this project we had to make our own how might we question related to Star Wars, and then come up with a solution to it. The driving question for this project was How might I design and build an answer to my own inquiry? My How might we question was “How might we take ideas from Star Wars planets on how to Adapt to are changing ecosystems?” 

During this project we used a system called the LAUNCH cycle. It had 7 stages L, A, U, N, C, H and, launch to an audience. During these seven stages I kept a journal in an app called explain everything. We also did separate tasks for each Milestone. Hear is a video of my explain everything. 

I found certain phases of the LAUNCH cycle harder than others. The stages I found the easiest were the L phase and the A phase. I think the reasons I found these phases so easy was because I already knew a lot about Star Wars. Looking, listening and learning wasn’t that hard nor was asking tons of questions. The phases I found the hardest were N and C because I had troubles narrowing down my idea and I got behind on building my prototype. 

  • This was the Great Tree

  • This was the Ewok Hut and Pin the tale on the Ewok.

  • This was my station where I presented my project.
  • This was our Lazer Maze

We were assessed on 7 competencies for this project. I will talk about the ones which I think I did well on and the ones which I had some troubles with. One of the competencies I feel I did well on was “What Questions Are You Asking and Answering to Complete Your Inquiry?” I asked a lot of questions and I also asked questions relevant to my project. Another one I feel I did well on was, “What Research Needs to Be Done to Complete Your Inquiry?” I knew what research I had to do and did it effectively. One of the competencies I had more troubles with was, How Are You Applying Your Knowledge to Solutions? I had troubles with this one as I found it difficult to apply the knowledge I researched to my solution. 

The last thing we did for this project was set up our planet room on exhibition day. We were each assigned to a planet. We had to transform a room into that planet. I was on Endor. The coolest things we had on Endor were the Great Tree and the Ewok Hut. 

 

The final thing I built was a model of a Modern Ewok Hut. I built my hut out of Cardboard, Hot Glue and, Styrofoam. I used  spray paint to paint it and moss and cedar bows to decorate it. This model was quite the challenge to build as I got a little behind on it. It took me around 10 hours to design and build.

The other part of this project was setting up and presenting at the exhibition. So as mentioned, we presented this project at the exhibition.  This took a lot of set up. We each got put into rooms with other grade 8’s and nines. Each room had a Star Wars planet theme. The planets were, Hoth, Endor, Tatooine, and the Death Star. The 2 weeks before the exhibiton involved a lot of planning, and making. I was on the planet Endor.

This is me at the winter exhibition.

In our rooms there was a few requirements. The first was that it had to look like the planet. I was on Endor which is a forest planet so we had to make it green and forestry. The second requirement was there was food, the food had to be somehow related to your planet. We had berries (candy berries), Yoda Soda (Mountain Dew), and we also had ewok jerky (beef jerky). The third requirement was that there was an activity, we had pin the tail on the Ewok. The final requirement was, we had to dress up, I was a rebel soldier from Endor.

This is me with my friend Raymond. I will link his blog down below.

Raymond

Student Blogging Challenge

Hi everyone,

It’s the final week of the student blogging challenge. It’s been an amazing 8 weeks. I have learned many things about blogging. This was my first year participating in the student blogging challenge but I will be participating again next year.

Through the eight weeks did a massive variety of posts but there were two which I really liked, week 3 Fun with Photos, and week 5 Music. Although I liked all the weeks. I completed all eight weeks of the student blogging challenge. I didn’t get very many comments from other people but that’s ok.

These are all my blog posts

Week 1 Let’s Get to Know Each Other

Week 2 Connect Through Commenting

Week 3 Fun with Photos

Week 4 Free Choice

Week 5 Music

Week 6 Emojis

Week 7 Celebrations and Festivities

I will continue to post my work on this blog. After this, it will mostly be reflection posts. I’ll also be doing the student blogging challenge next year.

See you in 2020!

Celebrations!

This weeks Student Blogging Challenge is about Celebrations! I’m going to explain a holiday from Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and, Judaism. Then I will have a poem I wrote about Christmas. First I will just list the holidays my family celebrates.

  • Christmas
  • Halloween
  • Easter
  • Canada Day
  • Thanksgiving

These are the holidays I will go over. Holi which originates from Hinduism, Ramadan which originates from Islam, Christmas which originates from Christianity, Vesak which comes from Buddhism and, Hannukah which comes from Judaism. 

Holi,

Holi is a festival celebrated primarily in India and Nepal at the start of spring. It lasts one night and one day. It is known in the western world to be the festival of colour. The night of Holi involves a Holika bonfire to celebrate Vishnu a Hindu god’s triumph over evil. On the day of Holi people go out and throw coloured powder at each other on the streets. Recently kids go out in groups and use coloured water in water guns and some kids have found other creative ways to get each other colourful. Holi sounds really fun!

Ramadan,

Ramadan is a month of fasting celebrated by Muslims around the world during the ninth month of the Islamic Calendar (April, May or June). It involves fasting for all daylight hours. Once the sun sets many families of feasts. Muslims believe Ramadan will cleanse them. 

Christmas,

Christmas is a christian festival celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Although, Christmas is celebrated by many non-Christian families around the world especially in the western world. My own family falls under that category. Christmas involves giving gifts to family and friends. Parents of younger children tell about a magical man from the North Pole who rides around on a sleigh pulled by nine reindeer comes down everyone’s chimney and gives kids who have been good gifts and kids who have been bad get coal.

Vesak,

Vesak celebrates the birthday of Siddhattha Gothama or the Buddha. It involves Buddhists going to their temples and hoist the Buddhist flag. It is normally celebrated in April or May.

Hannukah,

Is an eight day jewish holiday celebrating the rededication of the temple of Jerusalem. It involves lighting candles on this special stand with 1 bigger candle in the middle and four smaller candles on either side. Every day you would light one of the smaller candles until they were all lit.

Sketching Reflection post

Hi everyone,

We just completed a project about learning to use our Apple Pencil on our iPads. We learned many things over the project. Including different sketching techniques, ideas on how to make better sketch notes and many other things. When we started this project I was like “Oh no” because I didn’t have that much with art and sketching in the past. I kept a growth mindset and realized that sketching isn’t so bad and there are even types of sketching which I like! Our driving question for this project was “how can we use our pencils to enhance our learning?” The competency we were working was empowered learner.

Every single thing we did worked on this competency as we were using our iPads and Apple Pencils to make and achieve excellent drawings, sketches and logos. I feel like I did quite well on this competency I displayed this in all the things we did. I felt empowered when I realized that I was better at sketching and graphic design then I previously thought. The reason I did so much better in this project is because I used technology to my advantage and kept a growth mindset!

Our first milestone was Word Art. We had to draw our names in interesting and creative ways, using the techniques we were shown in class. I liked this assignment and I think I did an ok job at it. The parts which I liked were how we could use the fill tool to make cool patterns inside the letters and experimenting with different tools, especially the airbrush.

The second milestone we did was sketch noting. In this we watched a video about the power of a growth mindset. Taking sketch notes from this video we demonstrated our skills with connectors and symbols. I made some creative connectors but didn’t use them because they were to complicated to do quickly. Overall I prefer note taking in text but I can see why sketch noting is useful. 

For this third milestone we had to trace and draw an image of ourselves. This one was very difficult and took me around 4-5 hours but in the end I persevered and created a good self portrait. I felt I did very well on this although I did not love this. The reason so, is because I don’t love tracing and colouring large areas in, I wanted to use the fill tool but it wasn’t working. 

In our fourth milestone we had to sketch a fruit bowl and use the lighting techniques we learned in class. I did not do the best on this milestone as I didn’t use the lighting technique well enough and probably could’ve spent about 20 more minutes on this. I got the feedback that I didn’t use the light source technique which we learned in class. In my opinion this was my worst milestone.

This was my favourite milestone. We had to make logos for some companies we made up. I did 3 different companies. Alpine Ski co. A ski shop. PNW pics a photography company and Moxy Skis a ski brand. I used Keynote, Canva and, Sketches Pro. Sometimes a mix of all three. I think I did really well on this milestone and I overall really like it.

  • This is one of my favourite logos for alpine ski co.
  • This is probably my favourite logo for Alpine Ski co.
  • I liked this colour scheme and I think it was interesting and different compared to the normal blues.
  • This is pretty much the grey one but blue, I don’t like this one quite as much as the grey one but It’s pretty good.

  • This is my first draft, I like the colours but I quickly realized that the text shouldn’t be over the image.
  • This is my first and possibly my favourite logo for PNW PICS.
  • This is my other favourite logo for PNW PICS I can’t really decide if I like this one or the camera one first.
  • This is my final logo, and in my opinion my best one!

     

  • This is one of my other logos, I decided I would experiment with putting the text inside the logos.
  • This was my first logo I did for Moxy Skis in my opinion it is a little bit to complicated but I still like it.

All in all, this was a great project. I ran into some difficulties with sketching but I kept a growth mindset and created some amazing work. I feel this really improved my skills with an Apple Pencil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emojis

Hi everyone,

For this weeks student blogging challenge we had to do some stuff to do with Emojis! Personally I really like using emojis sometimes because you can often express more with emojis than text.

Emoji Quiz:

Here I have a slider for an emoji quiz. Don’t forget to leave your answers in the comments below!

Emoji Math:

Try and figure out what each emoji is worth in order to solve a math problem! Tell me your answer in the comments!

My New avatar. I’m deciding to change my avatar! I think this new avatar represents me better. First of all I’ve got my hair more similar to my real hair this time. Also, I have a facial expression. I’d say my facial expression is quizzical and I’m often quizzical.

 

Music!

Hi everyone,

Week 5 of the student blogging challenge is all about music. I’m doing three things to start off I’m going to have a playlist of some of my favourite songs, then I’m going to have a song I created, and finally I will have a survey about music.

https://open.spotify.com/user/c0ep2t0feoe9ek67hwfqmie6x/playlist/2TNC2spS3N9ohLh8SR9Koi?si=R1_caPxKTm-_JzxF4Tzqag

The First song on this playlist is Middle Child by J. Cole. I like this song for quite a few reasons. First of all, I like how this song sounds. Also, If you listen to the lyrics he’s rapping about how he is different and he is proud of it. The next song is Ransom by Lil Tecca, I like this song because of how it sounds I kind of just like all the aspects. The next song is Did it Again, Also by Lil Tecca. I think the reason I like this song is because it is different from other rap songs with the Piano intro, the background rap and the drum machine. The next song is Shots, another song by Lil Tecca. I like this songs background synth and beat. This next song is quite different for one it is not a rap. It’s called Fly, by Marshmallow. I like this songs beat and how it changes from soft to louder and more intense. After Fly comes KOD, By J. Cole. This song is really unique for a rap song, especially the intro. Now we have The London, by Young Thug featuring J. Cole, and Travis Scott 2 of my favourite artists. I think the fact that it has so many different artists and a good beat is why I like it. After it’s Love me, by lil Tecca. I think I like the lyrics of this song, but I don’t mean the meaning but how it flows. Let you Down, by NF. This song is the only other more Pop like song on this playlist. I like this songs lyrics and and it’s beat and how it transitions between rap and Pop.

This is my song, I made it using loops in garage band. It’s called Waves.

Here is a link to my survey. I made it with crowd signal, if you ever need an online survey I would suggest using crowd signal, as it is very easy to use.

My Hobbies

Hi everyone,

This weeks Challenge is Free Choice. So I’m going to blog about my Hobbies. Photography, Basketball and Skiing.

Photography is a relatively new hobby for me. Ever since the end of this summer I have been interested in Photography. It started with me taking pictures of the sunsets at my cabin and my dog. But then it expanded, I started taking photos of the ocean, deer, my cousins and brother and so on. I now am just beginning to learn about photography. During the our Oregon Coast Field school (which I should have a blog post about by Monday), I really took some started to learn more about photography. I took some great shots which I will show down below. 

My Favourite things to take pictures of is more natural themed images and I also really like to take silhouettes. I have many pictures of sunsets as the sunsets at my cabin are terrific. My favourite places to take pictures are my Cabin, The Oregon Coast was really good also a really nice place to take photos, especially Yaquina Head and Beverley Beach State Park.

  • This is the lighthouse at Yaquina Head in Newport, Oregon.
  • This is a photo of the Ocean at Depoe Bay Oregon.
  • This is a Silhouette of my friends at Beverley Beach State park in Oregon I will link there blogs down below
  • This is a photo of a sunset in late August at my cabin

Basketball is my favourite sport. This year is my sixth year playing basketball. I now play for the  Vancity U-14 blue basketball team. I am a wing in Basketball which means I play shooting guard or small forward. My favourite thing to do in Basketball is shoot. Here is a video of me shooting.

I also love to watch the NBA, my favourite team is the Toronto Raptors. I am really Happy as the Raptors are right now the defending champions. If you like a NBA team please comment down below to let me know which is your favourite team.

Skiing is my other favourite sport. My favourite type of skiing is downhill skiing and my favourite mountain is Sun Peaks which is a resort near Kelowna, B.C, Canada. I have been skiing since I was 3 or about 10 years. My mom has been skiing since she was really young so she started me off with skiing very early. I started skiing on Mt. Seymour

lukasbieri / Pixabay

Here are some of the reasons I love skiing. I love being in nature. and I love how in skiing you get to chose what you do, you can choose your line, you can choose if you’re going to take a jump. That’s why I love skiing

So these are some of my hobbies. In the comments please tell me about your Hobbies!

Ryder’s Blog, Logan’s Blog, Cameron’s Blog

Fun with Photos!

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Hello everyone,

This weeks challenge is all about Photos and Copyright!

For this weeks student blogging challenge we had to explain why you can’t take most images off the web. Your first thoughts are probably why can’t you take images off the internet. The reason for that is copyright, copyright is when someone makes an image that you can’t use without permission from them. You might be asking why do they care if I use there work. Imagine this, you spend six hours writing this terrific essay and then, ne of your class mates comes and copies it and hands it in. You wouldn’t feel very good right, that’s what taking a image off the web and using for yourself without permission from the creator is like.

This is a photo I took last week at Yaquina head when we were in Oregon last week for a field school. I really like his hot because of how the lighthouse sits in the photo and in addition to the awesome scenery I think the clear sky looks really nice in the background. The amazing thing about the clear skies were when were at cannon beach just two days before it felt like we were in a storm. This just goes to show how quickly life can change.

Another part of this weeks blogging challenge was to make some image task cards. I put three Images which represent me. There is a caption beneath each one explaining them.

I chose this photo because first of all I love Basketball and secondly I like the angle
I chose this photo Because I love skiing and it is also very scenic which is very scenic and shows natures beauty which I like as well
I like this Image because it shows the beach and I love the beach and the Ocean which I spend a lot of my summer on

Big or small waves crashing against the shore

Everyone happy the changing forever more

All the amazing animals like clams, urchins and gulls

Can you spot a fish, whale or boat

How amazing the beach is, I want to there today