Tag: 2020

Frankenstuffy’s

quinn1 Comment

Hi everyone,

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.

Running a Remake

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Hi everyone,

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.

It’s the end of our world… and we feel fine

quinn1 Comment

Hi everyone,

It’s the end of our world… and we feel fine. No seriously we just did a project on this. We recorded a remix version of the song, It’s the end of the world as we know it, by R.E.M. Our driving question for this project was, “who or what changed or challenged your worldview from elementary to high school?” We also learned about the Renaissance, and how it to was a transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age. 

This project involved us taking many creative risks. At the start of the project I was not very happy about having to record my own song, but I kept a growth mindset and tried my hardest.

The competencies we were being assessed on were create, and cause and consequence. I feel I did quite well on both competencies. 

The best example of the competency create was, my group song. I edited the music together, and Amy edited the video. My other group member was Evelyn. Go checkout both there blogs.

There were quite a few reasons I feel like this was a good example of this competency. First of all, I edited many different parts together. I also created lyrics to communicate my point about the transition from grade 7 to 8 through text, and later through music. 

I demonstrated the competency cause and consequence cause and consequence in many milestones. One of them was my individual lyrics, I wrote about the consequences of transitioning to high school. Another example was my Renaissance cause and consequence right up. I wrote about how the Renaissance caused lasting monarchies and the consequences of that. 

This is my Renaissance C+C

This project had 6 milestones. I will explain them all of them now, except for milestone 6, because this blog post is milestone 6. 

Milestone 1 was our worldview mindnode. We had to make to make a mind map about the transition of our worldview from grade 7 to grade 8. I did an ok job on this, there was many things I could’ve improved. 

Milestone 2 was our individual song lyrics. We had to write our own lyrics which would work with the R.E.M track. I feel I did a good job on this one, although, my lyrics could’ve flowed with the music better. 

Milestone 3 was our individual song. This milestone was when we sung our own song, from the lyrics we created in the previous milestone. If you want you can listen to my song below. I think I did a good job on this milestone but there was many things I could’ve improved. My audio didn’t always sync perfectly with the track which made it sound a little off. 

Milestone 4 was our Renaissance C+C (cause and consequence). In my opinion I did a great job on this milestone. I already mentioned how it was a great example of the cause and consequence milestone.

Milestone 5 was our group song. In groups of 3 we made a song. I worked with Evelyn and Amy. I think we did a great job. Originally the audio was a little weird as it had the track playing slightly off time in the background. Also, I think my singing could have been more similar to the original track. 

All in all this was a different project which forced me take to many creative risks. I think I kept a growth mindset and did some pretty interesting work. I could improve many things, but you can always improve a lot.

Surfs up!

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Hi everyone,

Over the last month I designed a surfboard with my friend Ryder, go checkout his blog. This project Involved many calculations and 3D design. I came into this project thinking that oh calculating volume, and surface area will be easy, we learned that in grade 7. I quickly realized that calculating the surface area and volume of complex shapes which don’t have all their faces showing is very time consuming. I’m so happy for computer programs which can do stuff like calculating Surface area and Volume for us. 

This is my model of a surfboard

As I already mentioned my friend Ryder, and I made a surfboard. We made 2 different surfboards. Ryder made a better looking surfboard in Tinkercad, but it wasn’t a simple shape and our teacher, and even the internet had no clue how to calculate it. I made a more simple surfboard out of simple shapes in Shapr 3D. The shapes I uses were Cylinders, Rectangular prisms, and triangular prisms. Then we calculated the SA and V (Surface Area and Volume). Finally we made a keynote explaining our object, and the process of building it, and calculating it’s SA and V.

Now I will do what I do in every reflection blog post. Reflect on competencies. 

Applying and Innovating: I feel I did quite well on this competency. I got most of my work done during class. I paid attention almost all the time during class. I also helped other people out. If I could do this project again I would make sure to finish all my calculation in class. 

Reasoning and Analyzing: I built a surfboard maximized for volume. It included 12 shapes. It was was maximized for volume. I built it with Ryder’s input and revised it many times to improve it. If I could do this project again I would have used more basic shapes at the start. 

This is my model of a surfboard

Communicating and representing: I did well on this competency. We made a keynote which showed all of our formulas, measurements, and calculations. We explained them in detail during our presentation. If I could do this project again, I would make my calculation more clear. 

So all in all this was an interesting project which I feel I’ve done quite well on. I think there were many things I could improve but there are in every project.

DI regionals 2020

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Hi everyone,

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. 

Crazy Chemical Conditions

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Hi everyone,

We just finished a Scimatics project called chemistry coding. As you can probably guess by the name it was about chemistry and coding. We had to code a game or simulator which showed are understanding of the kinetic molecular theory. Our driving question was “How is the Motion of Atoms and Molecules Related to the Temperature?”

This is my scratch game. I had another version the atoms are hydrogen and you can check it out here. The atoms speed up as your score (the temperature goes up), the goal is to get the highest temperature possible. 

My best work this project was my game in my opinion but I also did well on Gemstone ID challenge. In the gemstone ID challenge we had to ID gemstones by calculating their density. Turns out I was wrong they weren’t three different gemstones they were all white topaz, but I did a good job at calculating the density.

Now I will reflect on how I did on the curricular competencies. We had three curricular competencies for this project and I felt I did pretty well on all of them. 

The first one was Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. I feel I did quite well on this competency. I got all my work done on time, I used my class time efficiently and I was still demonstrating a curiosity towards this chemistry by the end of this project. 

Scientific communication: communicate ideas, findings and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies. I feel I did very well on this competency, I had 2 different atoms, multiple states of matter, and a historical model. Of the atom. I also communicated my understanding of the kinetic molecular theory. 

Reasoning and analyzing: Use logic and patterns to solve puzzles and play games. I feel I did awesome on this competency. I used logic and patter to make a game which you could play, and reasonable conditions and was fun!