This post is an extension of my other WWI post because we had to make one more video. This video was very fun to make.
Anyways, after our teacher saw our first blog posts and videos she decided to extend the dude date for three more days, and we were to make one more video with a group no larger than three. I was with Robbie for the planning stage, and then the next day Calum joined our group because he was sick the day before.
To start it off we came up with a thesis about why we think the war started. We came up with this:
“World War One began because of the numerous shifting and unstable alliances of the countries that participated in WWI. The alliances were established before the war and soon were untrusted making all the countries itching to fight.”
Then we built a video around that. But first we needed some information that supported our thesis, and so we found a timeline of the alliances formed prior to WWI and worked out what we would say from there. We had a few main ideas to talk about, which were:
– The fact that there were many alliances made
There were 18 million deaths involved in the war
There were alliances before the war started, and they weren’t super stable
This is what began the war
Those points were just some basic ideas that we came up with to get us going, and have a bit of structure in our video production.
We then started filming, and we chose different spots to film throughout Robbie’s yard to keep the viewer engaged. We spoke in chronological order about what happened, and shot short clips where me and Robbie each spoke a sentence about the topic. This part was serious, and we spoke right down to the point. Then, to loosen up the seriousness, we decided to film a “Robbie Recap” which was Robbie sitting on a stool playing ukulele while “singing” a summary of what we just said.
Me and Robbie were the speakers, and Calum was behind the camera. After this interesting musical solo we filmed our outro and then went inside to do some editing…
Which took 2.5 hours…
This was because we had to make a short intro, make our own music with the app GarageBand, and make other images to go with our information, and be relevant to our thesis.
Our idea was: Have the intro, then our thesis, some information, Robbie Recap, more information, summary, and the outro.
And so we did. We put all the clips in order, added the music and images me made, and then looked it over. We lowered the volume of the background music, and had ourselves a nice video. And so, here it is:
The next day, all, our videos were shown in front of the class, and the one thing I realize now we should have done more of was humour/entertainment. We should’ve made ours more funny, but still historically correct and respectful. The one funny part (Robbie’s Recap) wasn’t enough. Also I think we should’ve filmed other things other than just me and Robbie talking. I think those things overall would have made our video better.
But, I really enjoyed this project and learned a lot about the war doing it so, check it off the list.
To begin this school year, our teachers organized a one night getaway for us PLP 10 students, to get us working hard as a team right away in the year. We went to a small camp only a 20 minute drive away called Camp Capilano, and it was a small building with a dining room, common area with couches, and two large rooms with bunks, one for the guys and one for the girls. And there was a pool, which was very important. We worked on a three projects while we were there.
Our first project wasn’t filmed at Camp Capilano, we stopped at an outdoor park by a dam near the camp to work. It was an outdoor area with multiple viable locations to film. This project was inspired by Master Chef, Amazing Race or Big Brother and their intros that introduce all the contestants. We watched those intros and looked to see the different personalities of the different people earlier that day. Then we made our own intro that had to introduce different people, but we weren’t allowed to use dialogue. We were in groups though, and we had to act out 10 different characters that had distinct personalities. We only had one hour to make the entire video, so once the starting gun fired, my group of five got right down to work.
We first thought of the different personalities we wanted to portray, and then planned how we would show that in a short clip without talking. It was difficult because we really needed to think on how the viewer will be able to compare each character to the next, and see how they’re different. Anyways, our theme would be a wilderness survival show, and we titled it “The Wilderness Games.” Our characters would be participating in this event. Anyways, what we came up with is this:
After watching it, with only 10 minutes left in our allotted time, we realized we should’ve:
• Made our clips a bit longer for each person
• Really broken down what we wanted to portray and focus on that one small thing better
• Transitioned between characters better
But, we were happy with what we got, and it was a good start.
That afternoon, after a great lunch, we then were assigned another project. This one was assigned when we had arrived at Camp Capilano. The main idea: the same thing we just did with the TV show intros except only audio. No visuals. Only us recording our voice. We got into our same groups and got planning.
Since there we couldn’t film and show personalities physically, we needed to think very carefully about what we put in the script. We got to work planning out the 10 different characters which were mostly the same as before, but we changed a few people that were easier to portray through voice. Our main idea for this task was still the Wilderness Games, but now you were hearing a reporter ask all the contestants what they think their biggest strength will be in the Games. First we wrote a script, and as we went through it, we made the necessary changes. Then we were ready to record. We went through and each did two different people, and then once we recorded all of it in iMovie, we did a little bit of editing like cutting the clips, or reorganizing the order of them. Then we got our final product:
That one was fun to make, yet required careful planning and thinking to pull it off right. Then we had free time. We swam in the pool for an hour or so, and it was lots of fun. It wasn’t super deep and it didn’t have a diving board, but we had chicken fights and breath holding contests and stuff like that which made it fun.
Then there was dinner, and then we watched the projects we already did. They were really fun to watch/listen to. Everyone tackled the assignment differently, and it gave everyone ideas on how they could’ve done it a little differently, or ideas for next time.
Then the final project was given to us. We had to find different groups, and so I ended up with Simon and Spencer. We then had to make a 4:00 podcast (audio only story) that was on the topic of identity. We needed a story that talked about our identity and how it affected or portrayed our identity. Oh boy.
By the way, this project was introduced to us at around 7:00 pm that night, and it was due at 10:00am the next morning…
So we had to get cracking
Spencer Simon and I thought for a while and were having trouble coming up with something. Our only idea was this one time we were maintaining an area of Dirt Jumps for mountain bikes, and one time when we did a lot of work in particular, I ended up crashing face first into a log on the ground really hard. Then the next time we went there, we noticed that there were other bikers there, and we were happy.
We thought this story was a good idea because it shows that we like mountain biking, and we will build trails in our community to help it, just for fun and we keep going even when we crash. We pitched this idea to our three teachers, Mr. Hughes, Miss Willemse and Miss Maxwell. They thought our story was great, but to leave out the part where I crashed, or at least don’t make it the main part of our story. This is because the smaller of the event we chose to talk about the better, because we could really break it down. We agreed and got to work. This was between 8:30-9:00. We began our script writing, which was hard when your brain is fried and it’s getting late…
But then we began second guessing our decision on our story, which really, really, slowed us down to the point where we stopped and asked the teachers which idea to go through with because at that point we’d thought of two more. They listened to our new ones and told us to fully commit to our first one, which they thought was the best. And so we did. This was definitely past 10:00, probably later.
We wanted to just skip the script writing process, but we didn’t know what we were saying it so it wasn’t as strong as if we did have a script. So then we began slowly began wiring bit by bit on the script. This almost drove us insane. It was probably 11:45 or later, and we’d barely got anything done. All three of us were cranky and tired, and kept getting off track. This went on till about 1:00-1:30am when the teachers told us we all need to stop and go to sleep. Relieved, we dragged ourselves off the couches and went to sleep. We’d managed to get most of the script done, so when we woke up at 7:00 the next morning, we finished our recordings, ran through it, and were happy. Then the fun part. Listening to everyone else’s. I liked hearing all the different stories and sometimes funny, sometimes serious interviews in each podcast. One podcast was actually all about Kyle’s hair…
Anyways, here it is:
This project is really fun, and taught us a lot without us even realizing it. We learned about personalities, how to analyze them, portray them through visuals and audio, telling a good and interesting story, and lots more I haven’t thought of. Overall it was an awesome trip where we all got to know one another better, and had lots of fun.
The first big unit this school year for humanities is talking about WWI. Right now we are talking about our opinion on what, how or who started the Great War.
We watched a few videos on the main events prior to the actual war, and took notes on them. Then, from those notes we needed to create some kind of visual, which was expected to look like a mindmapof some sort. And this is what I came up with:
The next thing we had to to was get into groups of four and each read a chapter of a small book that talks about a few aspects of how the war might have started, and supporting points. Since we read one chapter each to save time in the class, we took notes and shared with each other what we found out in our chapter. The next part was forming a thesis in our own words on how we think the war began. The thesis I came up with is this:
“The Great War began because of unstable and shifting alliances, which made all the countries uneasy and itching to battle it out.”
My three main points to support this statement are:
1. It never would have happened in the first place if everyone was happy with their place in Europe physically and politically
2. Russia sending troops and money to Serbia really made Austria nervous, setting off an attack
3. All the countries were on the verge of war and were scared to lose their rank and respect from other countries, which pushed them over the edge.
On thing we learned in this unit so far is that there is no specific reason the Great War started, there are so many different opinions on this.
We had had to do one final thing to support our thesis, and that was make a type of visual. My visual was made in the app Explain Everything, and I cropped and cut out the backgrounds of my images with the app Photoshop Mix. During my research on this topic, I found this cartoon of the beginning of the War, and I thought it was really interesting.
I then had an idea which gave me this final project I was going to turn that cartoon into sort of a comic strip movie. I was going to bring it to life in my own way. Click below to see the video:
As you can tell from the title, this is the last project and blog post about my schoolwork in grade 9! I know, it’s crazy. The third term of this year flew by for me, probably because of all the work I had to do. So, this time I’ll be talking about the final project of our History Of Canada unit we have been studying for the past month and a bit. This project is meant to get us to reflect on all we learned, and then choose the event in Canada’s history that we think is the most important. And for me, I chose the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.
This was just one of the many events we studied that took place in our great country’s history. But I chose it because I think that the railway sort of “sewing Canada together” in a way. The eastern provinces, British Colombia and Manitoba wouldn’t have joined Canada’s confederation if it wasn’t for the governments promise to build a transcontinental railway that spans Canada. It was the link between the east and the west. But anyways, I’ll show you the project part of the assignment:This is a keynote presentation I made to give some history about this event and then explain to the viewer why I think that the CPR is the most important event. The process of creation was pretty short compared to other projects I’ve done, mostly just research and finding the right pictures.
This project was good because it got all of us PLP students to look back at what we learned and really break down that information so that a viewer without knowledge of what we learned could understand. Overall, this project was fun and a good last assignment.
Now I will be showing you some other work we did in our Canadian history unit:
This was a poster we did a few weeks ago, and the main idea was to create a poster targeting a certain audience that encourages them to come work on the CPR. As you probably can guess, we did this in the railway part of the unit. Anyways, here it is:
Another mini-project we did was to make a character card of a typical miner from the Cariboo Gold Rush era. We did this assignment while studying the gold rush, and it was pretty fun to make up a person:
Another piece of work we did was to write a short speech about whether BC should join Canada’s confederation, not join it, or join America. We were split into three different groups, and each group got one of the three options above. My speech had to encourage British Colombians to not join Canada’s confederation. So without further ado, here it is:
And that’s all for our Canada’s history unit, it was an interesting unit overall.
Hello,
In this post I’m going to be talking about one massive project, which has many different parts and aspects to it. The project is our Frankenstuffie videos and stories. This project ties into our math, geography, textiles and ecology units. It’s a big project. So here it all is, explained:
In math class we made the villains of our soon-coming videos, called Math Monsters. We made them in math because after we built them, we needed to find the volume and surface area of their bodies. Here is a picture of mine:
Next, we read the award winning book The Martian by Andy Weir in Humanities because we were looking at the question: “Who is in control, the environment or humans?” This is the main question of the unit. While reading the book, every quarter of the way through, we filled out a section response sheet with questions. Here is an example of one of mine:
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In our other humanities class, we learned about geography. We learned about maps and the differences between different areas of the world, like climate, weather, and land shape. Then we all chose a section of Canada for our video setting. Mine was the north Innuition Mountains. It’s in Northern Canada, and is part of the arctic. After we knew our setting, we needed to pick an animal that lived there. I chose the arctic fox. Then after a bit of research we made a small storyboard for an epistolary story we would write on this. Then we started writing. An epistolary story is where the characters tell the story in a log book or diary type format. This is exactly like the way the Martian was written.
I’d better explain how our stories were supposed to be written:
Our Frankenstuffie, called that because it would be an animal that adapts to its surroundings in a crazy way, needs to be dropped into a new environment where it starts a new life. The environment needs to be explained, the life in it, the setting, and the way it works. Then our math monsters need to come into the story and cause a disturbance in the environment the Frankenstuffie is living in. The Frankenstuffie needs to adapt to the change or problem is some way that will boost its survival chances in the story. Then the Frankenstuffie needs to battle the monster, and after everything we needed to explain how the environment is restored, and or changed in a good or bad way.
The whole story needs to be 8 episodes long, and each episode 200-500 words.
So, without further ado here is my epistolary story:
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I really enjoyed the writing of those stories, I didn’t realize how much I liked writing. I loved being able to make my own story, using my imagination and writing skills to create a fun, entertaining story.
After that, the textiles part comes into play. We all got a number of stuffed animals to create our Frankenstuffies with. I got myself a fox from home, and a seal from the dollar store. Here are the originals:
The next thing we needed to do was to make our animals with their adaptations by sewing pieces of one animal onto another. So, I cut off the tail and front fins of my seal, and sewed them onto the fox. This was so that the fox could swim and breathe under water just like in my epistolary story. Here’s a clip of me and my amazing sewing skills:
https://youtu.be/uT_-7PIty28
And here is a picture of the end product:
The seal flippers are attached to the front paws of the fox, and the seal tail right below the fox tail. Well, now that that is done, I needed to move onto the next part.
Now the next part to the story will be to make our videos. So, we drew out a storyboard before we started filming to get prepared and our ideas down. This is mine:
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It’s a very rough sketch and our videos don’t have to follow it exactly. The main point to this was just to have a general idea in mind so we don’t waste time in the filming process. Now, the video didn’t have to be our whole epistolary story thankfully, we could choose any point of the story to use, as long as it makes sense to a new viewer that didn’t read the story. I chose to start after fox adapts into a fox/seal hybrid, and just before the robot comes. Then I continue to the end of the story, but not as much detail as the written story. So basically the last third of the story. I mainly used the app Explain Everything, because it was the easiest way to make the video, since I couldn’t go out to the arctic to film live, I had to animate my video. I used the app Photoshop Mix to edit my photos and take away the unnecessary backgrounds of my animal images. It’s a great photoshop app, very easy to use. Those were the two main apps I used, but I also used the Internet for copyright free images for backgrounds and other stuff. So after all the other projects vital to this video, here is my Frankenstuffie Video:
I spent a lot of time on this video, most to make it a good video, and some just because it actually does take a lot of time. After probably 4.5 hours of just the video making process, I have that video to show for it. And I am proud of it. It shows the story of my animal, explains its adaptations, introduces the monster, shows the battle, and how the environment is restored all in just under 4 minutes.
This whole entire “unit” I should call it since it’s so big, has taught me lots, directly, like studying for ecology tests for science, and indirectly, like having to incorporate ecological and environmental information into my epistolary story and video. Overall, I enjoyed the build up to one big finale where all we have learned is showcased in a video we created ourselves.
In this post I will be talking about a big project we have been working on. This assignment was given to us in February when our PLP 9 class went to Florida for 10 days. This is the Making Fantasy Real Video. How it all started was we first got to choose a ride in Disney world that we would research and in a 5 minute video explain how this ride draws us in to the the imaginary world of that ride. The ride that was chosen by each person, had to be ridden by that person because the class would be going to Disney world. My ride choice was the Indiana Jones Adventure ride in Disneyland California.
Me and four other students wouldn’t be making the trip to Florida because of various reasons, so we got to choose rides anywhere, since we didn’t have to ride them. So when the majority of the class went to Florida, we stayed at school and worked on this project and our Destination Imagination projects. Away they went, and here we stayed.
So, the only thing to do to start, I started researching my ride. Once I had a good amount of research I put together a storyboard for my video. Here it is below:
It wasn’t set in stone, we could change if we needed, and I did stick to most of that plan. The next thing I did was to start filming and putting my clips together. Since I couldn’t ride my ride I needed to borrow some clips, but I worked with what I had. Once I got it all together I had my first draft, which is below:
In this video I had a lot of long clips where it was just me talking, so I saw how it got boring fast. I needed to change that, and make it more exciting. At this stage we did some peer critique, which is where another classmate gives feedback on our work. Here is what Claire said about my video in a critique sheet:
So after this feedback, I realized I needed to talk about the history of my ride, and why it was so popular. I got to work shortening the boring clips and filming about the history. After that it produced a second draft:
In this video I still needed to shorten the shots of me, and the shots of the ride because I needed to keep it tight to the points in order to keep the viewers interest. So after all of this it was time to do my third draft which looks like this:
This video has all the edits I’ve been asked to change, and so I was happy with this one, but of course we needed to do one last one for it to be ready to show the world, as our teacher says. The one last thing I was asked to do is to balance the audio, because at some points it’s quiet and at some points it’s louder. So I did that and here is my last draft (it’s the exact same video as the last one but with balanced audio):
And after all that I was finally approved to be ready. And here I am now, showing it to the world. This project was very fun to do, since we get to make a video, but I do wish I was able to go to Florida and film for my video myself.
Hello, today I’m going to tell you about a leadership assignment we started a while back in PLP. We were talking about what it actually means to be a leader and what important qualities they have. Then we started an assignment called “Who’s at My Table.” We needed to think of 5 people that were leaders to us individually and write a paragraph about each person and why they are a leader to us. Then we needed to design a diagram that had all of them in it showing them all together with us. My people are: My Parents, my Grandad, Jackie Robinson, Brandon Semenuk, and Connor McDavid.
My first draft of my diagram looked like this:
I definitely needed to change this, I didn’t love the colours and it wasn’t very appealing to look at. So, I started working on my paragraphs and my second draft of my diagram.
Below are my paragraphs explaining why they are leaders to me:
My Parents:
My parents are my mentors because they live with me everyday and are like my life trainers. They both set examples for me to follow, whether it’s intentional or not. They are important to me because they guide me, they show me what’s right and what’s wrong, and they set good examples for me and my sisters. They are my map for life. I learn so much from them, they help me through school and all my life problems. I wouldn’t be successful if they haven’t been there to guide me. If I get into trouble, they don’t get me out of it, they show me how to deal with it on my own respectfully. I learn what’s good and what’s not, and how to act the best in every situation. They are some of the best people I know, and that’s very inspiring to me. I aim to go higher than the bar they’ve set, and the only way I’ll be able to do that is with them as my parents.
My Grandad:
My Grandad would definitely be at my table, because he is so kind, caring and wise. I don’t get to see him much, but when I do, I love being with him. To me, he is full of life advice, and some of it I don’t even understand yet. He’s been preparing me for the real world and how to be the best person I can be. He is inspiring because he is so hard working, he is so smart, and he is the best people person I know. He inspires me because he works at the local Superstore, and sometimes for some long shifts. On his phone he has a step tracker that has a goal of 10,000 steps per day. And he hasn’t missed 10,000 steps a day since July 2015! My Grandad always knows what to do, and he is so caring for his 11 grandkids, me being one. He will talk to anyone, and is very good at asking people about themselves, to make them feel special. I want to follow in his footsteps and be just like him.
Jackie Robinson:
Jackie Robinson is on my table because of his story and what he accomplished. He inspires me to keep doing what I believe in, no matter what others think. In this day and age, we are obsessed at what others think of us. But Jackie Robinson wanted to play baseball, and even the whole world thought he was useless or bad, he kept going and won so many awards and there is a day named after him. He also inspires me because of his sports career. He makes me want to strive for the better in my sports, and do what it takes to become better as an individual, and make my team better. His determination also inspires me, because he had to be determined to play in the MLB, and he wouldn’t have made it if he just gave up, which he easily could have multiple times. Overall, he pushes me to not only be a better athlete, but also a more determined one.
Brandon Semenuk:
Brandon Semenuk is a professional mountain biker for Trek. He is on my table because of his incredible career as a biker, and how he became so good at biking. He inspires me because he can take his skills from downhill biking, and transfer them to BMX right away and still shine. He has won many championships in downhill biking, like Red Bull Rampage and also in slope style biking. This inspires me to become better as a biker, even if it’s only in one type of biking. The way he believes he still can improve even at a professional level is amazing to me. He is always doing crazy out of this world tricks and those seem impossible to me. Yet, he does them all with ease. His determination and skill are the biggest reasons why he’s on my table of leaders.
Connor McDavid:
Connor McDavid is my favourite hockey player. Not only because he’s on my favourite team, the Edmonton Oilers, but because of how hard he works. First off, every game he works super hard, but he would have had to work ten times that hard to make it to where he is today. Before he was picked to play for the Oilers, the Oilers were really bad. But now, for the first time in a while, the Oilers have a very good chance of getting into the playoffs. He is inspirational to me because of the difference he’s made in the NHL and on Edmonton’s team. It makes me want to make a bigger impact on my team I play on. He also has so much skill and speed in his game, and that’s very fun to watch. That pushes me to be better and faster. Overall, how much he has made an impact on those around him, and his incredible skill is what make him a leader at my table.
This is the final copy of my diagram showcasing my Leaders:
All of these people I look up to, whether it’s about sports or life. They all help shape who I am today.
Before spring break some people from an organization called Here’s My Canada came into our class and told us about a contest they are having. If you want to compete, you need to create a 30 second video on what Canada means to you, and it can be anything you want. While the people from Heres my Canada were here, we needed to go in front of a camera they set up and say a first draft of what our video would look like. So, I told a story of the 2010 Olympics when Canada was playing USA in the Men’s hockey finals and Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal in overtime. I told them I remember going crazy in happiness that my team had won a big game.
After this, we needed to create our own videos with our own clips as long as we took our own videos or photos. I used the idea I had in the first video we submitted to the Here’s My Canada people, the hockey finals. This draft was hard to put together that looks good because I had to use photos from a copyright free site, or me playing hockey and I didn’t have any actual video. My first draft of this looked something like this:
I didn’t love this draft, since I didn’t have any actually video of the hockey game so I didn’t feel it was very strong. I decided to change ideas because of the lack in videos I had for the hockey idea. Then, I switched to an idea I had lots of video on: GoPro video of me adventuring around Vancouver. I planned to tell about what I love to do around Vancouver. I wanted to show me skiing, playing hockey and mountain biking. I chose this because I really love the three things I do in my video. The next and final draft looked like this:
I really liked this project because it was something that I was good at: making videos on activities I love doing.
