This week I did some research on the tension and how accurate a ballista could be and it seemed that as they got bigger they got more powerful but lost a little bit of accuracy. Since I’m trying to hit a moving target I decided to scale my design down which will also make it easier to build properly so nothing goes wrong. It’s going to be about a foot and a half long and sit on a stand with limbs pointing out about a half a foot on each side. I will have the rope coiled up in the front providing the spring for the limbs to shoot forward and a smaller cords to pull back and fall into a hook where it will stay until I pull the trigger. Then it will launch the bolt forward hopefully with enough force to shoot down a glider but it will be accurate enough to shoot it down. 

People who have seen my blog before may remember a project I did last year. It was called the blue sky project where we had to come up with a driving question and mine was could you build a hovercraft out of supplies found in a home or hardware store. The answer was a yes I built a working human sized rideable hovercraft and documented it with a video. This time I will be doing the same thing but with a different driving question. Can you build a ballista out of supplies found at home or the hardware store. They are quite similar and yet so different. I will have to make the ballista big enough that it’s strong enough to fire a sizeable projectile. But that’s not it I have to also make it accurate enough to hit a moving glider. This one will require much more calculations for the strength and tension, the length to the cocking lever and more. So far I have come up with a general design nothing to in depth but a draft for the general project. This will be in my opinion quite a bit more challenging considering how much more math goes into it and just having to measure and make all the correct pieces fit together. Below is my rough rough draft. 
  

My friend JP and I had to create a explain everything on the Métis in Canada. The Métis were the offspring of half British and half Native blood. They have been around almost since we got here but we had to focus on the time period where Louis Riel came back to Canada to lead the Métis in there act to have there rights recognized. This time period was around 1880. We were assigned certain words out of order and had to put them into a order that one connected to the one before it.

http://youtu.be/0lcp91tjxdI

This week I learned about Romeo and Juliet and we had to make a collage of two of the main characters, Benvollio and Tybalt. We also had to pick only 5 words to describe them and pick some pictures to show there differences.

Hot and cold weather Sports

Hot weather makes practices exhaust me
Cold weather, the rain chills me to my bones
As the red blazing sun burns down on thee
Shiver under a tent, feet over cold stones

We all long for the shade of a tall oak
Our bodies long for our toasty warm homes
Gone from the Sun I open a cold coke
The life giving hot coco warms our domes

As games start player’s energy released
The coaches encouraged and reassured
Score becomes tied and needs to be increased
Another point is scored and win secured

Through hard work and dedication the game is won
These incredible sports are very fun

Writing a sonnet was very hard it’s not like a haiku where it’s just about the syllables you have to worry about the pattern of them, your limited to a set amount of syllables. You also have to have a rhyme scheme to it all. It’s not just a simple rhyme where it has to rhyme with another line it has to follow a pattern like abab cdcd efef gg. You have to have 14 lines of this. When I started it I thought that it would be like writing a haiku but man was I wrong. It’s basically like the hardest poem I have ever wrote. Mind you I’m not very good but it is a very hard type of poem to write. But with some brainstorming and looking up the patterns and rhyme schemes I got it done

Student lead conferences are conferences run by a the students, and I am going to present to you all the work we have done so far this year. Firstly I am going to show you a few of my assignments in humanities. Next I will share a overview of this course, and lastly I will show you the goal I created for this year.

This is a list of all the blog posts in this project

1) Overall portfolio reflection

2) Humanities Artifacts and Reflection

3) Goals

This year I think that I have put in a good amount of effort and preformed to the expected level. But as always there were times when I went above and beyond and times I fell short and was not up to standard. Really in flight we never had any tests so studying I have always thought of as for getting prepared for tests. So this year I haven’t really studied a lot at all. My strengths as a learner I think is the ability to put my nose to the grindstone and get lots of work done at the same time in a short period of time. My weakness I think is my habit of leaving everything to the last minute but they both cancel each other out in a way. If I was to get my weakness in check then that would leave me with just strengths which in turn would help my academic performance improve. Last year in flight I played a lot of games on my iPad even when I was way behind on work but this year I think that I have defiantly kept that in check and have only games when done with my work.

I am going to reflect on one of my favourite assignments this year, the Immigration a story. We went through a long process of editing and revisions to come up with a non fiction story of an immigrant to Canada that we interviewed multiple times. We were also tasked with the job of making a box with artifacts displayed in it, the artifacts were items that told our immigrants story of there journey to Canada. I really enjoyed this project and found it fun and it was a new way of seeing how immigrants came to Canada. I thought I did a good job about focusing in on a area of her story, and writing about it, and telling it through her experiences but my words. But If there was something I would change it would be about the presentations. I think we should of had a 1 person present in front of all of the immigrants and us. I think that it would’ve been better because we all put so much work and effort into our projects, and in the end I didn’t get to present to my immigrant.

One place that I struggled in was the writing aspect of humanities. My sentence and paragraph structure and spelling were all lacking and could be improved on a lot. But one piece of writing I got right. Not on the first try though. It took me four of five attempts to get it all correct and presentation ready. It was apart of the immigrant project where we had to interview a immigrant then take there story and tell it again through our own words. It took me many many times just to get the spelling right. But after all of that work I got this.

Story of a Life Time

Could you imagine moving across the world? Well I definitely can’t but with determination and commitment Maggie and her family from Shanghai China, moved from their home city all the way to Canada! Maggie and her family lived in Shanghai China and in 2006 they decided they would like to move. They wanted to come to Canada so they put in a request for a visa and documents. This alone took 6 years! With all that time they decided to come over and take vacation to Canada and take a look around to find out where they wanted to live. One plane ride later they were in Vancouver. They stayed for two weeks scouting out areas they liked. A little while later after returning to China they wanted to go back. But to a different city this time. After the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean they arrived in Toronto and Montreal and stayed there another two weeks looking for a place to live.

When my family and I were back in China we made our decision, we were going to move to Kingston, it was not either of the places we had visited but it was an adventure. We were making all the necessary preparations and then there was a big speed bump. I worked for a fabric company stationed in China and I was going to have to quit my job. But I wanted to continue on in the fabric company but moving to Canada looked like I had no choice. But when the day I had feared finally came around…… The company and I settled on a agreement that I would continue to work for them in Canada. My family also had to learn English but it was very hard for my son. With all of those stressful parts of the move out of the way I felt as if a elephant had been lifted off my chest and we could now focus on the move.

With the ability for me to start a new fabric store in Canada I was feeling good. After finally getting the visas and the proper documents ready, we could begin packing up. It was time. We were all happy that day, but still a little scared of the move to Canada I thought as the seemingly long car ride to the airport came to an end. As we boarded the plane all the anxiety of the trip vanished and I was suddenly over joyed with the thought of moving to Canada! Arriving in Kingston we were greeted with crisp fresh Canadian air and the cool weather of the great white North. We lived in Kingston for a while but we really wanted to move to Vancouver. Kingston was a small town and we never really saw anyone but when we did we saw them multiple times a day. We became close with our neighbours and when it’s was time for us to move we said our sad good byes and continued on our adventure across Canada.

So after thinking and talking over the idea of moving again we packed up our stuff and went on a cross Canada drive! We went through Ontario and up through the prairies eventually getting to the boarded between Alberta and British Columbia. I thought to myself this is it. In a little while I’ll be in Vancouver and our long journey will be over. So as the last kilometres of the trip came to an end and we emerged from the Rockies there it was VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA!!!

We wanted to live in deep cove located in North Vancouver but we couldn’t find a suitable home for our family. So once we found a home that we liked in the right neighbourhood we would buy it. The search for a house actually began before we even got to Canada. Back in China we looked and searched every house that came on sale in the area we were looking for. But nothing came up that we liked. Eventually we had no choice but to switch to a different area. We finally decided on Edgemont. We found a house there and immediately bought it and moved in. I sent my son to Handsworth secondary school which was different from our original plan but great for where we lived.

Once we settled it was a lot different compared to China. Canada was more spaced out, there was different food that took time to adjust to. Learning English was hard, but easier for me because I learned some from my mother back in China. In school my son was doing a lot better compared to the strict discipline of the Chinese schools. He could explore his own interests without conflict. We came here mostly for his sake. We wanted him to be able to follow his own interests instead of having mound apon mound of information shoved down his throat. He is adjusting to speaking English better and now he learns even out of school through sports and other activities.

Everyone seems happy with the change. There are hard things to get used to and hard things to let go of but the change was for the best. We wouldn’t of moved if it was going to hurt us in anyway. We all seemed to like it here in Vancouver Canada. I am enjoying cooking some tasty Canadian food. I still works for the Chinese fabric company 1 1/2 years later. I would say everything is going according to plan!

A big thank you to Maggie for letting me share her epic adventure across the world and her final destination of VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA!!!

Story lived by: Maggie and her family

Story told by: Robert Hannah