Writing: Why It’s Not As Bad As You Think

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A lot of people dislike writing and/or poetry, so for this post I will be telling you why writing isn’t as bad as you think. In this post, I will list 5 reasons why writing and poetry can be used for good and counter arguments to yours on why it’s bad.

  1. Writing and/or poetry is a great outlet. Any ideas you have? Create something with writing or poetry! Want to organize scattered thoughts? Write them down! Want to tell people information? Write it and give it to people!
  2. Writing and poetry are great for entertainment. It helps distract people, whether they’re reading the finished product, or just writing it.
  3. It’s fun! Especially when creative writing, because you get to make up cool stories where there are literally no rules/laws, but even other types of writing can be fun, especially when you’re passionate about the topic.
  4. You can express yourself. Poetry and writing are yet another way to express who you are and your personality. When you do this, others can read it and have a better time understanding you and how you work.
  5. It’s really not as bad as you think, you just need to learn how to write about topics you like. For example, if your favourite animals are cats and you hate dogs, but you’re writing about dogs, then you’re quite likely to dislike writing about dogs. But, if you were writing about cats, you would probably enjoy it!

In conclusion, I believe that people don’t think writing is bad, they just don’t like writing about the topics they’re writing about. Because really, what’s not to like?

Writing? Why?

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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.

The Outsiders and its Relevance to Worldview

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Hi, and welcome back to my blog. Assuming you read the title of this post, you probably have some questions. Firstly, how the heck is the book “The Outsiders” relevant to worldview? Secondly, what is “The Outsiders?” You will find out this and more in this post. 

First of all, I’m going to provide you with the driving question and an outline of what I will be talking about in this post. You should appreciate that. I am very generous. The first thing I will do in the post is give a very quick summary of “The Outsiders” and show the definition of worldview. This way you will know what I’m talking about when I name scenes, characters and different aspects of worldview. Then, I will talk about a few assignments we did within the project. After that, I’m going to talk about how the two relate. I’ll then talk a little bit about the winter exhibition and show some photos and videos. Finally, I’m going to answer the driving.

The driving question for this project was “How can the Outsiders teach us about worldview?”

We worked in groups. My group was: Keira, Mackenzie, Callum, and Daniel. Check out their blogs!

The Outsiders

The Outsiders is an old novel written by author S.E. Hinton. It follows the story of Ponyboy and the chain reaction set off by Darry (his brother) getting mad at him, and socs (the upper class) hating greasers (the lower class). When Darry got angry, Ponyboy went outside and found Johnny. Johnny and Ponyboy got jumped by socs, and the socs tried to drown Ponyboy. In order to save his life, Johnny killed Bob (the soc.) Johnny and Ponyboy ran away and stayed in a church for a week. At the end of that week, the church caught fire and Johnny and Ponyboy had to save kids from the fire. As a result, Johnny ended up hospitalized, and died. Dally (a good friend of theirs) ran away because of this, and died because he pointed a gun at a policeman and the policeman killed him. After this, Ponyboy was traumatized (obviously,) but he still needed to keep up with school. So when he was assigned an essay, he wrote about his experiences.

My Work

One of the assignments I had was to make a movie poster for The Outsiders. The economy aspect of worldview is demonstrated, regarding privilege and money, which are a huge part of the economy and society as a whole.

Another assignment we had was our worldview MindNode. This is basically a mind map of the different aspects of my worldview.  

How do worldview and “The Outsiders” involve each other?

This was a very popular question among me and my friends. Why did we read “The Outsiders” to learn about worldview? Why didn’t we read another book? Well, “The Outsiders” ties in very well to worldview because of all of the different points of view. On top of that, many outside things are influences many of the characters’ worldview in drastic ways. For example, when the socs jumped Johnny (the first time, before the instances in the book) Ponyboy began to view the socs as much more barbaric than he originally thought. His brothers, Darry and Soda, also influenced his worldview. Darry raised him to think, “greaser good, soc bad.” All in all, “The Outsiders” provides us a different point of view and an easy way to see how other’s actions can influence how you see the world.

The Exhibition

For this project, we did a presentation at the winter exhibition. We presented a tableau. A tableau is a still image. An easier way to describe it is a freeze frame. It’s almost as if you’re watching a scene and time stops. Our tableau was the court. We had to do two tableau’s: one from the original book, and one that’s been transposed into 2021. For example, our first tableau was the courtroom, with the judge closing the case. In the 2021 version, we had a social worker talking about the same things. For our tableau we created multiple props. This included a zoom call frame and an American flag (for the courtroom.) 

 

This post started with the driving question, and it’s also going to end with the driving question. How can the Outsiders teach us about worldview? Well, the Outsiders can teach us about how certain things influence worldview, such as experiences (Johnny getting jumped,) society (the greasers vs socs,) and many other things. We can also see that everyone has a different worldview due to experiencing different things that influence it. In conclusion, the Outsiders can teach us about worldview by showing different experiences that everyone’s gone through and how that changes who they are as a person as well.

Constructing Creative Communication… There’s More!

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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!

Constructing Creative Communication: Carr

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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.

  • In this activity, I learned about using pressure to change lines. I also learned about the different tools available in "Sketches Pro."

Tectonic Chances: A Summative Post

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How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? That’s the question, isn’t it. Well, we’ll answer it later. For now, I’m going to talk about how I learned the answer. For this project, I worked with Naomi. We built a board game, which we called “Tectonic Smash.” In this blog post, I will include the game outline and I’ll be answering the driving question.

 

The game outline consists of four parts: the pieces, the evidence, the turn and some examples of probability. We’re going to start with the pieces. The game included these items:Next, I will talk about the evidence. In this case, evidence means proof of tectonic movement within the game. Some proof of tectonic movement is volcanoes, mountains, earthquakes, and sea floor spreading. It also literally had plates that you moved within the turn, so that one’s kind of obvious.

Now, I’m going to talk about the turn. The board is split up into four quadrants, with one player at each. At the start of your turn, make sure that you are holding seven cards. If you aren’t, pick up cards from the pile until you have seven. At the start of your turn, the wise thing to do is analyze the board. What types of boundaries are each plate? are they even overlapping/far apart? Is there already a hotspot token on the board? If so, make sure to use that information strategically. Now, in your turn, you will place down a card. You can start with a plate boundary card, or if there’s already a useful plate boundary that fits your requirements, you can place down an attack or defense card (ex. if there’s a divergent plate boundary already on your quadrant of the board, you can place a sea floor spreading card there to revive one heart.) If you’re placing a card to attack someone, you must place it in their quadrant of the board. Make sure to roll the die to make sure your attack is activated. Instead of placing a boundary card, you could instead place a hotspot token or an epicenter token. Once you have attacked or placed a plate boundary, and (if applicable) revived hearts, then your turn is over.

Lastly, I have some examples of probability in the game. This is showing the chances of getting a certain combination

  • Pulling an earthquake card and able to attack with it: 5/90 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing an earthquake card= 5/45. Probability of rolling even numbers= 1/2. 5/45 x 1/2=5/90)
  • Pulling a volcano card and not able to attack with it: 5/90 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing a volcano card = 5/45. Probability of rolling even numbers = 1/2. 5/45 x 1/2 = 5/90)
  • Pulling a volcano card or protection card: 7/45 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing a protection card = 2/45. Probability of drawing a volcano card = 5/45. 2/45+5/45=7/45.)

Now it’s time to talk about the core competencies.

Evaluating: demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence.

In this project I demonstrated this competency by including important things in the game, such as sea floor spreading.

Questioning and predicting: demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

I demonstrated this core competency by doing extra research at home. I was interested in the topic as soon as the project started, and after school that day I read quite a few articles about it.

Understanding and solving: develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving.

I demonstrated this core competency by showing how I was able to apply probability to the game (above.)

Now I’m going to try to answer the driving question. Remember, the question is, “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? Well, as you can see above, there’s probability used within drawing cards and rolling dice. When that’s in a game, you can use mathematical elements to determine the chance of each possible outcome.

So that was my blog post. I hope you enjoyed reading about this project and my game!

Becoming a PLP Learner Summative Post

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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.

The Medium is the Message Summative Post

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This post is about the project “The Medium is the Message.” I’m going to talk about what I learned, and include evidence of my learning. The driving question was “how does what we hear, read and see influence us?” As you might be able to tell from the name of the project, it was about the media and how it influences us. The goal of the project was to give us a wider perspective on the world around us, specifically through media and the ads we see.

In this post I’m going to show three pieces of evidence of my learning through this project. My first piece of evidence will be my individual ad. The individual ad taught me about what’s appealing to the eye and how to tell a story through an ad. The second piece of evidence I will be showcasing will be my group ad. My group ad taught me about how what you say and the format of how you say it can change how people look at things. The last thing I will show will be my advertising photo journal.

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