Just Another mPOL

jacksonc Other 0 Comment

It’s that time of year again where I do a mPOL. As always, I must start with making the POL declaration.

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

At the end of last year, I did my tPOL. In it I talked a little about how one of my biggest problems is procrastination, which still is still the case but for a different reason. Last year my problem was more with how I managed my time poorly while this year is more with the shear amount of things that I have taken on. I am the kind of person that joins many many things and fully commits to them, in other words I bite off more then I can chew. I have always had a problem with this but I feel that it has become more apparent this year, at least in my eyes. Because of how much stuff I have going on, it’s less of a question of if I can manage my time, it’s more a question of if I have the time at all. This leads me to procrastinating things that I don’t find as important so I can try and give the more important things my time. 

Me biting off more then I can chew does have some benefits, for example the work that I hand in. I think a good example of this was the asexual reproduction comic that we made in science. In this we were tasked to make 5 different comics on the different ways of asexual reproduction. At the start of this, I planned out to make each comic with detailed drawings, an interesting story line, and more. The problem was that this was a lot for me to do, especially with other things that were going on, inside and outside of school. So I ended up putting it aside and doing other things that I thought were more important. When I finally came back to it, it was late to hand in and I didn’t have a lot done, so I had to do easier versions of what I originally planned. This is something that I found helps my work because when I try and go big on a project and end up having to dumb it down, it still ends up better then if I had started small and built up on it. 

 

 

Another thing that I want to work on this year is my learning habits/systems. In my learning plan (which I’ll talk more about later). In my learning plan I said that I wanted to get into the habit/system of doing my homework in shifts (20-30 minutes of work with no distractions then a 5-10 minute break with rewards for myself when I get things done). I find that this strategy really works for me and helps me get into the right mindset to get work done, the only problem being finding enough time at once to sit down and get stuff done. I find that I only normally have less then 1 hour at a time, unless it’s a bit later at night, to get the work done. This makes it harder to stick with this habit/system so I have to work extra hard this year to be able to stick with it. This may prove to be a challenge but I think it will pay off in the end. 

One thing that I think I have been doing well with this year is FAILing then learning from those FAILs. As you may know, fail stands for first attempt in learning, and I think one of my strengths has always been my ability to learn from my mistakes and improve on them. A good example of this was the Power of Geography ebook. This was something that I FAILed in a lot, and was still able to take criticism and learn from my mistakes to make it something that I am proud of. In my first draft or two, my ebook looked very messy, had too much writing compared to the photos I had, and even the photos themselves were poorly edited, if even. Through the feedback I got, and even my own personal opinions, I was able to pinpoint specific things that needed work and fix them. I was able to cut the text down to a manageable amount, I was able to lay everything out in a more visually appealing way, and the thing I spent the most time on, I was able to edit all the photos to something that I was at least somewhat proud of.

Looking back, there is always stuff that I’d want to change within my projects and work that I hand in, and an amazing example of that was with my first film documentary. This was a project that I more or less had to do most of the work last minute on it, due to the interview portion. I ended up sending out emails to around 3 or 4 different people and/or groups. The ones that responded mainly said that they couldn’t. This lead me to only really being able to plan out my video and get bits and pieces of the B-roll. Thankfully on pretty much the last day possible I asked Mr. Hughes for an interview and he was able able to do so. Once I was done with the interview, I still had to get more clips of B-roll, now that I knew what specifically I needed. I was able to get some revisions the next day for my documentary, but there is still a few things that I would want to change. My biggest thing looking back that really needed to be changed was the part where I actually talked about avatar. I think that it was too sudden and too short to make a lot of sense. I think I could have given it more of an introduction at the start of my documentary to give it more context and not make it seem so out of place. I do think that if i was to go back to it now and edit more and revise more, I could make it a lot better. 

The final thing that I’m going to talk about is my learning plan and what I could maybe even change. I thing that this year, for the most part, I have done a good job at keeping to the goals that I set for myself on my learning plan and getting the proficiencies that I wanted. There are always a few exceptions were I found that I haven’t done my best work or met the goals I set for myself, but I thing that for each subject overall I have been keeping on track. Something that I think would be a good thing for me to change would be to change my goal to an extending in humanities. Since humanities will be my only PLP class next semester, I think that I should set my goals a bit higher in it. Humanities it also not my best subject so I think that setting a higher goal might really help me try and understand it better. 

In the end, I think that this has been a fairly successful semester, but still with room to improve. 

What’s Your Story?

jacksonc Maker 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome back to another blog! This is my first one for maker this year and it was on a really fun unit, film and goal setting! In this project we were given a book to help us with our goal setting called “What do you really want?” We also made a series of videos to help teach us the different aspects of film. In this post I will include the three different videos that I made, as well as various activities from my goal tracker, like my goal ladder. This was all so we could answer our driving question, “How can I use my video skills to tell a story?” 

Goal tracker

Our goal trackers were more or less a journal of sorts that we would do our activities in. I think that the two most important things that we did in our goal trackers were our goal ladders and talking about SMART goals. A SMART goal stands for specific, measurable, actionable, relatable, and timed. This is important because a SMART goal is more or less the essence of what every goal should be to help you to achieve it. The other thing that was major was the goal ladder. This is something that I will talk more about later. 

Videos

For each video, there was a specific aspect of film that we were really trying to incorporate. The first video was about us learning out main tool, Clips, and it was also about what inspires me. This was probably the easiest of the videos, only because we could just use videos we already had. I think I did a good job at getting all the necessary information across but my story aspect of it could have been a lot better. 

Check out the video on Cam’s YouTube channel here

The second video that we did was our silent film. The main focus for us was the shots and angles that we used. To make this video, me and my group, Cam and Makenzie, took a story about someone achieving their goals from the book, and put it into an Old-Timey style with all the angles we had learned. We decided on doing a story about a kid and karate, that I think turned out very well. The one thing that I think we could’ve done better would have been to make certain parts, like the train montage, a bit longer and showcase more of the angles that we needed. 

The final maker video that we made was about how to set goals. It was also about us using all of our skills that we’ve worked on throughout the project to showcase a story about, you guessed it, goal setting. In this video me and my group, Tom and Evangeline, took a story about one of us achieving a goal and keyed it out onto a storyboard. We then spent the next day or so filming and editing until we had a product that was ready to be presented. To end this all off, our class had a mini viewing party where we watched all the group’s videos. The main thing that I think we could have done better with the video would have been to have our goal ladder clearer and more of a main part. 

Goal ladder

My goal ladder something that I did within my goal tracker. In my goal ladder, I chose a SMART goal from my goal tracker and really broke it down. I had to lay it out in 10 different steps with dates on when I wanted to get each step done. The goal that I decided to do was to build a home gym in my garage. This goal is fairly short term, since I could get it done in about a month or two. The only problem that I’ve ran into with my goal so far, is that I haven’t had enough time to start it properly. I’ve done the first 3 steps, but not thorough enough. 

In the end, I think that I did a good job of using my videos to tell a story. I learned about how different angles can really help get different things across, like using an angle to make a scene more dramatic. I also learned about, and was able to make, storyboards. A storyboard is an amazing way of planning out your story to make it easier to know what you’re doing, instead of just going in blind. My best example was the final we did. In it, I was able to use all of our strategies to make a video with a clear story. 

Our Amazing West

jacksonc Humanities 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome back to my blog! I’ve recently finished our first humanities project, and this was an interesting one. This project was all based around the the idea of how the geography of the West has shaped us. To start off the project and to see this all first hand, we went on a road trip through BC and into Alberta. On top of the amazing places that we got to see first hand and the things we learned about geography on the trip, we also did a lot of work in class to continue bettering our understandings of more historical features. The driving question for this project was done a little differently then normal. For this project, we were able to pick an aspect of how the West has shaped us, those aspects being people, economy, and history, and use that to create our own variation of a driving question to work with. In the end I decided to focus on the more economic side of it and created my driving question, “How has the  geography of the West shaped us economically?” 

As I already mentioned, we started this all off with a learning advance road trip. This learning advance was separated into two groups, with me being in the first. I go into a lot more detail about most of the place that we went to in the book, I’ll link that in later on, so I’ll just talk about some of the highlights that weren’t mentioned. One place that was very memorable that I wasn’t able to really touch on in the book was the painted warriors ranch that we went to. This is where we learned about First Nation culture through archery. It was a very fun and interesting experience, especially when we were sent off to shoot at foam animal targets. It really reminded me of when I as little and I would go to my grandparents house, who had a bow and arrow, and set up targets. Another very memorable place that we went to was lake Louise. This was amazing blue lake that had a walk around it and the massive Chateau Lake Louise on the water. On top of it’s beauty, it was amazing because of it’s details that not everyone knows, for example the fact that the Chateau Lake Louise was a big tourist attraction when the CPR was fairly new, or that Lake Louise is one of the most photographed lakes in the world. 

The book that we made was the big thing that we were working towards from the start. When we launched the project, we were given the book template so we’d be able to know what the major parts that we’d have to take notes on while away on the learning advance. From there we were given a bit more free reign, within certain limits, to add what we thought was necessary to the book. The biggest thing we were required to do within the book is give examples of our answer to the driving question at every chance we got. I think that I gave some good answers to the question, you can see my main answer on pages 6-7. The one thing that I wish I had done better with in my book was the layout. I found myself focusing more on the information that I was putting into it, which lead me to having something that wasn’t as visually appealing as it could’ve been. To showcase our books, we had a mini exhibition where we were split into rooms depending on what aspect of the driving question we chose to answer, people, economy, and history, meaning I was with the other economy people. We then had family come in to see my, and other student’s, work. I think that I did a good job with presenting my work in a way that answered any questions and gave a lot of information, without being too long and boring. 

Something that I was really abbe to take away from this project is questioning. I’m always a fairly curious person that will try and answer my own questions and I think that really showed while I was away on the learning advance. If there was something that I wanted to know, I would break down the question into more specific, easier to answer question that I would use personal connections and what was in front of me to answer. I would then use those partial answers that I had and answer my main one. I was definitely able to do that a lot over the course of the learning advance, and I think that it really enhanced my work. 

So to answer the driving question, how has the geography of the West shaped us economically? While, like I was saying throughout the book, the geography of the West has shaped us by allowing us to have a thriving economy with multiple industries that have helped us to settle and develop. Because of our economic vastness, we will always have things to fall back on if one of these industries were to fail, while many other places don’t have that luxury. A good example of the West being able to fall back on its many economic factors is what happened when Covid hit. A lot of these industries were shut down and many places took massive hits to their economies due to this while the west still had a economy that was working. We were definitely still impacted, but we were able to keep going fairly strong.

Ecosystems of Earth

jacksonc Scimatics 0 Comment

Welcome back! It’s been a while since my last blog post and I’m happy to be back. Over the last little bit, we’ve been working on a science project all about different cycles of nature and how humans impact them. The driving question for this project was “In what ways have humans impacted the delicate cycles within our local ecosystems and how can we lesson our impact?” We did a number of different things to answer this question including, learning about the earth’s different spheres, making food webs, making a bioaccumulation gif, and even a news report about wildlife management. Then to finish off the project, we made social media posts to raise awareness of all this. 

Food Web

The first main thing that we did to answer the driving question was working with food webs. For this we had to make a interactive diagram in scratch that showed a food web. The food web that I made was mainly taking place in the ocean, with a few exceptions like a bear and bird. You can try out my interactive diagram here. 

 

Bioaccumulation Gif

The second big thing that we did to answer our driving question was a gif on bioaccumulation. For this, we used the app of our choice, mine being sketches pro, to make a short animation that we used to show the process of bioaccumulation. This proved to be the most challenging/time consuming part of this unit.

 

News Report

Another one of the main things that we did to answer the driving question was make a news report on wildlife management. Every group was given a different example of a wildlife management technique to base their news report off of. My group was assigned the overpopulation of the sea urchins and how they are affecting the kelp forests. 

 

Social Media Posts

For the final part of this unit, we made social media posts on what we had learned. These weren’t real posts, we made them on a website that created fake instagram posts, but the information that we were saying was very real. I had a posts on the earth’s spheres, the carbon cycle and human’s effect on it, wildlife management, bioaccumulation, and food webs. 

So, In what ways have humans impacted the delicate cycles within our local ecosystems and how can we lessen our impact? As I’ve talked about and shown throughout this post, there are many ways that people have affected these cycles and our ecosystems. Wether it’s with pollution impacting something like the carbon cycle, or us killing a bunch of sea urchins to try and manage populations, we need to be careful. Things that we do on a daily basis can contribute to all of these things in positive and not so positive ways. To lessen our impact on these ecosystems and cycles, we have to start being more wary of our futures. We need to start making eco friendly decisions and using eco friendly products. When it comes to things like wildlife management, there’s not a lot that we can do differently because it’s more of a morals thing. Overall, we need to start being careful with how we impact the world with it’s cycles and ecosystems so we can have a better place to live.

Outside the class

jacksonc Other 0 Comment

This is an exciting blog because it is my final one of grade 8. To end off the year, all of PLP had our spring exhibition. In the exhibition, we were working with the grade 9s to show the different aspects of what makes a PLP learner. Every aspect had a different room with a group of people in it to show the aspect the best way possible. The aspect that our room was focusing on was outside the classroom work. For outside the classroom, we were focusing on the loon lake field study that we went on, as well as the advertisements the grade 8s did and the grade 9s showed some interviews that they did. 

Our room was decorated to look like a forest, representing loon lake. We had the room setup so that when people walked over to it, they would get an introduction at the door. They would then walk through in a bit of a circle, while getting to check out all of the different things that we had setup. Once they walked out the door, they would get to the station that I was at, the rope ferry race. 

This is it while we were still setting up

We decided to make a rope ferry race because at loon lake, there was a rope ferry that we would race against the time while setting new records. It was an amazing team building exercise that we had a lot of fun with, so we did our best to recreate it. We used skateboards tied to rope that me and some of the grade 9s were holding. The people would then pull themselves along and race to the finish line. 

The other thing that I was doing was showing people QR codes to some of our DI videos. This was a more minor job that I was doing but I do thing that some people enjoyed being able to watch some of the videos of our hard work. I think that the QR codes would have attracted more attention if we had gotten all the grade 8 and 9 DI videos because we only really had a few. 

In the end, I think that this spring exhibition was a fun way to wrap up the year. Our group did a good job with showing the PLP work that we do outside the classroom, with it still being fun. Since all the exhibitions are things that happen every year, I am looking forward to the next one.

Ebola

jacksonc Other 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome to my final scimatics blog post of the year. This was a pretty fun project where the final result was a comic. The driving question for this project was “How do cells and diseases interact?” There were a few steps that we had to do to get to the point where we could write the comic. We had to do our normal mind map, we had a wanted poster on our disease of choice, we had a storyboard, and of course, we had the final comic. 

As we normally do in scimatics, we had a mindmap to start of the project. In it we more or less just start writing about the subject, in this case it was how do cells and diseases interact. We write questions we have, thoughts/things we already know, and some examples. 

The disease wanted poster was a chance to pick our disease. In the poster we had to research and draw our own interpretation of the disease that we would later go on to put into our comics. We then put that all onto a poster and did our best to make it feel like an authentic wanted poster, while still displaying the information. I decided to go with ebola because I knew that it’s a well known disease that I could get a lot of information on. 

The storyboard was where we really had to start thinking about the comic. We started to plan it out but not in too much detail, while keeping in mind that we were going to add more on. We had to keep this in mind because we were supposed to keep the comic around 20ish panels long. We also had to include about 10 scientific words. I think that mine was not terrible but I did end up redoing a chunk of it. 

storyboard template (2) (2)

To finish off this project, we had the comic. This had to be about 20 panels long, with the scientific words from before and it had to be in full colour. I do wish that I had spent a bit more time on the drawings because they ended up being not the best. My story was also a little bit boring but I couldn’t think of ways to make it less. Overall I do think that my comic did a good job showing how cells interact with disease. 

battle of ebola

So, How do cells and diseases interact? Well, there are a few different ways that they interact, but for the most part it is a bit of a battle. The disease needs to find host cells to reproduce, while the cells have to defend themselves and the body. I think that I did a pretty good job on this project. I could have used my class time better but I do think that I was able to use the vocabulary that we learned to make the comic pretty realistic as to what would happen.

Grade 8 tPOL

jacksonc Humanities, Scimatics 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome to my tPOL. Before I begin, I must make the tPOL declaration. Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner. 

Halfway through the year, I did my mPOL. The mPOL was a reflection on my work throughout the first half of the year, while the tPOL is me explaining why I am ready to move onto grade 9. Throughout my tPOL, I’m going to be going through my different PLP classes this semester, scimatics and humanities, and pulling some examples from them to show why I should move onto grade 9. 

Humanities 

Humanities is a subject that isn’t really my strong suit. I tend to especially struggle with history, which wasn’t the best since we had all of our projects that were almost entirely based around history. The projects that we had for humanities this semester were The Renaissance, Argh Matey, and New Beginnings. All of these projects had different thing that went good or bad with them, or even just had things that I FAILed in. 

Out of these projects, I think that my FAILs are the most important things that happened. If you didn’t already know, in PLP FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning. The reason that my FAILs are important is because mistakes can help you learn. If you do something wrong or poorly, you can take criticism and learn how to improve it. I feel that taking, and using, criticism is something that I do very well. The best example of me FAILing in these projects is the seycove advertisement that we did at the start of the New Beginnings. It was something that we were doing to see what we remembered from past projects about photography, editing, and layout. In my first attempt at it, I forgot about all of the things that I had learned in the past, making it look terrible. I took some feedback from some of my classmates and my teachers then started making changes. The feedback that I was given, allowed me to make my second version much better. 

The other humanities project that I’m going to talk about is the argh matey project. This project had good examples of things that I did good in and things that I could have done better. The main thing that I think I really did good with in this project was getting things done efficiently. I feel that all my class time was used very well and, when we were filming at cates park, I was able to finish the project. The thing that I definitely could have improved on was my story for it. I had a bit of trouble with making the story enjoyable and have all the necessary information. I do think that I could have made my story a bit better if I had put a little more time into the actual writing of it and not all my time into the research. 

Scimatics 

For this semester, with scimatics being a lot more focused on the science aspect of it all, I had to push myself a bit more then normal. The reason that I say this is because I tend to understand math a bit more then I do science, but I do think that I was able to still do a pretty good job understanding the science this time around. The projects that I had for scimatics this semester were Chemistry Coding, Ultimate Design Challenge, and Comic Cells.

Out of these three projects, the Ultimate Design Challenge was the only one that was mainly math, it was also the one that I think I did the best in. A big part of the final result of this project, the presentation that we gave to the class about our design, was the calculations. For most of the shapes, we were given the formulas for surface area and volume, or we could just look them up, but I changed myself by doing shapes that didn’t really have a set formula, meaning that I had to figure them out. It was a fairly hard and tedious process, with a few FAIL moments, but I was able to do it in the end. I think that the whole process of that showed that I am a very persistent, and stubborn, person that will always do my best to follow through with things that I’ve committed to, in school and personally. 

The Chemistry Coding project is the last scimatics project that I’m going to talk about because I feel that it really showed who I am as a learner. The first reason that I say this is because, like I was saying with the Ultimate Design Challenge project, I was really trying to challenge myself and see it through. We had to code a game in this project, and I was trying to do something a bit more complex, so I was using tutorials and videos and even other students to help me with making it work. It also definitely showed my ability to take and use feedback. I was continuously making changes and getting feedback/ideas from others.

In the end, I have really learned a lot about myself as a learner this past year. I think that, in this semester especially, I’ve really started shaping into the learner that I want to be. I do still think that there are things that I need to change if I really want to become that learner. The biggest change I’d need to make being my ability to use time more efficiently because, I know I’ve said this a lot in the past, but I always struggle with procrastinating and staying on topic, making my work not always as good as I want it to be. With that said, I do think that I did better with that every once in a while and that, with time, I can become a lot better with it. 

The New World

jacksonc Humanities 0 Comment

Welcome to another blog! This project was an important one because it is my last humanities project of the year. In this project we focused on New France and photography. There were a few main things that we had to do in this project, like photography practice/editing practice, an advertisement for seycove, research, a trade simulation, and of course the final project. This was all to answer the driving question, “What did the establishment of New France mean for all the people involved”. 

The first thing that we had to do in this project was make an ad for seycove. This was to see what we remembered about photography, editing, and layout. I worked with Luca and Francis to make a first draft that didn’t turnout at all how we hoped. We then all went away and came back with our own versions of the ad. I think that our individual ads turned out a lot better, mainly because we had more time then what we had with the group ad. 

The next step for this project was to practice our photography skills. For this we went on a nature walk and we would stop every once in a while to take some pictures. This definitely helped with reminding me on past things that we learned about photography, such as perspective, rule of thirds, and leading lines.

New France research

This was one project that required a bit more research then some of the other ones. For the main part of the research, I was focusing on the thing that I was going to be doing the final project on, the Coureurs des Bois. I had three different sources, each with a few different notes from that source. In addition to that, I also took some other notes on why first peoples traded with newcomers. 

The next thing in this project was the most fun, it was a trade simulation. In this, the class was divided into different groups that were present in the time of the fur trade. I was part of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Every group was given different things that they would have traded, we were given things like guns, gunpowder, shoes, and string, and we were told to trade. For every round of trading, we would trade with a different group and there would be a different scenario that we would have to be aware of. 

To finish this project off, we had our final project. Originally, the final project was going to be some kind of ad for New France, but it was later changed to be two New France visuals on a certain part of New France. The thing that I decided to focus on for this was the Coureurs des Bois. As you can see in my New France visuals at the start, there is a lot off different thing happening, but there is a reason for everything. In the first image, the words are new trade. The reason that I put this in is because the promise of new trade and riches was the reason for a lot of the Coureurs des Bois. Another thing that I put in this image was a beaver. The beaver was the thing that the Coureurs des Bois would mainly trade because of the value of the beaver fur back then. Beaver fur was in very high demand back then. The hut in the background is a trading post/indigenous home. The Coureurs des Bois would travel to different trading posts to trade with the indigenous people. I also put in a person running with a log on his back. This is to represent the Coureurs des Bois because Coureurs des Bois translates to wood runner. In the second image it says outlawed. This because it became a crime to be a Coureurs des Bois. It got outlawed because the people in charge didn’t want too many people leaving the settlements, especially if they weren’t licensed traders. The images of the person in handcuffs and the jail that replaced the trading post also show the Coureurs des Bois becoming outlawed. People would get arrested if they were caught. It also kind of represents how how some of the Coureurs des Bois had to do this to pay off debt, mainly to merchants. The other thing in this image is the crossed out beaver. This is because the Coureurs des Bois helped with the beaver shortages. All European traders/Coureurs des Bois contributed to this because they were just trying to meet the high demand back home.

So, what did the establishment of New France mean for all the people involved? Well, the establishment of New France had various effects. One of the bigger effects it had was the disease that the Europeans brought with them. If they hadn’t given the disease to the indigenous peoples, killing off almost all of them, I feel that indigenous culture would be a bigger part of our lives. Another thing that happened with the establishment of New France is the new trade that was established. The trade allowed things that were not from certain places to get there, with some places going on to have that food as a staple in their everyday lives. The thing that was traded the most, and had the most impact was the beaver. Beaver fur became must have in Europe for things like fashion. Because of the rise in demand, the beaver was hunted almost to extinction in “The New World”. In the end, there were many things that the establishment of New France meant for the people involved, both good and bad.

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