Monthly Archives: June 2018

(Insert Awesome Island Here)

Posted on by under Humanities, School

Hello, Internet.

So, you may know the book Lord of the Flies. It’s a pretty common read for high school students, and centers around topics such as society, innocence, human nature, evil, and killing pigs.

We read Lord of the Flies in Humanities recently, following which we took some time to create a character chart analyzing the symbolism of different characters within the book.

The main character is a boy called Ralph who becomes the chief of a group of boys trapped on an island. Ralph is a born leader, and spends most of the book trying to follow the best course of action to get the boys saved, such as setting up camp, and keeping a signal fire going.

The story features two main deuteragonists: a boy called Jack, who is also a leader, but functions very differently from Ralph, and a boy called Piggy, who does his best to help and support Ralph in his role as chief. Jack is the leader of a group of choirboys, and he spends most of the book slowly turning more and more to the darker side of human nature as he goes from hunting pigs to being the head of a tribe of savages. Piggy, on the other hand, is one of the only characters who stands by Ralph until the end, eventually getting killed by a member of Jack’s tribe.

Over the course of the book, we see the group of boys get further and further from civilization as they attempt to function on their own. Eventually, those who are still alive are rescued, and they seem to come back to their senses a bit and regret what they’ve done.

 

We held three debates that addressed some of the themes of this book. My group argued against the statement that “in order to to survive, you must be savage”.

We had to draw from the subjects of some of our past work this year, such as WWI, social justice, Silicon Valley, and WWII. While it was fairly easy to reason why savagery was a bad thing in terms of the world wars and the history of social issues, it was a little more difficult to draw on our knowledge of Silicon Valley.

We won our debate, which one of our classmates then edited into a podcast.

In order to prepare for our debate, we listened to a podcast featuring professional debates, watched some videos and did some exercises pertaining to improving public speaking skills, and held a practice debate in class.

Another part of this unit was learning about different systems of government, including anarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and dictatorship. We talked about different ways that parties are elected: first past the post, proportional representation, ranked ballot, and mixed member proportional. We also learned more specifically about the Canadian government, the charter of rights and freedoms, and the constitution.

As someone who enjoys both debates and general public speaking, I really enjoyed this unit and the exercises we did to prepare for our debate.

Toodles.

Life on Mars?

Posted on by under Math & Science, School, Uncategorized

Hello, Internet.

So, recently in science, we’ve been learning about astronomy + space. Specifically, I just did a project on the potential of colonization of Mars, whether it would be doable, how to do it, and whether or not it’s even a good idea.

Doing this project reminded me a lot of the unit we did last year where we read The Martian, since we ended up learning some stuff about Mars survival, and the unit we did on space and NASA.

Here is the video we made about the colonization of Mars:

I also made a mindmap to show my knowledge about space, both from this unit and from prior knowledge.

Toodles!

(Insert Awesome Education Here)

Posted on by under Field Studies, Humanities, School

Hello, Internet.

So, you might remember a little thing called the launch cycle. In case you don’t, here’s a reminder of what it is:

 

 

I called it the launch cycle, but I should have probably written it as the LAUNCH cycle, capitalized, because it’s actually an acronym:

 

L: Look, listen, and learn. This is the part where you need to take in information from around you; identify issues, find out what subjects interest you, meet interesting people, etc.

A: Ask tons of questions. This is the part where you start seeking out more specific information instead of just taking in the information that is given to you. This might be doing research, interviewing someone, reaching out to someone who is a professional at what you’re trying to learn about, etc.

U: Understand the process or problem. This is where you really need to take the information you’ve learned in the previous two steps, process it, and think about applying it. You should know a lot about whatever subject is relevant to what you’re doing by this point, although you can always learn more.

N: Navigate ideas. This is the part where you actually start coming up with a plan. This might be working out a solution to a problem, thinking of a product, designing an activity, etc.

C: Create a prototype. Now that you have ideas, you have to actually do something with them. This is the part where you actually make your own thing that you came up with in the past step, whatever that thing was.

H: Highlight and fix. This is the part where you look at whatever you created, or get other people to look at what you’ve created, and try and figure out what you could do better. This essentially takes you back to the first step as you try and improve. This is technically the last step, and it’s an important one, as we like the revision process here in PLP.

 

If you have trouble remembering that, I made this handy graphic to help you out:

 

 

(Here is a more readable version)

 

Now, those of you who did know what the LAUNCH cycle is probably know where this is going.

 

Yep, that’s right: We just had our annual spring exhibition. This year, the focus was on the UN’s sustainable development goals. We were split into groups, with each group being assigned a goal, and then each person creating a project related to the goal they were assigned.

The goal I was assigned was quality education, or more specifically, ensuring “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. My project was about making post secondary more accessible, or to put it in slightly more catchy terms, making university more universal.

The idea for this project appealed to me for a few reasons: I’m going to go to university myself in a couple years, and I have an idea of what I want to do and where I want to go, so I’ve looked into prices a bit, and they’re pretty ridiculous– less so in Canada than the States, but still concerninglt high for no discernible reason. This is also just something that has never made sense to me; a level of education that is required for a lot of jobs is not available without the income you get from said jobs.

Now, unfortunately, I was not able to actually go out and create a university, so my project was mainly theoretical, with the end product being some ads for the university experience I designed.

I wanted to address a few different problems: How expensive university is, the fact that it can be difficult to work while also attending school, and the fact that for people who are in remote locations, university might require travelling far from home. Separate solutions for these things do exist (a fact very bluntly pointed out to me by a couple of people who asked about my project, so shoutout to them), seeing as they’re widespread problems, but I wanted to come up with a way to address multiple issues at once.

The main ideas I brought together were online classes (and, specifically, being able to get a diploma or degree online, which is less common than taking just some classes online) and doing a co-op program. I wanted to make sure that there was a way for students to still be making contacts and getting real world experience even with online classes, so I figured that the best way to ensure that was by them being given the opportunity to do that through said classes.

 

I made some ads to explain my project– a pamphlet, and a couple of posters (one of which I wasn’t a big fan of because it felt kind of misleading, and one of which I liked but wish I had put more information on):

 

With that done, it was time for the exhibition itself.

Since our theme was education, we decided to make the theme of our area (conveniently, a high school classroom) school and education. This included playing school themed music, serving the kind of food you would find in school lunches, wearing university hoodies, and having desk chair races.

As I’m sure you can clearly tell from that panorama, I was sitting over by the door, looking very professional and school-ready:

(Apparently I gave off a Sean Penn vibe what with the being overly lax in a classroom and the gay pride flag.)

I’d say the exhibition went pretty well; the fact that we were already in a classroom made setup pretty straightforward, and while I spoke to a decent amount of people about my project, it didn’t feel super overwhelming or crowded. I did briefly leave my desk chair to look at some other areas of the exhibition, all of which seemed interesting, but I’m ultimately happy that I ended up doing a project themed around education.

I do wish that I could have done more with this project; for such an expansive topic, ending up with only some pamphlets and posters seemed a little skimpy.

Now, it’s almost time to take a break from receiving quality education for the summer, so…

 

Toodles.

(Insert Awesome TPOL Here)

Posted on by under About Me, Humanities, mPols & tPols, School

Hello, Internet.

Also: Hello, people who are here in person. Welcome to this year’s Transitional Presentation of Learning, or TPOL.

We’ve done a lot of things since January– visiting Caliornia, participating in Destination Imagination, creating generators, and attending the BC Tech Summit, to name a few –but one of my favourite things we did was our unit on disruption and technology.

This unit involved a lot of different aspects, but the part I want to focus on is the essay we had to write towards the end of the unit. The essay I wrote is one of the things I felt I did really well on this year, and I want to highlight it as something I’m proud of. Writing is one of the areas I feel is a strength for me, and getting to write an essay that brought in topics I’m already interested in– technology, current events, social media –gave me a really good chance to showcase that strength.

Now, you probably remember I did an MPOL back in January where I talked about what I wanted to achieve as a learner before the end of the year. I mentioned that my goal for the rest of the year was to work more on adapting, “rolling with the punches”, and not ansgting over being assigned work that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. So, did I complete that goal?

Well, when I talked about this goal originally, I mentioned that I usually go into Destination Imagination with the expectation that it’s going to be stressful or unenjoyable, and having this expectation usually just causes it to be more stressful and unenjoyable.

This year, I wanted to avoid that sort of expectation. I also happened to participate in DI again– and I tried to be a little more objective in terms of how much I did or didn’t like it (which is sort of weird).

Now, doing DI did involve some punches to roll with, such as half of our group not being there for the provincial tournament, but it was far from the worst project we’ve ever done. It did even involve some enjoyable parts, such as making a sign that looked exactly like Shrek but blue, and watching Kyle impersonate Elon Musk. I also learned a lot about various “explorers”, and got to revisit our fantasy unit from last year while researching Alice in Wonderland.

Now, that being said, I still think I have some further work to do with this goal. I’d still like to improve my attitude and be more optimistic about work. However, I want to shift my focus to a new goal (or, in a way, an old goal): working on developing my interpersonal skills. While I have no trouble with public speaking, or speaking in a formal setting like in a debate, I do sometimes get anxious having to speak directly with people I don’t know very well, especially in professional settings like a job interview. This is a goal I’ve worked on in the past, but because being able to communicate with people is such a vital skill, and considering I think it needs more work, I want to revisit it for the upcoming year, especially as I approach the senior years of high school.

Toodles!

(Insert Awesome Job Shadow Here)

Posted on by under About Me, Humanities, School

Hello, Internet.

So recently for planning we had to do a job shadow– or, essentially, going about someone’s job with them so you can see what it’s like. I haven’t decided what I want to do for a living, but I know I want to go to business school, so I decided to try and do a business-type job shadow.

I started by coming up with a few ideas for people who I could job shadow– I considered jobs that were interesting to me, and possible connections that I had. I eventually decided to job shadow John Gilson, the vice president of Cobs Bread and the dad of my bestest bud.

COBS Bread (CNW Group/COBS Bread)

Prior to the actually doing the job shadow project, we had to come up with questions to potentially ask while there. This was my list:

– How did you get this job?
– What other jobs led to this job?
– What education and experience was required for this job?
– What’s your favourite thing about this job?
– What’s your least favourite thing about this job?
– What do you do in a day?
– Why do you like this job?
– What made you want this job?
– Have you always wanted to work in this field?
– What’s the most difficult part of your job?

Then it came time for the actual job shadow itself. I sat in on a couple of meetings and phone calls, and John explained to me how his job works– he handles finding locations for franchises, as well as helping find franchisees who will run said franchises.

Aside from that, I spent a little bit of time shadowing the financial controller (sort of the equvialent of my mum’s job), who was actually working on finishing up the script for a video that would be shown to new franchisees. I read a little bit of the script, which talked about some different topics that would be important to a potential franchisee, such as the cost of goods sold (or COGS).

After that, she and John actually had to film the video– or, more accurately, be filmed talking about the information in the script. I watched them filming it, spent a while putting letters into envelopes, and my job shadow was pretty much done.

After doing my job shadow, I sent a thank you letter to John.

I found it really interesting to do a job shadow and see a little bit more about how this sort of job works. While I still don’t have a definitive plan for what I want to do when I grow up, I’m feeling pretty good about the decision to study business, and I’m always happy to learn more about what working in business is like.

Toodles.

Skip to toolbar