Month: November 2023

Power Play During the Medieval Times

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Introduction

Our driving question was “Can we learn from the past and why does that matter to us today?” Yes we can, but it goes much deeper than just that. How? We read ‘The Book of the Lion,’ put ourselves into medieval art, and did a LOT of reflecting. So sit back and relax while I explain what happened.

The Book of the Lion 

The Book of the Lion wasn’t the greatest book I’ve ever read. It was about a boy named Edmund living during the crusades. We had to connect our lives to life during the crusades, which might sound hard but it wasn’t as difficult as I expected. We did this by doing rly sheets, which we also did in “It’s the End of the World as we Know it.”

Role sheet reflection:

Something that I could’ve done better is taking my time on the drawings and creating drafts. Another thing that I could’ve done is doing it before the last day and not having not rush it. That way my work could’ve been more insightful and more proficient. I also didn’t have two questions. I forgot to add another one because I was in such a rush to finish it. If I set goals and an earlier date to do it by, I would more time to make it better and it would be my best work, but since I rushed it, It wasn’t very good, ad I wasn’t proud of it. Next time, I will make sure to take my time and to set a reminder on things (I already did this but I didn’t have a widget so I wasn’t able to visually see it.)

Artwork Explanation 🗣️

We can learn from our past by learning about our worldview, I realized how similar my life was to the medieval times. There are a lot of things that we can learn from it by fixing our mistakes and learning from them. 

Time

The reason why I put a clock on the art is because time was very important in the Middle Ages and people treated it with great respect. This is because people in the Middle Ages made whole buildings that told the time. I also really depend on time because I like to be on time for school and activities like soccer. It connects to my worldview because if I’m late for school or soccer, then my teachers and coaches won’t be happy with me, and one of my worldviews is to be a good soccer player and student. But if I’m late then I won’t be a good student or soccer player. In the Middle Ages, time was important because they needed to know when they needed to harvest their crops so they could have something to eat and so that they could make money and a profit.

Society

For the society aspect of worldview I drew a crown because in the Middle Ages, they used a monarchy system and they didn’t have much of a say. That shows a lot about the societies in the Middle Ages because everyone did there own, because if they stood up, the king said that they wouldn’t go to heaven, so what people did, was that they just did what they were supposed to do and then they would get to go to a better place after they died. They didn’t work very well as a group because they didn’t think that it was worth it. Unless it was in the crusades because if they all believed in the same thing, then they would all work towards a goal. That relates to today because people today will all work towards a goal if they all believe in the same thing.

Beliefs

For beliefs I drew a church, I did this because it was a very large religion at the time and it still is today. I also did it because a huge part of the crusades was influenced by religion and fighting over Jerusalem. It was also relates to today because there are currently wars in the same place as in the crusades and they are partly influenced by religion, but not as much as in the crusades. Religion was also a big part of why people did things and it influenced the way they acted towards each other.

The reason why I chose this piece of art is because it shows a king and at the time, everything happened because of the king including their beliefs, jobs, and life. The worldview that was shared by many people in the Middle Ages, isn’t that different to mine today. And through this project I learnt that even though things may look extremely different, you can still find a way to connect to it.

Artwork Paragraph 

I chose three different aspects of worldview that relate to mine and the ones from the Middle Ages. The reason why I chose to do a clock is because the it shows all of the different aspects of a medieval worldview (at least one of a framers.) This is because a clock shows what time it is and it told the farmers the season and when they would have to harvest their crops. Without time, they would die of starvation because they wouldn’t know when to harvest their crops. I added a crown to represent society because in the Middle Ages, everyone was ruled by a king, and all of the orders throughout the kingdom, came from that one person. For the beliefs aspect of worldview, I drew a church. This is because in the Middle Ages, the majority of people were Christian, and religion was a main aspect of why the crusades even happened in the first place. These were my three aspects of worldview that I chose to represent and I think that they all relate to my current worldview. 

Artwork Choice Chart 

For the artwork choice chart, we had to take medieval art and say how it connected to our worldview.

Sketch and Tell ✏️

The Process 🔄

To make the medieval art I had to learn a lot of different things about the medieval times and Middle Ages to actually make it. We did this by doing the role sheets and reading the Book Of The Lion. We also got different perspectives by reading about the Haudenosaunee and their worldviews. I communicated this art to answer this driving question by choosing things in my art that represented the worldviews of people in the Middle Ages such as the flat earth for geography, the cross for beliefs, and an old clock for time. If I made one that represented my worldview, it would look different but also pretty similar. I answered the driving question because I saw that it was similar to my worldview today, and how it connected to back then. We can learn from it because we can reflect on what we did wrong and we can learn from our mistakes and we can know how to do something better. We had to work in groups. Cole, Sven, and I made a presentation about Genghis Kahn and we talked about his personality and his impact on the world today. We all collaborated and drew a statue representing all the different things that he did and his impact on the world today. We drew him making the first ever mongol language which were called “yams.”

Conclusion ✅

I think that the past is definitely relevant to today and through this project, it has really helped me realize how much of an impact it has on us. I will remember this project for being difficult and challenging but also for teaching me so much. I learnt so much about medieval times and worldview (which I didn’t think was possible after my last project.) from reading The Book Of The Lion, making artwork charts and inserting ourselves into medieval art, this was a very interesting and important project to do and overall, I really enjoyed it!

It’s the End of the World! *Wait.. Not Really*

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It’s the End of the World!!!

It’s the end of the world? Wait, no not really, we had to write a song, sing it, record a music video, and post it to our YouTube channels (which certainly felt like the end of the world). In our project, we made a song that was like“The End of the World as we Know it” and we had to tie it together to our worldviews by reading and comprehending the Outsiders and how their worldview in the book still relates to our worldview today. We did a lot of small assignments such as our MindNode, in which we connected different aspects of our worldview and we commented our beliefs on the certain aspect of worldview we also had to write lyrics for our song, and we devolved and reviewed the song until it was good enough and we liked it. The finished project was our video which you can watch here:

The Outsiders:

In this part of our project we read the book “The Outsiders” and we reflected on it by doing role sheets. We also talked in our groups and discussed about the different role sheets and then we assessed ourselves on how we think we did in our discussions. When we finished the book, we watched the movie. I recommend reading the book, but it really helped me connect to the driving question: How can a text help me understand myself as my worldview is changing? The text in the driving question was the Outsiders and why it helped me understand my own worldview was that it was about teenagers around my age, and they were very different from me, but some things still were the same.

The Ousiders by S.E. Hinton

Conclusion:

To end off this blog post, I felt like it was right to say how much this project taught me. If there is one thing that I have learnt from my first few months at PLP, it’s that when you finish a project, it’s not done. You take the knowledge that you learnt from it, and apply it to the projects to come. Worldview is a great example of that. In our other projects, we always refer to worldview, and this was a great way to start everything off, by doing a project on something that I will need until grade 12! Thank you for reading! And I’ll be sure to post again soon.

 

Reflecting on my First Maker Project

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“Failure is success in progress” -Albert Einstein, this quote really summed up this project. In my first ever maker project I made a slideshow documenting who I was as a PLP learner. I learnt a lot of different things in this project and there was a lot of things that I did well in. 

What I actually did right,

I thought that one of the things that I did well in was when I used my current knowledge that I already had, I combined it with the things that my teachers had taught me to use. Another thing that I thought that I did well on was my reflection. At PLP reflecting is where you do a lot of your learning because it teaches you what you could’ve done better and how you can apply that to your next project. I did this in my reflection slide of my keynote:

I was also very proud of the things that we drew and explored with using the Apple Pencil, I learnt a lot from that experience and it will be extremely useful in my years to come with PLP.

“Isn’t this a reflection blog post?” 

My Nike shoe that we made in a keynote slide using different techniques.

Something I could’ve done better was handing it in in the correct format. When I handed it in to my teacher, I used the wrong format and I had to do it again. I think this could’ve been a good thing though, because it gave me a chance to look things over and improve on them. The other thing that I thought that I could’ve improved on was the voice recording. I was in a rush to get it done, so I barely had the chance to review it. I think if I was more prepared and had finished everything else, I would be able to do a better and clearer job of it. It sounded too scripted and there was a lot of background noise. Something that I will do better next time on this will to take my time on little things because it all adds up to your final project. The last thing that I needed improving on was to make my edits for stickers that were on my laptop to be more relevant to what the stickers were, the animations just seemed random and rushed, which they were. If I were to do it again, I would take my time on smaller details like that and make the animations more relevant and visually appealing.

So, who am I as a PLP learner?

My Memoji that had the sticker animations

I think that this project, “Who an I as a PLP Learner?” might actually be one of the most helpful projects because I learnt so much about myself and how I prefer to learn, it will most certainly be helpful to my years to come with. Through this project I’ve realized that I’m a learner who thinks creatively and outside of the box, and I sometimes try to take the lead in projects while other times I prefer to do my work and have someone else lead the team to success. I learnt how to post on YouTube, how to make a blog, how to use all the different features on the Apple Pencil, and even how to use keynote properly. Whether it was carving pumpkins and drawing shoes in keynote, to posting our final project to YouTube, It certainly was a rollercoaster of a project and one that I will hopefully never forget. Thank you for reading my blog, and have a great rest of your day.

The Haudenosaunee And Their Perspectives

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Where the Haudenosaunee lived, and the borders that separated the different groups.

Who were they?

The Haudenosaunee were a large group of indigenous people who lived on the eastern side of Canada. There was five different groups of them and together they made up the Haudenosaunee confederacy. The Peacemaker would ask each of all the five nations to pick men to be their leaders. The leaders were called hoyaneh and they played a very important role.

What does that show us in terms of perspective?

I think that showed perspective on the way that they acted because that is a similar government system that we use today and the Haudenosaunee continue to do this today. Another thing that they believed in was the seventh generation principal, which was a law that was in section 24 of the great law of peace. It makes people think ahead and assess their actions. They still do this today because they think about what they do before they act and they haven’t forgotten this rule. The last one is that they protect and love the earth. They showed this by protecting it and not taking more than they needed. They continue this today because in a speech by Leon Shenandoah, he said that they were “instructed to carry a love for one another and to show great respect for the earth we must live in harmony with the natural world and recognize that excessive exploitation can only lead to our own destruction.” That shows that they still believe in their rules and guidelines that they set down many years ago.

Conclusion:

That was my post on the Haudenosaunee’s worldviews and perspectives, I hoped you learnt something and if not, I happen you found it a least interesting and informative to read.