What does James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar reveal about society today? Well, up until this last project, I didn’t even know what Avatar was about. I’m going to assume that you don’t, either.

Basically, Avatar is a movie about this guy. His name is Jake Sully. Jake’s twin brother was a scientist, but he died, and since they shared DNA, they sent Jake to take over his brother’s job. Jake got sent to Pandora, a far off planet, to transfer his consciousness temporarily to the body of a different species – the Na’Vi, a race of humanoids that are blue and have tails. He gets lost and runs into Neytiri, who is the daughter of the leader of the Na’Vi. Neytiri saves his life and brings him to the clan. It’s decided that he can learn the ways of the Na’Vi. He learns all about the flow of energy and respecting the world around him – which is a completely different worldview than what the humans have. After that, the rest of the humans start fully colonizing the place: destroying their home and all the land around it in an attempt to get to unobtainium, a rare mineral buried under the home of the Na’Vi. In the end, Jake basically switches sides and fights the humans alongside the Na’Vi – but he’s still an easy target, because at the click of a button, his consciousness can be removed from the Na’Vi body and back into his human body, a much weaker form of himself. Anyways, there’s a lot of gritty details but in the end the Na’Vi win and Jake has his consciousness permanently transferred to his Na’Vi body. Oh yeah and he fell in love with Neytiri, but that’s a completely different part of the story that you can see by watching the movie.

The film was full of different themes, and it was really easy to sort of sift through them and get a deeper look into it. For this project specifically, we had to choose a theme we saw and work through it along with others looking at the same themes. The theme I chose was racism, because it’s a relevant issue in society today and it was shown very clearly in the movie. 

Our final product for this project was a documentary showcasing our theme and how it connects Avatar and the real world. We spend about 2 weeks working on this video. We conducted interviews, collected clips from Avatar, and learned about making videos. Here’s my video:

In the video, I touched on the racist terms used in Avatar that can easily connect to the real world. I also talked about micro aggressions and blatant racism, and I found recent stories to look at. I interviewed 2 people of different ages, which helps show what different kinds of people experience.

Something I didn’t talk enough about in my documentary was how the film itself could be racist. While I was researching for my video, I stumbled across an article that mentioned the people are finding it controversial. I didn’t pay much attention to it and moved past to other articles, but it kind of stayed in the back of my mind. What could that mean? If it’s bringing issues like racism into the spotlight, how can it possibly be bad? After the exhibition, the thought sort of started to snowball and now there’s this whole idea that I have.

The first idea that anyone put into my head was about the plot line. This is because they thought that it’s “just another movie where there’s a race that needs help and a white guy swoops in and saves them.” I see where the point can go, but there’s really not much other evidence to back it up, because you don’t see many other similar cases in the film and it could just be dumb luck that Jake is white. After pushing the thought to the side for later, I realized something. I didn’t see many people of colour throughout the entire movie. I saw white people, and the blue Na’Vi people, but looking back, I can remember only noticing one face that was a person of colour, and he was a background character in one of the scenes with all the people in the military. This bring another question into light: was this intentional, or just showing actual racism in the real world? Obviously, because of discrimination, it would be more of a struggle for a person of colour to get to the point that they can have a role in a big movie like Avatar, but to that extreme? Or did James Cameron sit down and say, “hey, maybe we can make racism even more of a central theme in this movie by showing less people of colour.” Because if so, it worked, and it shows that the humans in the movie, despite being 100 years ahead of us, still display a discriminatory nature. 

Looking into the cast of the movie, there are actually many people of colour. But most of the main roles played by people of colour are Na’Vi people in the movie – so they’re covered in effects and CGI so much so that skin colour does not matter to the role at all, and has no impact on the racist theme in the movie. Almost all of the main human roles are white, which makes me think that it was planned by James Cameron. However, I’ll never know unless someone asks him themself.

Anyways, that’s a lot of my thinking on the racism portrayed in the movie. Once we finished our documentaries, we started planning for the exhibition. In order to show how privilege works, and how some people get an easier starting point than others, we had two sides of the room. On the side I was placed in, there was a game where you throw a ping pong ball into a box through the holes. On our side, you were close to the box, and got more of the prize for doing it successfully. On the other side, it was dark, you were farther away, and you got less of the prize even though you had to put more effort in. The other grade 9’s on our side were Silas and Mackenzie. We set up the room to showcase the work of the grade 10’s and 8’s. It was nice because everyone in the room had chosen to dig deeper into the theme of racism.

I believe that the theme that everyone chose really says something about those people, and specifically, their worldviews. I think that because that’s true, everyone in our room worked well together and it was really nice working with a great group of people with similar views and values to mine. It was really interesting to have a look at a movie and be able to apply it to the real world. In some ways, the line between the fictional and real world blurred. Maybe it’s because the fictional world is supposed to be like this world, but in the future. I really hope that it isn’t our future, though. I hope that we can advance our views and how we treat other people so that one day, we don’t have all the crazy technology that’s in the movie but not be able to treat everyone with the proper respect they deserve.

Maybe I’m ranting a bit too much.

Susan

Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today I’m going to be writing about my most recent maker project: Vibrant Videos! Vibrant Videos was a project that we’ve been working on for a while, about, you guessed it, some vibrant videos. We also learned about setting goals.

The essential question to this project was “how can I use my video skills to tell a story?” You’ll be able to figure out how I answered this for myself over the course of this project through the rest of this blog post.

We started out this project by reading a book about setting goals. Within this book we did a few activities about ourselves, our goals, and our dreams.

One of the first main activities we did was a form called “what inspires me?” In it, we answered questions about our likes, dislikes, favourite things, etc. Then, the next day, we learned skill #1 in video making: clips. Clips is an app for video making that we had to use for this. In clips, you can import videos, film videos, import photos, add text and stickers, and so much more. Here is the video that I made about what inspires me, using my clips skills:

I did really well on this because I told a story and included different titles. I also drew a few images to help explain what I was saying, and as an extension, I explained not just the what, but the why, as well. 

Our next moviemaking assignment was a silent film. This silent film had to portray a “goal getters” story – a story about someone reaching a goal. Some people used one from their own life, while others, like my group, used a story that was in the book. The people in my group were Julia, Evangeline, and Owen. Here is our silent film:

I think we did well on this because we were able to tell the story without even speaking! We used clips to make this video as well, and aided the silent film with some music.

After this, we took a quick swerve in a different direction with this project. Because the exhibition for our humanities project (here’s my blog post on the Power of Geography,) we made different videos to be played at the exhibition. I was in the group for the fun video, which basically showed the highlights of our trip. The people in my group were Jackson, Keenan, Jasper, Cameron B, and Julia. Here’s the video:

After the exhibition, we got back on track with the project. The next assignment was actually not a video. Instead, it was a goal ladder, which is a ladder that shows the steps you must take to get to the top (your goal) on each rung. Here’s mine on getting a standing back tuck in gymnastics:

I’ve already completed the first step, and I made sure to time each step so I wouldn’t forget about my goal. I also included some rewards for myself to motivate myself to complete the goal.

Next, we had our very last video of the project: skill #3, planning and shooting. In this skill, we needed to learn how to make a storyboard and follow it. We made this video in a group, and my fellow group members were Silas and Ronan. The video was a tutorial, and the goal was to show one of these three topics: how to set goals, how to be a “goal getter,” and how to stay on track. We chose how to set goals. Here is our video:

After all that, we moved on to our last assignment, AKA this blog post. I’m very proud of my work in this project and I hope my work in maker continues to be this good all the way through to next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.

See you next time,

Susan

Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog. Today I’m going to be talking about Destination Imagination! I had the scientific challenge, which was called Up Close.

My team included Caden, Kadin, Owen, Jackson, and Naomi.

The Up Close challenge required quite a few things, but mainly for there to be a story in which character(s) go into a microworld and discover a mysterious object, and later learning what it is (this is a rough explanation.)

In my team (Bacterial Besties)’s solution, we had 2 scientists fall into the microworld and meet our three bacteria, who’s names were Sal, Mon, and Ella (to be salmonella.) The scientists met the bacteriophage, figured out what it was, and used it to kill the bacteria, before leaving the microworld.

When we started working on ideas, we had pretty much nothing. We had barely any ideas, only that we would have scientists fall into the microworld through a microscope. As we continued to work on it, we began to come up with more ideas, such as the bacteriophage and it having moving legs. Eventually, we had a full plan and began to write the script. Once we had a pretty good script, we started building things, such as the microscope. When we went to Loon Lake, we finalized the script, and when we got back, we built the backdrop. As we put together our costumes and started rehearsing with our backdrop, it fell apart, so we rebuilt it, and our entire presentation was already looking much better than before. Eventually, we memorized lines and went to St. George’s to present our solution.

I think our presentation went okay, though I think we could’ve improved by delivering our lines more smoothly. It seemed a bit too awkward, and we weren’t in sync. We also would’ve done better if we started building the bacteriophage costume earlier on. Because we built it so last minute, it was almost falling apart while we were presenting, and it wasn’t fully functional. I think if we had also put more effort into it, we definitely would’ve done better.

One thing I think we did really well was our backdrop. When it broke the first time, we were sad, but we went back at it with a proper plan, and it turned out so much better. We also did pretty good with the backdrop transition while presenting, doing it smoothly and efficiently without and bumps of hitches. I also think we did pretty well on our instant challenge.

There was also a photo we had to take of our car decorated by our team! This was ours:

The big sign that says “bacterial besties” was our team sign.

And finally, here’s a video of our presentation:

Thank you for reading my blog post. DI really pushed me out of my comfort zone, but it was totally worth it because of all the ways I grew along the way.

Introduction

Hello there and welcome back to another blog post. In this post I will be introducing you to my short (upcoming) series of blog posts about writing and poetry. Now you might be wondering, “Why did you choose two topics?” Well, I might answer, they really aren’t different at all. I mean, other than the fact that (SOME FORMS OF) poetry has stricter rules, the line between the two is quite blurry. Either way, I’m going to be talking about both, and in this post, why it matters to me.

Wondering what exactly is the difference between the two? Here’s a link to the definition of Poetry, Writing, and here’s an article about the difference.

How I Use Writing and Poetry In My Daily Life

Now, you might ask me, “Why are writing and poetry even relevant to me?” or “How could I use it in the real world?” Well, here are three examples of how you could involve these in your life, and how I do:

1. Venting or talking about something you’re passionate about. Many people sometimes need to speak but have no one to say specific things to, and might need to have an output for it. For me, that’s poetry, and it could be greatly helpful to others, too.
2. Reflection. Often when I have a weird or interesting dream, I write about it and sometimes even add on to it, creating stories. It helps me reflect on my dreams and get me thinking.
3. School or work. If you’re good at writing, it can help you do better in almost anything, even if it’s something almost completely unrelated to writing. If you’re better with words, it’s easier to make a statement or get a point across.

Why It’s Important To Me and Others

Now, I told you how you could use it in your life, but I still haven’t told you why it’s important. Well, many people find joy in reading what people have written. It’s like an escape from the current world, and allows you to see things from a different perspective. It also can help people express emotions or get their minds working. In conclusion, writing and poetry are important because they can help people think about different things, think from a new perspective or express emotions.

Hi, and welcome back to my blog. So you know my last post? Did you think I was done with all that creative communication? Well, you were wrong! That was the drawing aspect. In this post, I will talk about the part 2 of the project: Herzog! In this project, I worked individually to tell stories via pictures that I created. As a reminder, the purpose of this project was to learn how to communicate and tell a story with images.

In this post I will include three sections. The first one is this section: the outline. In this section, I will basically be explaining the project and tell you about this blog post. The second section will be a demonstration of my learning. I will include a slideshow of all of the pictures I made, and tell you what I learned for each of them. Lastly, I will include the some of my favourite photos I made during this project, and finally reflect on the success criteria.

Success Criteria

I can communicate clearly and express myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to my goals. This mainly includes using interesting images to understand the different skills needed for making great photos that tell a story. I think I did well with this, as you can see with the two slideshows of my photos and this blog post in general. You can tell what I’m trying to say with each of the photos in the slide show.

And that’s it! Thank you for visiting my blog!

This “project” technically wasn’t a project. There was no driving question and how I would describe it would be “a series of activities to learn about art.” For the section that I just completed, I was in Carr, the group all about drawing and art. In this blog post, I will keep it short and simple. We did many activities to learn about drawing and art, using the app “Sketches Pro.” The main purpose of these activities was to learn how to communicate through art. In each slide of the following slideshow, I have included a caption telling you what I learned during each activity.

How do I build and strengthen the PLP learning team? Good question. This question is actually the driving question for the project we just completed, which was called Becoming a PLP Learner. This project was all about me and how I work in a team. We did three milestones, which were the team contract, the big life journal, and the user manual. In this post, I will be talking about and reflecting on the things I did.

Here’s an overview of what I will talk about, in order. I will start by talking about one of the very first things we did, which was the big life journal. Then, I will talk about my user manual. The penultimate item I will reflect on will be my teamwork contract, and the final thing I will talk about is my Keynote presentation.

This is my big life journal. The big life journal was mainly about who I am. Of course, since it’s a 5 chapter workbook, I can’t show you everything, so I’ll show you my 3 best works, which I showed in my Keynote presentation. This time, you are able to see the original and the presented version, though. The three works I’m showcasing are my dream board, my interest brain, and my life playlist. These are important to me because they represent who I am and what I like to do.

This is my user manual. The purpose of the user manual was to tell others who I am, so that they can understand me and know more about me. I’m including most of it here for you to see. I personally enjoyed this milestone a lot, because I love to write. The user manual showcases who I am because it includes my hobbies and interests and how they affect my everyday life.

This is my teamwork contract. The purpose of this is to show what we could do better at, and what the solution will be, and to show our strengths in working in a team. As you can see, I colour coded it. Words in purple are strengths, words in red are weaknesses, and words in yellow are neutral. I enjoyed creating my teamwork contract, and I feel that it accurately reflects how I work in a team.

This is my Keynote presentation. On Wednesday, October 20th, I presented it to the PLP 8 Parents in an exhibition. Since you’re reading this, you probably either couldn’t make it to the exhibition, or you’re looking back on this. So I recorded a video with my presentation. If you turn up your volume, you’ll be able to hear me guide you through the presentation. I thoroughly enjoyed this milestone for two main reasons. The first is that I was able to showcase my skills with the iPad and design my slides in my preferred way, and the second reason is that I like presenting.

So, now I’m going to try to answer the driving question. How do I build and strengthen the PLP learning team? Well, firstly, I’m very good with technology. I’ve always liked technology and using it in general. I’m also able to work well in a team. In conclusion, I build and strengthen the PLP Learning team with my skills in technology and teamwork.