Humanities

Going To The Second Most Polluted Place In America… For School

Sam

Because we are in PLP, we go on trips called field schools, where we get to go straight to where we are learning about to help our understanding and gain a more firsthand perspective. And this trip was to a site that was crucial to the development of the two atomic bombs made in the 1940’s. We went to Hanford Washington.

This trip would be the backbone of all the knowledge we acquire for this unit and project. I wrote another post about the learning we have acquired through this unit about the manhattan project. Be sure to check it out.

The Manhattan Project Project

But since we are talking about the trip in this post, let me give a little bit of explanation of what I learned on this trip first. Here are two main aspects of the Manhattan Project that we learned and wouldn’t have learned without going to the Hanford site:

1. The full scope of how big the Manhatttan Project site was.

I don’t think I really understood how big, physically, the Manhattan project actually was. It is occupies 586 square miles (1,518 km) which is roughly half of the size of Rhode Island. You can easily find this fact on Google, but I didn’t know what that looked like until we went there. For me at least, learning how large of a space they needed showed me the scope of how important this project was. On this site they had multiple buildings, all with different uses. There were pumphouses, water filtration buildings and multiple just straight up nuclear reactors. One thing that really stuck out to me was how spaced out everything was. The building and reactors were all really far apart, and I learned that’s because there were thousands upon thousands of temporary homes and trailers for the workers set up across the land during the time the site was in use. It really blew my mind how much land this site took up. It was a solid 45 minute drive from the tour bus headquarters to the reactors we saw up close!

2. The perspective of the American workers from Hanford.

I never really considered how much different the point of view of the Americans could really be than that of mine or other people not involved in the Manhattan project. For example, one of our tour docents, Joe, was explaining to another group how he is extremely happy that America decided to drop the atomic bombs, because if they hadn’t, his uncle would have had to go to war, with a good chance of never returning. Joe was moved to tears even now talking about how happy he is that his uncle was able to stay and didn’t have to go fight. This is something I never would have understood if I hadn’t been on this field school, and it’s really impacted me. I now see that Joe was only one case of millions of people in America that could have had the same experience with their own loved ones. This is something I vividly remember from this trip, and really helped me learn more about historical perspective.

 

Now, since we have covered what I learned about, let’s get into the fun stuff. The actual trip.

The fun stuff

Our main destination was Hanford Washington, but before that we had a few stops to make. We had a total of four days, and we would make the best of them. I think I’ll go about this post by explaining the best / my favourite parts of each day, and make them more detailed and explain what I learned because “Everything we do is for a reason.” – Ms. Willemse

So lets get into it shall we?

We first stopped in Portland Oregon, after driving all morning, (we left the school at 7:00 am) and arrived at Powell’s City Of Books. And a city of books it is, as it’s literally the largest new and used bookstore in the world. It takes up an entire block of downtown and we found out it holds approximately 1 million books, with 32,000 different categories. It’s so large it even has its own guided tours.

This was a pretty cool place to visit, as it’s kind of nostalgic to the days when I had time to read a lot, and a nice place to get out and stretch our legs. But, since we are in PLP, there’s an assignment involved. In a group of our friends, we needed to find a crazy book title, in this castle sized book store, and then using our bodies, imitate the title in a picture. This is what me, Robbie, Simon, and Spencer came up with:

The book title was: “A Brief History on the Worst Ways To Cure Everything.” In our photo, Robbie has a toothache, and so me and Spencer are punching him in the stomach to “make it feel better” and Simon is sitting on the floor poking his eye out with his finger… (we can’t remember why).

Anyways, lets get back on the road.

The next super interesting point of interest was Reed College. Here, we met with a student of the college, who is able to work the small Nuclear Reactor housed in the college itself, under 25 feet of water. This is the only nuclear reactor primarily operated by undergraduates. But these students don’t use it to make atomic bombs, they use it to test reactions between different types of metals and materials from the periodic table.

We weren’t allowed to take photos, but this is the exact reactor

We got to go in the “bunker-like” building on the campus that has been  home to the reactor since it was built in 1968. We needed to hang up our backpacks and jackets near the door, and then we entered the “control room” where two other students worked. They were about to boot up the reactor for us. We waited for a few minutes in the control room, and then entered the 20ft by 20ft room with a small pool in the middle surrounded by railings. We gathered around, and without anyone’s knowing, were about to witness a rare event. What we witnessed was a SCRAM, which is basically an emergency shutdown of the reactor. This was caused by the students in the control room booted the reactor up just a little too quickly. The reactor then automatically drops neutron-absorbing rods directly into the core of the reactor, cutting off any reactions going on inside. This only happens like ten times a year, and was a cool experience to be a part of. While we were there, I learned a lot about the reactor and how it works, and that technically, you could swim in the reactor pool, but it’s not recommended. This is because the radiation from the reactor is slowed down by the water so much that there’s barely any on the surface of the water. But still if you went down deep, you definitely wouldn’t feel good after. Overall this was a lot of fun and I found it really interesting.

 

 

 

The Manhattan Project Project

Sam

Well. We’re back.

Another year, another project, another blog post. So lets get into it.

This year what we started working on in PLP is a continuation of where we ended last year, with World War Two. And the main part of the war effort we focused on was in the United States of America. It is something both well known, and also very secretive to this day.

It is: the Manhattan Project. Our task was to create a short 5 minute film in groups of three or four describing 5 different facts about an aspect of the Manhattan project. We were to do lots of research and then use our highly developed script writing and video editing skills to create a peofessionalh looking video. I was in a group with Ethan and Parker. And this was our final product:

And if you want to find out the learning behind this, then keep reading and I’ll tell you all about it.

To kick off this unit, the first thing we did was really look into what the Manhattan project was. We all had a basic knowledge of the atomic bombs that were dropped on the Japanese at the end of WWII, but what we didn’t really know was how those bombs came to be. This, essentially, is the Manhattan project.

 

We needed to fully understand the ideas and goals of the Manhattan project to gain the historical perspective we needed in order to create our video. We studied the beginnings of the project, how America heard that Germany was developing their own atomic bomb research, and that America then jumped right into atomic research. There were three different sites that the American government needed for the atomic bomb creation. Each site needed to meet a specific set of criteria: they needed to be near a large source of water, have access to a lot of electricity and be in the middle of nowhere. The three sites were Hanford Washington, for the creation of the plutonium, Oak Ridge Tennessee was the home base and specialized in plutonium splitting, and finally Los Alamos, the site where they tested the bombs. This was the first bit of learning we did by reading articles and passages in different books, and conducting our own research. Something I found almost astounding was that the government just showed up one day to the farmers and families living on the Hanford area and said they had 30 days to pack up their stuff and leave. They were offered very little money for their property, and a lot of people were quite unhappy to leave their homes. Some went to court and fought for more house payment, and a few did succeed but it definetly wasn’t close to market value. This is a direct form of how the Manhattan project affected the lives of people near the project in any way. This was something I had a hard time picturing, but on the trip we did learn more in depth on that process. But, we still had a lot to learn before the trip begun.

Of course, we knew the final product of what was to happen. The bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed 90,000–146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 people in Nagasaki. This was devastating. While studying more about the Manhattan project, we did a mini project to help us get a better historical perspective on the times of World War Two. To do this, we were split up into groups of three or four and tasked with creating a short video called a Newsreel. This was to be set as if it was showing in American theatres a few days after the bombing in 1945. This was something that was the norm at the time, because there weren’t any televisions, so people would get the news about the war when they went to see a movie in the local theatre. So, we needed to watch a few newsreels and then create our own using footage we find that supports a script we write. Here is ours:

I enjoyed making this video. I was the “lucky person” to do the voice over, and it needed to be in a specific style, as you can hear. I tried to match with the real newsreels of the time by talking fast and in short bursts. I even used a voice filter in GarageBand to make my voice sound like an old phone. I don’t think I nailed the accent, but other than that I was happy with our end result.

Another mini project we did was to look into one person that worked or was associated with the Manhattan project, and then create a character card for that person. This was so we could learn about all the different roles and responsibilities of the many many workers in the project. I decided to research a guy named Samuel Goudsmit, who was a physicist and the head of the top secret Alsos Mission.

His parents were Nazi concentration camp victims, but he was an aspiring physicist who ended up working for the American government. His job was to be on the Alsos Mission, a Mission that would be constantly watching, spying and monitoring the progress of the Germans attempts to create an atomic bomb. He even wrote a book about his experience where he says that the Germans were not close to having a working atomic bomb.

But let’s get back to the video. Before we even went on our trip we were to create a really rough draft of our video. Most of the footage would be us when we are on the trip, but in the rough draft we would just have our script recorded, background music ready, and indicate where different clips, interviews and photos would be. I think this stage actually helped me more than I thought at first because it really put what we were going to create into a product that I could see and visualize rather than just think about. I could figure out timing, and where ideal spots for interviews would be.

After this, we embarked on our trip. Four days in Oregon with 17 students and two teachers. It was a lot of fun, I have a post about it here if you would like to find out more about it.

And once we returned, we began editing and putting all the shots and even more knowledge we gained on the trip into our video. And after a few sets of peer and teacher critique, me, Ethan and Parker ended up with the video you saw at the top. I’m extremely happy with the end result, as I put a lot of hours of hard work into it, and I’m glad to see how it turned out. I actually tried a different app for this video other than regular iMovie, and it was awesome. It’s called EnlightVideoleap and you can get it on the App Store for free.

 

Well, that’s all for this post.

 

See you

Just… Don’t Get Stranded on an Island

Sam

Buckle up your seatbelts everyone because this is a unit end post.

Our first major unit in PLP 10 Humanities was WW1, and then we just recently finished our WW2 unit. The last unit we just finished was about the book Lord Of The Flies by William Golding and that is what this post is about.

The driving question for this unit was: “How do we organize ourselves?”

We would be studying human nature, power, corruption, and many more topics relating to this because it has a lot to do with the book Lord Of the Flies. We would look at government systems, politics and current events to help look at this question is different ways. The other major concepts we’d be thinking about are as follows:

• Power and Authority
• Humanity and Inhumanity
• Violence and Destruction
• Human nature
• Civilization and Savagery
• Innocence and Evil
• Individualism and Community

We then wrote out these ideas onto big sheets of paper and as a class brainstormed any thoughts or theories we had about each topic:

After this, while reading the book, we would be looking for evidence of these topics in the literature. But before we started reading, we needed to make some groups. And we did this in quite a unique fashion.

As you may or may not know, in LOTF a group of young boys are stranded on an island and have to survive until they can be rescued. So, in honour of having no adults to organize or watch over us, the task of creating groups was passed onto us. Ms. Maxwell would leave the class, and we had 30 minutes to create 6 equal groups on our own. This process began with 6 team leaders writing their names down at the top of each group list. We then matched up people with the opposite qualities of that team leader in that group and went on until there was no one left. We then all agreed the groups were to our liking and signed a paper. Except this didn’t go as smooth as it sounds.

The entire time we were making these groups, there was a large amount of chaotic noise and distractions. Half the people were huddled around the whiteboard exclaiming their opinions on the groups all at the same time, and the other half of the class didn’t care and was messing around outside the huddle.

In my group, I was with Spencer, Michael and Sydney. We all have different skills and so we all felt that this was a strong group.

Afterwards, we wrote a reflection on how we personally think the whole experience went. I I’d say that we completed the task, but not in a very civilized or reasonable way.

Another activity we participated in were our concept journals. Essentially theses were just paragraphs where we would talk about our opinions and understandings on the topics like human nature and innocence and evil, to name a few. For my first journal, the one I’m quite happy with, I chose to talk about whether a form of savagery is necessary to build a civilization. Take a look:

I enjoyed writing this paragraph as it got me thinking about whether or not it is indeed necessary to resort to savagery to build a civilization. I feel like the answer would depend on who you ask.

Anyways, moving on. We now began reading the book Lord Of The Flies. Every week on a Wednesday we would meet in class and have a team quiz. We had three different team quizzes, and at each of these checkpoints we would have read 1/3 of the book. As a team, we needed to keep up in the book so we would know the answers to the 10 quiz questions we got every Wednesday. We ended up around 7 or 8 out of 10 for the first two, and on the last one we got 11/10 becsuse of a bonus question. This was really good news for us.

And that is because at the beginning of the unit we were told we’d be keeping track of points per team. We could gain points and lose points based on our behaviour and performance in our humanities class. Here are the points opportunities Ms. Maxwell gave us:

So over the course of the unit, Ms.Maxwell would be keeping track. Our quiz results would be a big part on how many points we received that day. Our team name was the Skinny Dippers, by the way.

This was the point board at the end of the unit

 

Moving on. We were also conveniently studying politics throughout this unit. We looked into the different types of government. For example, there is anarchy, monarchy, and dictatorship. For a quick one class project, my team and I researched a little about dictatorship while the other teams looked into the other forms of government. When we were done, we had a short PowerPoint and we took turns telling the class how each government worked. My team looked into dictatorship, and what it is. We already knew what it was for the most part, as hitler is a huge example of a dictator. You can read about it in this PowerPoint we made in not even 10 mins:

We also looked closer into Canada’s government. We did this by designing diagrams that showed the different people in power in the Canadian government. Here is mine:

We did a few more activities regarding politics and current events as well throughout this unit. Another activity we did was look at the different voting systems used around us. This is an example of First Past The Post, what Canada’s system is based off of.

Other examples are Mixed Member Proportionalism, an extremely complicated version, and Proportional Representation.  Politics weren’t my favourite part of this unit as politics are very uninteresting to me, but it’s important to know about the current events around you and also the structure of governments so you know what to do when you get old enough to vote.

Another assignment we had during/after reading the book LOTF was a character analysis chart. William Golding brilliantly designed each character to represent a trait in our society today to reflect true human nature. In this chart we not only talk about each characters physical appearance, but their motives and representation as well.

This was interesting to analyze because of all the hidden deeper meanings in everything in the book. Each character has their own strengths, weaknesses, abilities and problems but all of them are important and act in certain ways because of who they are. The book is definitely an interesting read and can be interpreted many different ways.

Towards the beginning of the unit, we found out we would be conducting some sort of debate at the end of the unit. When I learned that, I was actually quite excited. I was looking forward to creating points and speaking in front of the class, since I wanted to practice my public speaking. Now we were approaching the week of the debates. About a week before the three days where debates would be taking place we finally got our debate topics and statements. As teams, we all submitted our top three choices in order of preference, and then Ms. Maxwell based what debate we would do on that information. We ended up getting our second choice, Power and Authority. Next we received our statement: Be is resolved that power leads to corruption. And finally we received our position: AGAINST. We would be arguing against the statement, trying to prove that power doesn’t lead to corruption.

Next we began our research phase. At first my team and I were stumped. We didn’t know how to defend our point, as we all sort of agreed with the FOR argument. After a day or two of thinking, I suddenly came up with an idea and then pitched it to our team. Our own main statement would be: Power does not corrupt people, rather corrupt people abuse their power. We would say this at the beginning and then elaborate and support that idea throughout the debate.

We then began researching supporting points, which was constricted to only topics we talked about in class. We ended up using the book Lord Of The Flies, as it was a requirement, Adolf Hitler and also Winston Churchill. Once we had our points we planned out who whould say what at what time. Michael and I would do the opening statements, Spencer and Sydney on the rebuttal, and Sydney and I for concluding statements. All that was left to do was wait for the debate to start, which was about 20 minutes of time.

When the debate started, the opposing team, made up of Adam, Izzy, Will and Ryan started off with their opening statements. Then after two minutes, it was our turn and I started us off. At this point, once I started talking, my nervousness faded away and I was able to talk freely. I won’t explain too much detail because guess what? We recorded the whole debate! Listen to this track to hear our whole debate:

After the debate, we reflected on it as a class. Since our debate was the first of three, it was kind of a test round for the other ones. Our class reflection brought up the fact that the debate didnt feel like a debate. And I agreed, my team and I tried to predict what they would say and so we had pretty much prepared what we were going to say for our rebuttal even though that part is supposed to be quick thinking. We wanted the debate to have more back and forth actuin as well so we decided to change the rebuttal from 2 minutes each, to 1 minute but there are two per team, one after another. And the last aspect of the debate we needed more of was audience engagement. The audience (the rest of the class) was just kind of there, so we wanted to have them clap and cheer after good points and such. I definetly agreed with these changes, as I felt they would make the next two debates a lot better.

This being said, I would do my debate again in a heartbeat. Even though we still won, and by only one point, I want to make it a lot better. I would like to make it a lot less scripted and I’d focus more on listening to the opposing team’s argument and trying to counter it. I want my debate to feel like a real debate, and have it more intense. I really enjoyed the topic of the debate and found it incredibly interesting. The part that stuck out to me the most with this debate is the fact that we needed to research our ideas, put that information into points, develop an opinion, and turn that opinion into a captivating argument. This was incredibly fun for me and really got me thinking. We were also pulling in everything we’ve talked about in class, which made it even more interesting. Overall I had a lot of fun with this debate and learned a lot.

This unit was by far my favourite this year in Humanities. That is because of the multiple aspects, the team choosing, the book, the point system, politics and government, and the debate of course. I also really enjoyed talking and learning about the different topics like human nature, civilization and savagery, and power and authority and how much it ties into WWII and other historic events. And also how it ties into events that are happening today in our world with different governments and political figures. In conclusion, I learned an absolute ton in this unit and had just as much fun. I really enjoyed the topics and activities we all did and I’m happy with the work I completed in this unit.

 

Thats all,

See you

World War Two

Sam

Here we are again, another blog post. This one is going to cover an entire Humanities unit, so get ready.

Since we finished our recent unit about WWI, we have now moved on to learn all about WWII. The project we did for this unit was different from anything we’ve done before. Instead of a simple book review, podcast, paragraph or research paper, we did all of that and more.

Our goal was to make a website. This website would have multiple pages, and each page would be about one country that participated in WWII. But before all this, we had to complete many steps to get there.

1. Learn the Basics of WWII

This was the start of a large project. Since we would be making a website about the war, we needed to know all about the war. We did this by studying maps and watching a bunch of videos about the history of WWII and the major battles. We took lots of notes and familiarized ourselves with the major players, dates and battles of WWII, so we knew what we were talking about. For the most part.

Next, as a class we came up with any questions we had about WWII before we started our research, and we would go back and check them at the end of the unit. Here are a few questions we had as an example:

– How were concentration camps viewed by those uninvolved in the war, as well as those involved?

– What were some of the future plans of Hitler and the Nazis?

– How was the war disrupted by having new technology?

– How did war affect families at that time?

These questions were unanswered to us at this point but we were hoping we would learn the answers to them by the end of this unit.

We were also put into groups based on our preferences on which country we want to study for this unit. Since our website would feature all the countries in WWII, we got to choose our top three countries to study, and I got my first choice, Germany. I was grouped with Sofia, Adam, and Reid.

2. Book Reviews and Citing in MLA Format

The next step was to focus on the literature part of our project. We were given three books to read, and then we needed to write a book review. But look below because I tell you all about this in this post:

Book Reviews Will Break Me Someday…

Since we would be writing a lot in our websites, we would need to do some research. This is why we began practicing our citing skills. We went to this website to see the basic criteria for each different type of citing, since we’d be citing books, videos and websites. We then practiced in text citations in paragraphs about battles we had just learned about, such as the Battle of Britain.

 

We also looked at some book review examples to get our minds thinking about how we would write ours. Since we had all read the book Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, we read a book review written by Austin Grossman in the New York Times.

Overall this stage was to get ready for actually writing the website, and how to give credit to the websites we took information from. This is really important if you want to avoid plagurism, which is a big deal.

3. The Project Deliverables

The next phase was the making of the project. But before this, we had an incredible experience.

As a class we got the amazing privilege of meeting Helmut Lemke, a german WWII veteran. He fought in some pretty cool battles, and he told us all about his entire WWII experience. This was something I will remember for a long time, as it was crazy to hear the stories he told from a German perspective. To him, he was fighting for the right country, since he is a German. He didnt know the extent of the concentration camps, and the Hitler youth was a fun Boy Scouts activity.

Helmut Lemke as a teenager

Since his stories were so interesting and it’s not every day you get to meet a WWII veteran, we decided, with Helmut’s permission, to record his stories. This was so we could make podcasts. Because the recording was an hour long, we broke up the audio into sections and we could choose within our groups what part we wanted to do. Mine was about Helmuts battle of the Russian front.

This was an amazing experience and I’m so glad I was a part of it, and able to record it to keep it with me. Seeing the perspective of a german soldier was really cool for our group, since we were studying Germany, and so to actually hear what it was like in person was incredible. Helmut was very interesting to listen to, and his life is so much different from ours it’s mind blowing.

The next step was to actually put all of our research into the website. The criteria that was given to us looked like this:

#1. Your Country Pre-WWII (before 1939)
Location, language, leaders/political parties, population, military, prevalent religions, historical turning points (perhaps after WWI), culture, etc.!

#2. 1939 The War Begins
Who was your country allied with? Why did your country enter the war? What were their goals?

#3. Military/Technology

#4. Timeline of WWII for this country

#5. Helmut Podcast

#6. Details of Significant Battles
Tell your battle from the perspective of YOUR country.

#7. Soldier Details
What did your soldier look like on the battle field? What type of training did these soldiers endure? Where were the training camps?

#8. YOUR CHOICE! There is something unique about each of these countries. I am sure you have found yours by now. Add some interesting details that are unique to your country that have not been covered in previous sections.

Now that we had this, and all our research, we could begin the creation of the site.

To create and build the site, we used an application called Weebly. This didnt go so smoothly when we tried to edit the site on our iPads. Every time someone hit undo, all the work done in the past few seconds would disappear, which didn’t work since the whole class was trying to edit their own pages. We then tried again on the schools laptops, and this worked wayyyy better. The website was finally coming together.

Once we had all our information down, it was time to format it all. We all agreed upon basic formatting such as font, titles, and justifying the text. We also all had 3 or 4 sub pages for topics like Before the War, or After the War to break up all our information. We also included lots and lots of photos to keep the website from looking bland. Another aspect we had that was pretty cool was that our book reviews, which we posted on our blogs, and our Helmut Podcasts were also added to the website. We also added some photos of us as a class.

But it was time to present, and so we took turns in our country groups presenting to the class as a mock presentation. We did this practice one first because we would be presenting to Ms.Maxwell’s teacher, Kathleen Barter, who is very knowledgeable when it comes to WWII history. So, we prepared our pages and made final edits, and then we finally presented our pages, and got through the whole website with seconds to spare in our block.

Mrs. Barter gave us great feedback, and asked us great questions. Our last missing piece was the focus on the perspective of each country, since that was the title of the website. We needed to write more about that. But other than that, I know that my country, Germany, and everyone else did really well.

At this point you’re probably dying to see our website.

Well Here it is. Have fun.

 

Reflection

This website was probably one of the most unique projects we’ve done. I actually really enjoyed it, for a few reasons. For one, I like learning about war history since it wasn’t too long ago and is really cool to research. Also, we used multiple projects from our WWII unit and put it into one large form of media, a website. Instead of just doing a book review and then moving on, like you would do in “normal school,” we did that and a podcast. We pulled our personal and individual work into one website, making this website very personalized as us as a PLP class. And lastly, I liked how the whole class worked together to get this done. We all did our own pages of course, but we had to work closely together to make the website consistent and look good. This website was the first time we’ve all worked together as one big team. Overall, this was a lot of fun, and I learned so much from all of our research, and actually building our own media source that the world can see.

 

That’s all,

See you

Book Reviews Will Break Me Someday…

Sam

Even though we’re in PLP, we still do somewhat normal units. And for this post, I’ll be talking about our most recent assignment in History.

Earlier on, we went through WWI and so, naturally, we moved on to WWII. We started learning about all the major battles and events, mostly chronologically. Then, at about halfway through our learning of the war, we were given the choice of three books to read regarding the war.

1. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

2. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

3. Code Name Varity by Elizabeth Wein

I chose Unbroken because I’ve heard of the story and it really sparked my interest. Then, we had spring break and a little bit after that to read the books, and then we began the work side of it. We needed to write a book review in our book. This didn’t sound too bad to me as I had read the book and am fairly good at writing.

But I’ll just let you read it instead of me talking about writing the book review.

Below is my book review on Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

 

Book Review – Unbroken

Author: Laura Hillenbrand

A total of 16 million Americans served in WWII, and the veterans remaining are fading quickly. Every single WWII veteran, whether they’re American, German or French, have a story to tell. And every day, on average 372 die, and with them, their stories. War is not something that is easily talked about, and Louie Zamperini definitely didn’t have it easy. Laura Hillenbrand, author of two nonfiction books including Unbroken, and her books have sold over 13 million copies, and each were adapted into movies. With Unbroken, she takes us down the road of Louie Zamperini, a man with a story.

From the moment Louie could walk, he was a trouble maker. Restaurants, shops and bakeries in the population 1,800 town of Torrance all paid the price. He soon grew very confident in his bold and resourceful behaviour, and that would define him in has manhood, and prove very helpful in his future. Reading through this section of the book gives me the feeling that Louie is growing as a person, and it gives me great hopes for his future. This well written section of the book is easily a highlight because of the trouble making nature it is written in.
As Louie aged into his early teen years, he was still having trouble fitting in with other kids. Pete Zamperini, who was the successful and respected son of the Zamperinis, realized the potential in Louie as a track runner. After some practice, and time, Louie had a mania for running. This began a multitude of races, one after another, with Louie breaking one record after another. In one race, the 1933 UCLA Cross Country two-mile race where Louie ran effortlessly, breaking the course record and winning by more than a quarter of a mile, when finishing the race Louie described almost fainting, not from exertion, but “from the realization of what he was.” (Hillenbrand). He realizes who he is as a person, which he’d been searching for his whole childhood. He then goes on to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games where Louie would run against track legends, and meet Adolf Hitler himself. Louie’s Olympic exerience makes you feel proud of the small boy from Torrance that you have been reading about, and Laura Hillenbrand describes this section extremely well. The Olympics are a highlight of the book, and creates a growing tension inside of you for what is soon to come. Louie does well in his events and has extremely high hopes for the next Olympics. But things don’t always go as planned, and this is something Louie would soon know all too well.

Louie Zamperini was ready for war in August, 1942. He joined his crew on the Hawaiian islands, where they were assigned a rickety B-24D bomber plane, which are known for dropping out of the sky. Louie and his crew flew a few missions together, which resulted in one very close call getting back to base. But it wasn’t until flying a search mission when every bomber crew’s nightmare became Louie’s reality. Their new plane, the Green Hornet, was barely deemed flight worthy when it dropped out of the sky into the Pacific. Him and two other of his fellow bombardiers then drift through the ocean for a total of 47 days, surviving on the fish, sharks or birds they catch, and the rainfall from rampant ocean storms. When they finally see land on the horizon, they are unsure whether or not to be thankful when they are scooped out of the ocean by the Japanese. Louie and Phil, the survivors of the raft They go from POW camp to POW camp, where they are malnourished and beaten daily. By sabotaging or stealing anything the Japanese put in their hands, “the men were no longer passive captives. They were soldiers again.” This is what got Louie and his fellow captives through two years of imprisonment. During Louie’s captivity, a Japanese corporal called “The Bird” was particularily harsh to Louie. This man was insane, and sadistic, beating the men for no reason, and resulting in many broken people. Louie is finally released when the war is over in 1945 and the Japanese leave the POW camp. Louie embarks on his long journey home and discovered his PTSD, before it was a condition. He eventually marries and becomes a Christian. After reading this exhilarating section where Louie goes through unthinkable pain and suffering, you realize how truly terrible the war really was. Filled with details, this section is extremely well written in that you follow Louie through the toughest few years of life, as if you were watching from right behind him. This is definitely one of my favourite parts, bevause of the reality of everything that happens to Louie. Louie Zamperini, a mischief maker, theif, Olympian, WWII bombardier, castaway, survivor, prisoner, and husband is finally home.

Laura Hillenbrand leads us through the life of Louie Zamperini, a man with an extraordinary story. She describes his life with great detail, and showing us the transformations in Louie as a person firsthand. While excelling at giving us a great story filled with gripping events, she sometimes lacks in the ability to get inside Louie’s head. Laura Hillenbrand explains what Louie is seeing, hearing, feeling, and saying, but not what he is thinking. Whether or not that’s the fact that the 83 year old Louie isn’t keen on speaking about his wartime experiences, we still don’t know the feelings that Louie had on his crazy adventure. The book is a sensational and emotional masterpiece, taking us on a roller coaster of feelings as we see just how unbroken Loui’s Zamperini really is.

 

Well, that’s it. Thanks.

 

See you.

Technology is Causing a Rukus

Sam

What if I took away ALL your technology, from your dishwashers to cell phones to electric locks on your doors, and you had to live for a week without it.

Would you be able to do it?

Well, if you think you could then good for you.

But it wouldn’t be easy for everyone. Our 21st century lives rely on our technology for almost everything we do. Education, transportation, communication, and many more areas of our lives are full of technology, even if we don’t know it.

And that’s what our past unit has been all about.

Disruption

This unit was one that we have been looking st for a long time, and finished off with our amazing trip to California. Read this post to hear lots more about our trip. We went to three different cities in California and visited lots of major tech businesses such as Twitter,

Google,

Apple,

and Intel.

These big corporations are more present in our lives than ever in our day and age.

After returning from the trip we had a few projects to work on. One of them was a scrapbook type of digital book describing our trip and how it all relates to the theme of disruption, which you can read at the end of this post. Another was all about our time at High Tech High, which was in the form of an interview podcast, and I have a post on it here. And the next project was a partner project, and I worked with Isobel, and the project was a choice of a few formats, and a choice of a location.

Heres what our options were for formats:

And here’s what we could have done for location:

Me and Isobel decided to a video about High Tech High, because we instantly thought of a good thesis, and thought a video would be a great way to showcase how different High Tech High is. We filmed a lot when we were in California, more specifically High Tech High, and had lots of clips to work with for our video. But without any other talk about it, here is is below so you can watch it:

We created this video to show the main differences to our school Seycove and the PLP program we are in, to HTH and their crazy school.

The video production went smoothly other than a few technical difficulties with photo storage and iCloud, and we both did our parts well. Sometimes there was confusion as to who was doing what or how things should be done, and that is just bad communication on our parts, which can easily be improved for next time. Other than that, I’d say this video was a success and I’m happy with what we created.

But of course, as always in PLP, we aren’t done yet! We still needed to do one last thing on disruption… other than this post. We had to write

an essay.

Yeah, I know, it’s crazy. As if we didn’t already have like four projects. And at this time as well, Destination Imagination regionals are looming in the back of our minds, making us cry ourselves to sleep with stress, or in Ethan’s case, get a lisp from a swollen tongue.

(Which was caused by stress. It’s a real thing, look it up.)

But, anyways, back to the essay. The theme was about technological disruption, and the driving question being as follows:

How has technology acted as a disruption throughout history?

For our essay, since it’s a synthesis essay, we needed to use information from three different sources. One of them had to be from the book we read in class, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. The other two were up to us. But anyways, I’ll show you the essay and then do the rest of my talking:

Cameras Are A Disruption
By Samuel Scheewe

 

Every single person in our world has encountered some type of technology in their life. Technology has grown so big and so diverse in our world, and it has completely re-shaped it. Technology is a disruption, and it is evident in the invention and modern development of the camera. It has changed our entertainment, personal lives, and privacy, all by one device.


Movies and TV shows are some of the most popular forms of entertainment. Almost every single person has been to a movie theatre at least once in their life, and these movies are there because of one thing. Cameras. Cameras are mounted on cars, planes, and drones for these professional films, and are the reason for the millions of dollars the industry makes every movie. An entertainment study by ISBSWorld in 2012 claimed that the movie and film entertainment industry reached $126.8 Billion, ranking it among the top 5 forms of entertainment our world has ever seen. The industry has only gotten bigger since then. People watch movies every day, and every year hundreds of new movies are made. And it all wouldn’t be possible without cameras. Before cameras and movies, people found other ways of entertainment. But since the recent development of the professional filming cameras, it has brought the film industry to the top, to the point where almost every household has one working television, and is used daily. Movies and TV shows are a very popular form of entertainment, as they are extremely addicting. It’s very easy to say, “Just one more show,” and keep watching. Filmmaking is all about keeping the attention of the audience, and that is all in captivating camera angles and gripping script writing. This has changed our entertainment from books to television because of the way that movies let us hear the story, see it, and follow our characters through an exciting adventure. The movie immerses us and lets us escape our world and join another for a short time. Cameras are the reason for this change from books to movies, and it’s because of this change people can watch and keep stories with them whether it’s an action movie, horror film, or nature documentary. 21st century entertainment is getting better and better, and the cameras behind those screens get better and better. These stories will be kept with our generation forever.


Cameras have become so small, that they have found a way into our own personal lives. They can go with us wherever we go, in our pocket. The camera was integrated into the smartphone, and this was revolutionary in that people didn’t need a separate camera if they wanted to take pictures anymore. Now, everyone had the power of photography at their fingertips, which was huge. A study on Altitudeinc about the iPhone camera as a disruption to digital cameras says: “It is a photographic experience designed for the masses and one that will quickly obsolete the need for a separate camera for most people.” And Altitudeinc is correct. Having HD photo and video capabilities already in your smartphone is a very quick design that is more appealing to the masses than having to lug around a different camera. And the cameras in our smartphones are dummy-proof. It’s a point and shoot type of idea, where the exposure and focus adjusts automatically, making it super easy for everyone to use. This has changed our world, and has let every single person with a smartphone be a photographer of their own lives, and can keep their memories as long as they want. Having a camera on our smartphones is something we take for granted. They effect social media, which is an extremely popular industry, and communication in general. Taking photos and sharing them with other people is what a smartphone does, and we wouldn’t be able to do that if none of the smartphones didn’t have cameras. The camera is one of the biggest functions of a modern day smartphone, and without it our personal social media and communication would be drastically different. Cameras have changed our personal lives for the better, making us all capable of keeping our own stories in our pockets.


Would you want someone watching you at all times? No, you probably wouldn’t. People want their privacy, and that’s your right. Security cameras have changed that. They aren’t able, or allowed, to watch you at all times, but they protect you in all the public places you go. Whenever you go out to the mall, or just walk around downtown, there are cameras on the outside of buildings. And they are there for one reason. To help prevent or discourage crime. This is another form of camera we take for granted. They have been a positive disruption to our daily life, as Reolink survey on the effectiveness of home security cameras informs us that 83% of burglars will not rob their target house or building if they can see security cameras. This is a big number. Having cameras constantly surveying the activity in public places is a vital help to police. But there also is a fine line between security purposes and controlling the freedom of people. This is clearly demonstrated in the book Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, where the main character Marcus is being watched and controlled, but manages to fight back. This problem of too much control is always up for debate, but having security cameras still greatly decreases crime rates. And it wouldn’t be possible if not for the camera. It has truly changed our world as we now it.


The camera was once used only for professional filmmakers, and was big, heavy and only shot in black and white. But with the modern developments, it has changed the way we live in multiple areas of our life. Cameras brought a $126.8 billion entertainment industry to life, impacted the way we share and document our personal lives, and have prevented and protected us from crime. All of these areas of our lives are ones we see every single day. Without the new technology of cameras disrupting our world for the better, we would live extremely different lives.

 

I found that for most of the essays I’ve written, I’m pretty confident going into them as I’m good at writing. But for this essay, with all our other work going on, I felt I was less prepared. It took me a while to come up with my thesis, and I didn’t finish my actual outline until after I wrote the essay. Which isn’t good, in case you’re wondering.

But, I think that for all my unpreparedness, I did pretty well. I found my two other sources, and I think they supported my points really well. My main idea was that cameras are changing our lives worldwide for the better. They are going from big machines, to something that can fit in your pocket, or fly hundreds of feet in the air on a drone. I think that this essay explains and supports what I’m saying. The day or two before the essay I was preparing as much as I could, brainstorming ideas and such. But I feel that I don’t really need to do that much preparing other than an outline to get my ideas down. I felt fairly confident beforehand, and I feel confident in my product.

Overall, this has been my favourite unit in a long time. I really enjoyed hearing about how all the businesses we know today started out as small as three guys in a garage. It really interested me how they though of something totally crazy and different and kept going with it until they changed the world. That was quite inspiring.

And then we went on and actually experienced all these businesses and organizations in real life, while being on an incredibly fun trip with my good friends, and it was absolutely incredible. I will remember this trip for the rest of my life, and all the things I’ve learned as well. I’m very glad I took this opportunity and went with my classmates this year, because it was something to remember.

This unit has been amazing, fun and tough at the same time, and I’m actually sad to see it go. But I can only imagine how the next projects and assignments will be after this great one.

Thanks for reading,

See you.

 

The Man That Hacked Xbox

Sam

In our PLP class, we have just began a new unit. We have been focusing on technology and how it has changed our world as we know it. We’ve been looking at our lives and seeing how technology has changed our daily routines, work life, and school life. In this unit, we will be researching and creating projects through the lens of technology as a disruption.

Our driving question for the unit: How has technology acted as a disruption with its creation throughout history? 

The first thing we did over the Christmas break to kick off this unit was read a novel called Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It’s a fiction novel about some teenagers who live in San Francisco, in an unstated future time. The technology in this city rules over everyone, and the government is monitoring everything everyone does. I don’t want to spoil the book, but the main idea is that there was a terroirs attack on the bay bridge. A massive bomb was set off, and the government scrambles to find out who is responsible. They use unjust and wrong ways to do this, and the main characters use their internet and hacking skills to fight back.

This book  is related to our driving question because it shows how technology has disrupted our lives. To me, it seemed that technology has taken away the freedom of the characters in the book, because the government is watching everywhere you go, everything you do, in real life and on the internet. The main characters were constantly having to use secure servers to talk and outsmart security devices.

But we also had another aspect to this assignment. The book we read had mentioned a whole list of other topics, from people to computer programs, that were related to technology. We had to choose one topic from the list to reseazrch and write a blog post on.

And my research topic:

A man named Andrew “Bunnie” Huang.

So far, the most interesting thing about him, unless you already know who he is, is his strange nickname. His nickname is short for vorpalbunnie, which is the name of a creature in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that he used as a BBS screen name. Here is a video of a presentation he did about himself, if you’re interested in knowing more about him:

In the book Little Brother, his place in it was writing the afterword, where he talks about being a hacker, and how Little Brother shows what it is like as a hacker.

Andrew Huang is an American researcher and hacker, and has a Ph.D in electrical engineering from MIT. He is most well known for when he hacked into Xbox. As he said in Little Brother’s afterword, “When I hacked the Xbox in 2002 while at MIT, I wasn’t doing it to rebel or to cause harm; I was just following a natural impulse, the same impulse that leads to fixing a broken iPod or exploring the roofs and tunnels at MIT.”

He also explained that hackers are sort of looked down upon, as misfits looking for trouble. “I was lucky.” Huang said, “The fact that I was a graduate student at MIT when I hacked the Xbox legitimized the activity (of hacking) in the eyes of the right people.”  He also was the hardware lead at Chumby, meaning he designed and lead the production of the Chumby devices.

He has many other technological achievements, including designing the worlds first fully integrated photonic-silicon chip that runs at 10 Gbit/s and participating in designing of wireless transceivers for use in Bluetooth networks.

He also is well known for his long history with reverse engineering. He even wrote a book about hacking the Xbox: Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering. This was one of the first published books about reverse engineering. While hacking the xbox, Xbox, the organization, put lots of legal pressure on Andrew not to release any details on the systems he was hacking into. MIT also sent him a letter saying that they were not a part of what he was doing.

But what does all of this have to do with our driving question?

Well, in Little brother, the main character Marcus was a computer hacker as well. He wasn’t doing any hacking to cause legal trouble, only for his own fun and interests. But after the bombing, he was kidnapped, and after the government saw what he was doing with his technology, they falsely accused and held him prisoner as terrorist suspect. This is showing that technology has disrupted our ability to explore, since the government was watching Marcus, and stopped him from going further with what he likes to do. Andrew Huang once said this:

“Without the right to tinker and explore, we risk becoming enslaved by technology; and the more we exercise the right to hack, the harder it will be to take that right away.”

He is saying that we have a lot of great technology at our fingertips nowadays, and people who want to dig through and tinker should be able to, just like a mechanic with a car.

Andrew Huang isn’t the answer to my class’s driving question, but he does explain that some technology is blocking the freedom of individual people that want to explore more in computer programming. He says this in the afterword of Little Brother:

“We win freedom by having the courage and the conviction to live every day freely and to act as a free society, no matter how great the threats are on the horizon.”

When I first started writing this, I didn’t have that many ideas on what to write. But as I got going, I realized how everything I’ve been reading about connects. I actually enjoyed the writing part of this assignment, and reading about Andrew Huang. I also didnt understand parts of the book Little Brother, but I began piecing more and more together as a wrote this. It also helped me understand more about what our driving question is asking. Overall, I learned a lot about computer programming and was thoroughly interested in my topic.

That’s all,

See you

 

The Good and the Bad of Vancouver

Sam

For the first term in PLP 10 Humanities, we have been studying what makes a story, and asking good interview questions. And for most of our projects so far, we have made different types of podcasts. We made 2 during our Camp Capilano trip, one for our WW1 soldier podcasts, one for science, and a few drafts before creating our big Vancouver Podcasts, (mine was about labour rights). But all of that writing, editing, recording, thinking, and hard work were only building us up for what would come next.

Over the course of this first term, we have been working on breaking down the building blocks of good stories, and storytelling. We first read a graphic novel on WW1, and that lead to watching more videos on the War, and eventually to our own video. We teamed up in groups to make videos on why we think the Great War started. If you want to read more, look at my other post about this project. The reason I’m mentioning this project is because it is the beginning of the long road to the final demonstration of our podcasting skills.

After that video, we began working on our first major podcast of the year. We needed to research and explain how the war had influenced the identity of the people involved, and Canada’s identity as well. We had to really focus on what we were saying in the script, because everything we said mattered, since there are no visuals to support what you are telling the listener. Look here for more on the creation of the WWI Podcast I made. This project was a real taste of the amount of detail we need to put into the script, overall feel of the podcast, and finding a good place to record. All of which were vital to the coming hurricane of work we would have to do.

And here it was. The second biggest workload of audio editing we would have to face:

Our Vancouver podcasts. In this project, we would be looking at large topics that take place in our city, like labour Rights, city growth, immigration, and environmentalism, to name a few.

To kick off this project we took a field trip to the local Vancouver Museum, located near Granville island.

There, we learned all about Vancouver’s history, the good and bad. In the days before we arrived, our teachers kept reminding us that we were there to learn, and also choose a topic of the history that interests us. We needed to choose our top three favourite topics, and have a story from the museum for each topic that grabbed our attention. We would be put into groups based on our preferences.

I ended up with Labour Rights, my third choice, with city development and immigration being my top two. My other group members were Ryan, William and Kyle. After visiting the museum, we sort of had an idea of what we would talk about in our podcast, but we definitely needed to research more.

For this podcast, the driving question was: Through the emergence and growth of Vancouver, was everyone treated the same?

And the driving question that my group and I made for our podcast, which fits with the greater driving question:

What labour rights were in place in early Vancouver, and how were Asian immigrants treated differently during this time?

In our podcast, We would talk about how Asian people came across to Vancouver to start a new life, and then they would end up working the more difficult or dangerous jobs. They wouldn’t have much pay at all, and the working conditions would be terrible. For example, while working on the Canadian Pacific Railway, the workers would be working all day, for only a few dollars per day.

In our podcast, we explained what was happening, and how through the growth of Vancouver labour rights were put into place. We also got to interview a youth worker from Worksafe BC when she came to our class to talk to us about our worker rights. The program was called Alive After 5:00 If you want to find out more.

After we wrote our our script, got it critiqued by both our peers and teacher, we moved on to recording our first draft. Our group went to Seycove’s recording booth, which is equipped with a Mac computer in a small editing room, and then through a small window behind the computer, you can see the even smaller recording room which is where we set up our mic to record.

We each took turns sitting in the mostly-soundproof recording booth, and read through all the parts of the script we wanted to say. This part didn’t take us long, and we moved onto the editing stage. We each took a small portion to edit, and then sent it to Ryan to put together and hand in. In this stage, we didn’t have our interview, but a few days later we were able to interview Faye, the Worksafe BC worker. We took her into the recording booth, and I asked her the questions we prepared. We asked her about what she knew about the labour rights in early Vancouver, and when the labour rights were implemented. She gave us some really good information, and it helped our podcast a lot.

We then editied in the interview, and made a few other changes. One other thing we had to do for the whole podcast, (9 minutes), was make our own music in an app called garage band. We each made a short 2 minute song, and then we had enough music, since it sounds nice when you change the music from one song to another at specific times.

Well, here it is, the big Labour Rights in Vancouver Podcast we spent so long on:

This took us a long time to make, and I think I can speak for my whole group when I say we learned a lot. We learned about what went on during the construction of the CPR, the growth of Vancouver as a city, and we learned a lot about the amount of work it takes to make a big podcast like this. We learned that research is very important, we had a lot to look up, and we wouldn’t have been able to write the script based on the knowledge we already possessed, obviously.

Although, it really didn’t take us that long to find all the facts and information we needed, it took us a long time to put it into the right order and wording to really make a good story. We needed it to be interesting, and for a full 9 minutes. This is where I felt that we slowed to a crawl in the creative process. We were really stuck on how to write it. Then, one day, I sat down during a spare block and really took a look at what we had, and saw that we had a strong podcast, but it needed some work. And so I reorganized, added, took away and edited my way through the some 1,700 words we had. And, after draft one, we realized we did a good job, and just needed our interview.

And this is where I think we got lucky… super lucky.

A few days before the final one was due, our future interviewee waltzed right into our class and talked to us about our worker rights as a teenager. During the talk, I had the idea that after this class we should interview her. And, after class she agreed to do so at lunch. We ended up with a great interview, and we all relaxed a little bit.

Our podcast was complete.

 

Overall, I thought this was a great project to do, since it really showed us the real amount of work it takes to make an almost-professional podcast. My group did a good job in the overall workload, although we definitely procrastinated a lot…

We didn’t exactly start the next step until a few days before the due date, and we wouldn’t have gotten an interview if it wasn’t for the random guest speaker for our planning 10 class. But, I did enjoy working with this group, Will, Ryan and Kyle, we had good times, and more stressful times. If I could do one thing differently, I think I’d get my group and I to work harder in the editing stage, as I feel that wasn’t our strongest point. Some of the audio clips are really fuzzy, and the interview could’ve been integrated in a better way. All in all, I feel we did a great job, and I’m finding myself sort of looking forward to the next podcast we will have to tackle in the new year.

 

If you noticed, I was hinting at another big project that we had to tackle, right after we finished this one. Look for my next post describing this experience.

 

That’s all,
See you

Naming Waterfront Station

Sam

As a short mini project in PLP 10 Humanities we were to research and make a maximum 2 minute video on one location in Vancouver that has been around for a while, or made a difference in Vancouver’s history. We were doing this project since our whole Humanities unit right now is about the history and growth of Vancouver in all its different areas. And to start off the project, this was the list that Ms. Maxwell gave us to choose from:

Keefer Street
Joe Fortes (restaurant / library)
Seymour Mountain – Simon, Reid, Spencer, Calum
Stanley Park – Isobel, Ruby, Hannah
Gastown -Claire, Sydney
Caufield
Lions Gate Bridge – Will, Ryan
British Properties
Robson Street
Kitsilano – Kate, Adam, Aiden
Lonsdale Ave / Quay – Lucas, Micheal, Alex
Waterfront – Kyle, Sam, Robbie
Cambie Street
Nootka Sound
SFU / Fraser River
Blood Alley – Willa, Ethan, Sofia

We were in either a group of two, three or four, and my partners were Kyle and Robbie. And since all the locations we wanted to do were taken, we asked if we could do Waterfront Station, and we got a go-ahead.

So me, Kyle and Robbie planned to go across the sea bus to get some clips of waterfront station for our video. We decided on getting a few time lapses of going across the seabus and pulling into waterfront station, a few timelapses of all the people going through, some clips of the trains, the buses and also just of the building. So the next day after school, we headed out to the seabus.

By the time we were getting in the seabus, it was close to 4:05 pm, and the sun sets at around 4:37 pm, so we had to get our clips fast. We timelapsed the seabus ride over, and the sun was just behind the skyline of downtown Vancouver, making for an amazing shot.

This was was the most enjoyable part of the project for me. I really liked this shot of the ocean, the setting sun, and the skyscrapers of Vancouver looming over us as we pull in closer and closer.

Then, once we got in we ran over the bridge across the train tracks, through the station, and went outside to get our shots of the exterior of the building before the sun set. We looked around at the busy street and Kyle had a great idea of going to the top of a parkade to get a great  shot of the building.

We then also filmed the back of the building, and then got the rest of our shots inside. Once we finished we headed back home.

After we researched Waterfront station, we put our research into a script that we would add to our video as a voice over. I actually learned a lot from this research, as I didn’t know that Waterfront station was built so long ago, and that it’s apparently haunted!

Then, the next step was to do the editing. We used the app iMovie to put all the photos, video and music all together into one product. I really like iMovie for this exact reason. You can even record the voiceovers into the video wherever you want them, which makes it super easy to create this type of video. In the end, our video was done a few days before it was due, and after critique from our teacher and the class, we just had to balance or re-record some audio to finish it.

I really enjoyed this project because it was looking at something in our home town, the Waterfront station. And since I’d been through it many times, I was interested in it’s history and I was determined to make an engaging video on it. I think that being able to go to the location is really helpful because it helps me understand what I want to show in our video.

Overall, my group worked together well, even though Kyle went on vacation halfway through, and we produced a great video together.

That’s all,

See you

World War One In A Podcast

Sam

As you probably know based on recent posts by any grade 10 PLPer, we have been learning all about World War One in humanities class. The whole unit this year is about identity, and we are relating the First World War back to Canada’s identity. That’s what this post is about. Our big project for the WWI unit is a 5-6 minute podcast about the impact of WWI on Canada. But before we started the podcast, we did lots of smaller assignments first.

One of the first things we did was read a graphic novel that was online, called Shattered Ground. It was a story following a soldier that went to WWI and fought for Canada. I liked this story because it was extremely detailed, and very interesting to see this one guy fight through multiple well known battles. The drawing were really well done, and really portrayed what it was really like. The graphic novel also featured real photos and video from the War. Overall, It really gives you insight on what is what like to be a soldier in WWI.

Next, we read a section of a textbook that explained what was happening in Canada while the war was being fought. We then answered a true/false page about what we just read:

 

Then we watched a very interesting video about Vimy Ridge, a battle Canada is very famous for, and we made notes about this video as we watched.

I really liked the video, because Vimy Ridge was a very famous battle, and Canadian soldiers fought with true grit to gain a victory.

After learning all this new information, our next step was to write our podcast script. This was the big project of the unit, and we’d had it in the back of our minds while we did all those assignments above.

The aim of this podcast is to explain how the war affected Canada, but also have another aspect to it. We went to this Canadian Soldier War Memorial website, and chose a soldier that we thought could support our story. This soldier fought and died in World War One. The soldier I chose was named Henry Jackson. I chose him because the website gave me the information I needed and there was a lot of photos and letters of him and his life.

The next step: to write my script.

I ended up writing 1,300 words, which is a little long. My theme for the podcast was a WWI radio show podcast. My soldier was integrated as if I’m interviewing him, but he’s not there. I talked about the war and how Canada participated. Before handing in our script to our teacher, we first did some peer critique. Me and Simon switched iPads, where I read his, and he read mine. Here’s the feedback he gave to me about mine:

After this, I handed in my first draft of my script to my teacher and got some great feedback from her. Here’s the notes she wrote on my script:

After this feedback we had to record our draft 1 of the actual podcast. Then, on the Monday, we traded iPads with the person next to us, listened to each other’s podcasts and then gave feedback. Here’s my first podcast:

And here’s the feedback I got from Izzy:

The next step was to take that feedback, and change our script/re-record based on it. But before we did that, we focused on making a good hook for our podcasts. We did that by listening to other podcasts that more professional podcasters made, but only listening to their hook/intro. We then made a chart that states the way the podcaster hooked you into each podcast:

After that, we wrote out a script that would only be about the first 30 seconds of our podcast and then recorded it. We added Music and then the next class we were to listen to all of our intros, and get even more feedback. When I plugged my ipad into the classroom speakers and played it, you could barely hear my voice for some reason, so I just got feedback on my music. I then went back and re-recorded it later on, and then put it in the beginning of my podcast. Here it is, just the first 30 seconds:

Then to finish off this project, after talking about and listening to more professional podcasts, we were assigned a WWI Podcast Final Draft. We were to fix anything, add more music, change it based on any critique, and so on. And after adding different music, cutting out some sentences from my original script, and re-recording it all, this was my end product:

Overall, I really enjoyed learning about the First World War, and making a podcast on it. I especially liked researching about a specific WW1 soldier because it made it more personable, and it was interesting learning about their stories.

 

See you