So for the past couple of weeks in scimathics we have been learning about the periodic table and different elements in it. Ms pye assigned Simon our class room “president” with the task of creating groups for the project that we will be doing. Our task was to create a superhero using one element from the periodic table, my group chose hydrogen as it could make him/her fly and make everyday tasks much easier, the next step was to create a periodic table, this part of the project took the longest as we had to add all the information on each part of the table like the atomic mass, atomic number, symbol, ion charge, and name. And the final part of the project that we have done was create a model of a hydrogen atom, this was easy to do as not much materials where needed to create this. This project was overall pretty fun so far but at the start we where a little off task, I’ve enjoyed this project and I am looking forward to see what the next part of the project is.

-This is our group name and badge

So here we are, end of the project and I can proudly say that me and my group have finished are metaphor machine. If you’ve read my other blog post you’ll know that in PLP 9 we have been working on a project for the past two months. Our task was to create a machine that would show the process of a chosen revolution that would have to include a circuit, the aesthetic of steampunk and we would also need to create a video of the process of building the machine, and how it works. First we had to learn about Crane Brinton and his theory of revolution, Crane brintons theory of revolution was book Crane brinton wrote talking about his theory. His theory was that a revolution would have four stages, in each stage the revolution would progressively get worse until the last stage, this is when the revolution would start getting better and go back to normal, Crane brinton described a revolution almost like a fever. Next we had to learn about steampunk and what it is. Steampunk is a sub genre of science fiction that typically features steam powered machinery rather then advanced technology, typically the people are dressed as if they where in the Victorian era. Machines in steampunk are usually made of copper or brass and havin all the “guts” showing, so if there was a steampunk watch it would have all the cogs and materials commonly seen on the inside showing on the outside. We also had to learn about a revolution of choice. We where put into groups and had a choice of what revolution are machine would be based on. My group consisted of Claire, Sofia, Simon, and I. The revolution we chose was the Haitian revolution. The Haitian revolution was when the people of colour revolted against the white colour due to disagreements over the freedom rights. So in our machine we included a piece of paper being ripped in half, this represents the people of colour disagreeing with the white colonists over freedom rights.
We had many other metaphors in our machine. We started off with making a timeline of our revolution, we did a lot of
Researching on our revolution so we would be able to explain each step of the revolution and each step of our machine. We then started planning out the metaphors and how we would put our machine together, we got all the metaphors and then decided how to use them and how we would build are machine. We got all the supplies we would need for our machine and started building. Building the machine took a lot of planning and time. We would always come up with cool ideas but it would be pretty hard to use on the machine. We spent a lot of time on building the start of our machine as we could never get it to work. We would have a piece of paper rip in half by a metal gear/cog pulling on one side of the paper, which would cause a metal ball fall out and roll down a track. This would represent the people of colour disagreeing with the white colonists over freedom rights, the ball represented Toussaint the main leader of the people of colour int the haitian revolution. This was hard to do on the machine because the ball was never able to stay in the paper and would always fall out on the floor. We solved this by using stronger paper and have the paper taped down for extra support. Me and Simon did a lot of building the machine and testing to make it work while Claire and Sofia made the video. For the video we took lots of time lapses of building, used lots of images of us building and filmed the machine working. In the our video that I have included below, it tells you about the Haitian revolution, how we built the machine, the overall project and how we planned it out, and What we learned. We planned the video out before using a video template that showed what would be included in the video and all the dialogue that would be spoken.

I’m really proud of my group because we all put lots of effort into this project and tried to do our best, this project was very interesting, fun, and it taught me a lot, I learned how to plan and use my time a lot better and because this is my first year in PLP it taught ,me what PLP group projects are like and what the expectations are for a great project. I liked how we got to choose the revolution we wanted to use because it made researching a lot more fun and interesting. Overall I really liked this project and a lot of fun building the machine.

So last Wednesday seycove had a day where all the grade 9’s had the choice to go to career day, which is basically where you go to one of your parents jobs for one whole day to see what it’s like to work in their environment, and maybe learn new skills and get an idea of a job you might like to do in the future. So in PLP 9 we would have to create a blogpost to go along with our experience, including – a description of the job you observed – what you liked best/least about the experience – what surprised you the most about you observed, heard, did, or learned – would you consider a career in this type of industry? Why or why not? – from your perspective, identify aspects of the job that were positive and negative. – did the job shadowing experience influence your career choice/goals? How? For my career day I didn’t have much choice as to where I could go as both of my parents work at RBC- Royal Bank of Canada, I decided to go with my mom because my dad sits in an office cubicle all day answering phone calls, my mom works from home most of the time but she said she would take me to the Lonsdale branch and introduce me to everyone who works there and, give me an idea to just how many jobs there are in a bank. My mom is a mobile mortgage specialist which is basically helping people purchase residential properties (buying homes). In the morning I really didn’t want to go because I thought got banking was all about math and staying in an office all day, when we got to the bank my mom was introducing me to everyone who worked there, we must’ve been doing that for like two and a half hours (lots of shaking hands), I met some really funny people, everyone was always joking around and having lots of fun, nobody who worked in that bank looked like they where bored. And to my surprise every one who my mom introduced me to didn’t like math, everyone said that math is the easiest thing about the job because you had a calculator in your office and a computer to help you whenever you needed it, they said the most important skills of the job where problem solving and people skills (resolving problems, and talking/helping people) which are two major skills in PLP. My favourite thing about this experience was meeting all these people and learning about their jobs and why they like what they do, I found it very interesting listening to them and asking them questions. My least favourite thing about this experience was watching my mom work, she basically was just typing on her keyboard for an hour and a half and I found it very boring sitting in an office typing away. Another one of the things I enjoyed about this experience was going into the money vault

and seeing all the money stored in the back of the bank, it reminded me of some of my favourite movies like Point break, and Heat where robbers would go into the banks and steal lots of money. An interesting thing that happened was when I was sitting with one of the tellers at the front of the bank named Guy, he’s a really funny “guy” and was really fun to talk to. He showed me a suspected phoney check, it hand to different peoples hand writing on it with two different colours of pen on it. He told me that a lot of his job is helping people with money and also looking for fake money/checks almost like a detective, I’ve always thought of being a police officer when I’m older because I like helping people and solving problems. I learned a lot about bank king and what different jobs there are inside a bank, would I consider a job in a bank?, probably not because I like moving around a bit more and not sitting in one spot all day but I can say that I respect the job a lot more now that I’ve seen what it’s like and know a lot more about it. I think some positive aspects of the job are helping people with any problems they have, meeting lots of new people, always a new thing/problem everyday. And some negative aspects of the job are that it’s very stressful, some clients will always complain and be rude, if you have an office job you will be sitting in that room for a lot of the day.
This job shadowing experience did influence my career goals, it thought me that something you would never even think of doing might actually be fun and interesting, I still really don’t want an office job as I’d like a job where you can move around more but I can respect this job a lot more now. Overall this might not of been my favourite or most fun thing I’ve done at school but, it’s thought me a lot and I meet some really cool people during this day, and I can now respect my moms job a lot more and understand why she’s stressed sometimes.

So in grade 9 humanities we have been working on a project for around 1-2 months, we have been learning about Crane brintons theory, steampunk, metaphors, and a revolution of our choice. So obviously after learning about all these different things we where going to have to do a project that would include all these different topics. The project was to build a machine that represents the revolution of our choice but it also has to include metaphors, and it also had to have a steampunk aesthetic,for example in my groups project our revolution was the Haitian revolution. The haitian revolution was basically when people of colour revolted against the white colonists of Haiti due to unfair treatment of the people of colour, so in our machine we included a piece of paper being ripped in half this represents the people of colour disagreeing with the white colonists over freedom rights, but it would be ripped in half by one side of the paper being attached to a gear because gears are commonly seen in steampunk, so it added a steampunk aesthetic. The machine also has to include a circuit, we have been learning about circuits in science class and we have been learning how to draw diagrams in math class. My group consisted of Claire, Sofia, Simon, and I. We started off with researching our revolution and finding all the main events we could use as metaphors in the machine, we found as much information as we could about the revolution so that we where familiar with it and that we all understood each step of the revolution. Next we decided to plan out our machine and come up with metaphors, we chose the big events in the revolution that had a lot of impact to use for our metaphors. We then moved onto bringing in supplies and planning how we would build the machine, We decided to do this- A piece of paper held up against a board will rip in half due to a gear/cog being tied to one side, this will knock down a ball that will go through a set of knives (kind of like plinko) (representing the war of knives which is the first physical contact between people of colour and the white colonists) which will then travel down a tube hitting a switch (circuit) which will then make the Haitian flag rise (representing Haiti becoming a monarchy). We then got all the supplies and started to build, me and Simon did a lot of the spray painting, gluing, and sawing/hammering as Claire and Sofia did a lot of planning, bringing in supplies, painting, and doing the storyboard for the video that we will have to make that will show the process of building the machine and incorporating everything into it. From what my group has done so far I have really enjoyed this project and I like how all the classes that we do like humanities, math, and science have skills that we need for this project. I really like that we got to choose what revolution we wanted to do because it gave more freedom and made the project mor enunciated because we got to make a project on something we where interested on instead of being given a revolution we didn’t want to do and wouldn’t have as much fun researching and overall doing the project on. Overall I’ve really liked this project and it’s been a lot of fun building the machine.

So in math 9 we have been working on finding the area and square footage of houses and finding the price of them. After doing this for about a week we where assigned with a project. We had to build are dream house and find the square footage of each room and the total square footage, we also had to find the total price of the house in different areas. My group consisted of Michael, Quinn, and me. We decided to do our project in minecraft because it was an easy way of seeing a 3-D representation of our house. I feel that we could’ve used our time a lot better as in class some times we would get a little off topic, but overall I feel that we did very well on presenting and making our Dream house. Down below i have included a picture of our dream house, as you can tell from that photo our hose is very big, that picture shows around half of the front of our house.This project was very fun because we had to learn how to do the math but we also had to show are understanding in anyway possible using our iPads.

In Plp 9 we have been reading the book Leviathan by: Scott Westerfeld, so naturally we would have to show our understanding of character development and how the characters evolved through out the book. In the book Leviathan how does Alek’s character evolve and change through out the book? In the book Leviathan there a two protagonists Deryn, and Alek, Throughout the book Alek changes a lot. He starts off as a young boy who grieves his parents death. At the beginning of the book Alek isn’t used to talking to piers, because Alek comes from a royal family he is not used to talking to people his age. When Alek first meets Deryn she is disguised as a guy named Dylan so she can be in the air force, Alek doesn’t find out that deryn is a girl in this book but, they form a great friendship “We save each other. That’s how it works, says Deryn.” Also during the book deryn builds a crush on Alek, she really starts to like him. Aleks character seems like a real guy, he seems like the sort of guy that you would want to be friends with. A lot of that is due to him being very kind, he hates war and hates death/killling “Killing is ugly, whatever shape it takes. That’s why we have to stop this war.” At the end of the book Alek has completely changed, he has friends, more social skills, and he’s a board the leviathan “You’re rather friendly with young Alek, aren’t you?” “Aye, sir. He’s a good lad.” “So he seems. A young boy like that needs friends, especially having run away from home and country.” The captain lifted an eyebrow. “Sad, isn’t it?”Deryn nodded, saying carefully, “I suppose so, sir.” I believe that in the sequels of the leviathan that Alek and Deryn’s relationship will only grow, and I also cant wait to see what happens next. Overall Aleks character is very different at the end of the book than at the beginning of the book, I believe that he is a dynamic character because at the beginning of the book he was a sad kid with no social skills and not many friends but at the end of the book he is a more developed character, he has friends and has more social skills. And I can’t wait to see how they change and how their relationship changes in the next books.

So for a couple weeks in class we have been learning about the industrial revolution and cause and consequences of the implement of roads, canals, railways, and the inventions like the steam engine, power loom, and different machines that make work easier. So obviously we would have to do a project that would show our understanding of the industrial revolution, we each had to make a explain everything about, what were the causes and consequences of the development of the railway during the Industrial Revolution in Britain?. Explain every thing is an app where you can use images and animations to help improve a voice over. In this blog post I’ll explain how I made my explain everything add how it improved over my three drafts. So to start off I had no idea how to use the explain everything app, I first started off with researching for three different causes (the reason why/how railway had that change)
After that I planned out my script and what images I would use in my explain everything. When I started to make my explain everything I had no idea how to use the app. I spent a lot of time experimenting and messing around with the app to try find out how to use it. Looking back at my first draft, its not very good. My voice over is pretty good but due to not knowing how to use the app I had no animations whatsoever and because of that it wasn’t very interesting to watch. I could’ve easily improved this by asking some of my friends how to use the app. The feedback that I got from my good friend Simon was that my voice over was great and included lots of information, I had lots of content in it that was interesting, but that my animations where not very good due to just talking over my pictures.

My second draft is a bit better due to me asking my friends how to use the app. In my second draft I added some animations to the slides but it was very poorly implemented. The animations where at the end of each slide and where not added throughout when I was talking so it would be silent when the animations where happening. In my second draft I didn’t change anything else apart from adding animation so it felt a lot like the first draft. The feedback that I got was that my voice over was great and very clear, my content was great, but my animations where still not great due to them being at the end of each slide and that when my animations would start my voice over would end so it was not very interesting to watch.

For my last draft I had learned a lot, I knew a lot more about the app and how to use it. In my third draft I redid my voice over so that my voice sounded a little more clear, and I added a little more expression in my voice to make it more interesting to watch, and I redid and added more animations so that they would fit into the video better. Out of all my drafts this is definitely my best. I put more effort and time into this draft and I think it shows. Overall I really liked this project, it made us show what we know about the industrial revolution in Britain, and made us use technology to show our understanding.

So far this year in class we have been focusing on steampunk and what it is. We have read the book Leviathan which is set during world war 1, but the book has these super cool mec’s that are powered by steam. First I will answer the question What is steampunk? According to Wikipedia “Steampunk is a sub-genre or genre of science fiction that features steam powered machinery rather that electricity powered machinery or advanced technology”. In steampunk the aesthetic is very interesting, the clothing is inspired by victorian era clothing, the technology has its “guts” showing, an example would be if there was a clock or watch it would have all its cogs and innards on the outside of it. I think the aesthetic of steampunk is the most interesting thing about the genre, I think it looks really cool and unique. So, that’s why my question is Who does the steampunk aesthetic appeal to, and what makes it appealing?  

I think the most appealing thing about the steampunk aesthetic is the look of the technology and the clothing that is used. In steampunk the machines are always usually powered by steam, hence the name Steampunk. The materials used in steampunk to make these machines/technology is usually made of metals like brass, steel, iron, copper, gears and cogs, rivets, old light bulbs and wood. Clothing usually worn in steampunk is long coats, corsets, vests, capelets, goggles, dresses, pocket watches, etc. The clothing is usually made from leather, velvet, silk, cotton, wool, etc. In this picture down below I have drawn a picture of a machine from the book Leviathan, its the stormwalker. A machine used in the book piloted by the main character Alek. I think the stormwalker looks very cool and interesting, it reminds me of a vehicle that you would see in a movie like Star Wars or some science fiction movie.

I think steampunk appeals to people that like to be different and stand out more due to the style and aesthetic of steampunk being so unique. I think steampunk is appealing because it is so different and unique. If you watch the video that I have provided below it shows fans of steampunk attending a steampunk convention, this video shows different elements of steampunk and delves deeper into the aeshtic of steampunk.

I found that video very interesting because it shows the elements of steampunk and goes deeper in to the aesthetic and why people like steampunk. I hope that you have enjoyed reading my blog and hopefully you have learned something about the aesthetic of steampunk and why people find steampunk appealing.