Tpol 2023

I will start this required reflection with a required 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. 

This year was my second year of PLP and it was a wild ride. From the Alberta trip to the Avatar themed Winter exhibition, project to project, revision to revision, I experienced an intake of valuable knowledge. When I started the year, I was still figuring out how to successfully approach projects and our first project, the geography of the west and its history, was a challenge. It took a great deal of brain power to successfully approach the project to create my e-book. This project taught me  about what I would need to improve over this school year, time management and eliminating distractions, and helped to start my current process of knowledge intake and reflection. Looking back on my past projects, from my fake instagram posts in science  to my poster at the exhibition in humanities I have improved in my work quality and organization of assignments. I still hope to improve whenever possible as there is always room for improvement.

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”-Henry Ford

This year I learned a broad variety of topics. As I learned all this, “I failed”. I had some major setbacks with time management and trying to intake more subject knowledge than possible or ever needed. I slowly have improved though and kept on flanking the task at hand. Next year, I hope to focus more on assessing work to increase the efficiency and quality of the assignment and in turn the knowledge intake. 

Goals I had and my learning plan

I had many goals this year over a broad set of topics and habits. I started the year aiming for full profile 4s and rainbows in all classes and a better set of learning habits. When I got to my mpol I was extremely overwhelmed and a decent chunk of my work not up to standard. I made the adjustment of lowing small portions of my goals that where the most challenging and lowered them including decreasing the amount of profile 4s and lowering some of my grade goals. I also adjusted my habit goals to focus more on improving attention span. I don’t know how but I have definitely surpassed my expectations for myself and my work. 

Next year I look forward to improving myself, my mentality, my work and my knowledge intake. My main focus is to start the year out with a better plan for myself to intake what parts of my learning can be pushed further past my boundaries, comfort zone and expectations. I want to intake a deeper understanding of what topic is at hand and extend my work and creativity. I plan to use a more positive approach instead of my current method of controlled chaos with an extra dose of dopamine. I strive to be more cohesive in my work and creativity.

 

Why I’m ready for grade 10

I am ready for grade 10 because of many things. I have learned, improved, refined, and re-approached many things this year. I believe that I have improved my work in more ways than I though I could. I have completely thrown all my expectations for myself this year that I personally do not even know how. I am more proud of my work than ever and reflecting back on this year I am happy with what I have accomplished and improved this year. I can’t wait to learn more next year as learning is one of my favourite things to do (apart from gaming and reading). Grade 10 for me will allow me to push my boundaries and expand on my experience, knowledge, skills, creativity and more (I don’t want to list everything, we would be here all day). Above all it means I can continue my path through school and keep going down the path of my life as a clump of quarks and electrons that form me. 

nationalism board game

This is a reflection on our nationalism board game project

What did nationalism mean for people around Canada? Nationalism in Canada was heavily defined by its union of colonies outside of the U.S.. Many colonies joined together over the course of about 35 years with the goal of an independent nation. This was mainly due to the threat of the Americans and their desire to take control of more land; in addition, Britain wanted to finally get a country established in the Americas. Nationalism meant independence. 

 

Our learning process began with learning about and defining nationalism and Canadian nationalism. At the same time we studied confederation. The bulk of the learning in this stage was a “Confederation Simulation” where we split up into “colonies”; each with its own goals and problems. Then we came up with our demands and requirements for joining confederation. After that, we negotiated for our demands and came up with a set of plans that would happen after confederation. Each colony chose yes or no to join the confederation and we ended. 

 

Then we played with different board games to generate ideas on what we would do. Then we were split into groups, except me, (teacher forgot to sort me in }:( ) to create a board game representing a part of nationalism that covered an event before 1900. 

 

I decided to cover the Red River Rebellion. First I decided on the style of game and chose a Risk type game involving 2 players but with a lot of extra rules and restrictions. Afterwards, I proceeded to write a set of rules that explained how the game started and  proceeded and listed the extra rules for each of the 2 sides involved in this battle. Then I began building the board and creating the map of Rupert’s land (the area of the game). Second to lastly I cut out 100 game pieces and employed the help of fellow students to write numbers on them. 

a photo of the board game

Once all board games were complete, we had the grade 10s and 11s play them and critique us. 

 

Overall this project was repetitive as we did a board game last year. However I enjoyed this as my experience from last year gave me some knowledge and allowed me to create a better end product.

A bad movie trailer

Hello welcome to another post. This time a reflection on my very chaotic work surrounding and answering the driving question below.

How can sci-fi/fantasy fiction help us imagine a different future? 

By using the world of sci-fi, you can break the laws of nature and spacetime. This can allow for a highly scientific book with less boundaries while keeping the realism. On the opposite side, fantasy is a world with no limits and is implausible. Take the Mandalorian for example, items like beskar and lightsabers will eventually be possible to some extent. Then take John Wick and his suit that can stop bullets without damaging the suit. We can make a bullet proof suit however that suit can only take so many hits, eventually something like the suit will be possible. Sci-fi allows for people to imagine a different future just like Star Wars and John Wick. 

 

My learning process began by reading Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld which expanded my knowledge on the steampunk theme and the Darwinism theory. While I found the book underwhelming, the central idea/concept of it was good but my interest was lost quickly. As we read the book, I had to complete a reading role for each slotted amount of chapters. We had to rotate: summarize the chapter, find interesting vocabulary  words, create a piece of art or find a way to connect the story to real life.

 

The next step in the learning process was that I wrote a story spine on our own vision of the sci-fi/ fantasy theme. Then I extended this into a plot synopsis, peer critiqued, drafted it again, then self critiqued the plot and played with my main character’s backstory. For my main character, Ghost, I mutilated stuffed animals and attached various stuffy limbs together to create a new creature. To complement my creation, I wrote a resume for him and brought him to life. Below is a photo of my frankenstuffy

I then began the long chaotic process of writing my short story. Through many drafts and expansions, I completed my drafts 1 and 2. I then completed a peer critique with my classmates to give me some extra insight into what worked in my story and what did not. This was a helpful process. After some more revising, expanding, critiquing and re-revising again, I completed my short sci/fi fantasy story centered around my stuffy creation.

here is my plot draft

Once my story was complete, I began the planning for a minute long movie trailer for my book. I used heavy amounts of green screen to film due to its sci-fi/fantasy origin. I chose my key scenes before filming the scene bases that later would be heavily edited. I proceeded to obtain all the content from the internet that would be added on top of the raw footage that I filmed. After that, I cut the scenes to fit together and properly overlay. This continued with the addition of sound effects and music. This is quite a tedious and time consuming process but is worth the effort. Finally I cut the video apart to add in spaces with text. Overall, I am happy with the end result of the trailer as it represents my short story and my character well. 

This is the completed trailer

During this extent of my learning experience, I improved on my writing skills and focused on bringing my messy ideas together. I also worked on my filming and editing skills; I still think there is room to expand my filming skills, however, more projects and revision are necessary for improvement.

below is my short story

 

There was a husk, a shell of a person you could say, his name was Ghost. One that had seen it all, he knew more than any and was perfect, creepily perfect, too perfect. He was a hard working person who knew almost everything and had a degree in everything, except law.  He was a higher up at Notownedbyawarcriminal Inc, a company owned by Timmy. Timmy was a man who only cared about money, he had no morals, he would work people to death and paid no one for their work and used death threats to keep them in check. Ghost had worked there for years, and had seen many Timmys rule the company; he did not know for how long and they did not know how much longer he would last.

Ghost was the lead of the legal team, ironic as he had no law degree at all, he creates documents with hidden clauses so Timmy can sue for monetary gain. Even Ghost was not paid for his work out suing other companies to the ground. Regardless, he had been there for so long a degree would have been useless even if it was even possible to obtain one due to the world’s companies eliminating education to keep people working.

Day in and day out he made illegal deal after illegal deal, bringing in trillions for Timmy and never saw a single penny of it. Yet he was never aware, the husk of himself was just too ignorant, and this kept him working all these years. It was as if he worked robotically. Like a kind of limbo or trance where you’re awake but at the same time asleep; you can’t wake up but others can wake you.

The husk, being just a body itself, can evolve an immunity to control. As Ghost drank and ate the same company supplied food as the other workers, his limbo was brought further from his consciousness due to Timmy drugging everything that the workers consumed. Timmy was using an age-old mixture of lab made stimulants that can emulate mind control. The immunity that Ghost was slowly building over his existence was making this drug ineffective and allowed him to have some control from limbo. Over time, he finally had a window into the world, a view from his internal prison.

Eventually, due to the drug taking less effect, Ghost’s work quality noticeably degraded making Timmy suspicious about his free labour. Timmy sent Silencers, a team of genetically modified and chemically enhanced assassins, to drug test Ghost and kill him if he had gained immunity to Timmy’s mind control stimulants..

As things turned out Ghost had developed an immunity and so the Silencers prepped a batch of Francium bombs. By precisely firing a needle into the vacuum sealed tubes of Francium, the exposure to air caused the Francium to rapidly decay and atomize everything around it. This in turn woke Ghost up fully.

Suddenly the internal prison in Ghost broke, setting him free, however, he awakened with no arms or knees as a result of the explosion and he was in complete shell shock.  He fainted as something or someone picked him up. Awaking on a lab table of unknown material, he discovered that  a set of metal arms labeled Levium were fused to his shoulders. At the same time, legs labeled Dlevium replaced his missing lower limbs. He blacked out again…

When he gained consciousness again, a computerized voice explained to him what had happened to his body. It stated that his arms and the lower half of his legs had been replaced, while elaborating that the new limbs had some certain powers. A robotic arm handed him a manual on what the limbs could do; the manual was heavy and the size of a library. He fainted again…

He woke up and was directed to a firing range located in the next room over. A map on the floor indicated he had been transported to the other side of the world. In this firing range, he slowly began to learn what he could and couldn’t do with his new found power. He was also informed, with an LCD screen, of the state of his former company and what had been going on while he was in limbo previously. Ghost had had no awareness of what had gone on in his former life.

He began to devise a plan. He was now in a constant state of fury due to the lives being wasted by Timmy. He angrily wanted to stop Timmy and the other companies from working people to death for monetary gain. The plan had a massive preference for revolution and massive explosions.  He opened up a laptop to his right and promptly ordered 7 B-30 stealth bombers and 21 Plutonium reactors from Floormart. Using a digital map on the laptop, he located the facility that created the drugs used by Timmy and other inhuman companies.

First he flew a modified B-2 into the stimulant facility completely obliterating it, stopping the drugging of the workers outside of the stimulant facility. (the corrupt ones inside were completely vaporized) Ghost was immune now to any form of damage, blunt force, heights, radiation, you name it, all forms of damage. He walked over to a nearby hot dog stand completely unharmed to the mass damage he had just caused.

At this time, the stimulants had worn off causing mass shock in the workers. This quickly turned into rage and revolt as the now aware workers waged mass destruction of guerrilla warfare campaigns on the companies. Ghost used this as an opportunity to take control of the rebellion army by giving perfect war plans to defeat the remaining armies. This was so he could begin to direct the creation of democracies and the rebuilding of the old world.

Using the new power he gained from freeing the workers from their mind control, he directed the rebellion into destroying everything the corrupt companies had built. Ghost swiftly stomped any remaining enemy defences with tactical nukes in his conquest to the enemy stronghold.  City after city, army after army,  building after building are all destroyed by the wrath of the rebellion in their conquest for freedom.

As the war blitzkrieged to an end, Ghost prepared to go after Timmy and torture him. He found and captured Timmy, who was eating a soggy taco on the 111th floor of his skyscraper. He proceeded to silently shove a chloroform soaked towel in his face. Instantly Timmy was knocked out, which allowed Ghost to tie up and abduct him. On the way to a gladiatorial arena, Ghost stopped and bought a hotdog. Once at their destination, he waited for Timmy to wake up completely and untied him. Ghost then gave him a sword and forced Timmy to a duel (loser gets slowly quartered). Ghost and Timmy fought hard, blade to blade with sparks flying from the intensity. Eventually Ghost chops Timmy’s feet off rendering him unable to fight, then proceeds to quarter Timmy and atomizes the pieces with a small scale nuke.

Cue the rebuilding time lapse. 2 words later, the world is rebuilt and democracy is restored. Ghost returns to his life from eons ago, as a science teacher at a university that teaches anything and lives in the center of the planet. The way he did this is unknown and how he got a hot dog vender outside is even less known. END

Mpol 2023

Hello and welcome to my Mpol, I can’t wait to get started but first I am obligated to make this 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.

This year I have really grown as a learner, I now understand my limitations even if I strive to push them, and I am still working out how I can work with and really push my limits to creat good quality work on time.

I have learned and struggled with my goals and I think I have learned a valuable lesson in the fact that I am not ready to achieve extending in my work across all subjects, and that my time management on work needs improvement.

I not only have learned but I “failed” as well, and I failed a lot. I have struggled with getting my work done and struggled with focusing as well with this only slowly improving over this year. I also found trouble in my writing and struggled a lot in my blog posts with the time needed to write a good blog post increased to an un manageable amount of time giving me lots of trouble.

I think that I also improves greatly this year when it comes to my skills, I have gotten increasingly better at using sketches pro, basecamp, showbie and more. But I  still need to work on my blog writing, time management and my approach on school work.

In my learning plan this year, I aimed for extending in all classes and for profile 4s in my core competencies, this was a very ambitious goal and in my opinion I aimed to high, kinda like fighting the final boss before learning the game and I bit of a bit more than I could chew. While I will still aim for extending, I currently think I can only manage accomplished for the time being, I also will change the amount of profile 4s I want to hit this year as I don’t think I can make all of them. This will allow me to be more balanced for the rest of the year, giving me the time to balance my habits to create a good plan of learning, reflecting and celebrating my work so I can aim higher in the future and not aim to high to quickly. This will allow me to work in a way I can complete everything to my standards and it will allow me to create for I can be proud of and happy with the effort I put in. I also will adjust my self as well, and plan to turn of the xbox and the games for at least 1 or 2 days a week and just get my work done. I had a lot of trouble turning it all of and I think that just telling myself that I can level up some other time after completing my work will be helpful as I found myself often distracted by video games and the interned and distanced myself from my learning and reading, 2 things I really enjoy but overshadowed by things like replay loops in games (its a technique that keeps a gamer gaming to much) and not doing my work. My goal to eliminate this distraction will allow for better time management and work that I am proud of and not just some random assignment I completed or some random blog post I wrote. I also plan on deleting a large portion of my games to eliminate a small amount of the distractions that are more likely at distracting me.

In the next half at school, my goal is to create work that I’m proud of, that fits my standards, is at least accomplished or extending while showing me and my goals as a PLP learner and a student at Seycove. I want to be able to create habits for myself that will help me work and not distract me while creating systems for myself so I stay on top of my work so I am proud of my work and so I can keep learning and enjoying my hobbies in a way that I reflect myself as a person and learner completely and not just reflect parts of me as I am my own learner, and I reflect myself and my work and that is important to me.

Thanks for reading this Mpol or mid year presentation of learning

Revolution simulation

BOOM

Welcome to the time of imperialism, you are at the bottom of society, a mere peasant, you make a dollar a day doing the most amount of work just to be treated the worst with the most restrictions on what you can do and who you can speak to. Along with work every day you have to write 100 words on what you did or face jail. Your tax is 1 dollar so you can’t afford anything. 

Welcome to our world simulation, an opening to our new project about revolutions. Each of the 2 classes where spread into 2 sets of 4 groups one for each class, their was a group A,B,C and a group D. Each was a represent for a different position in old world society. A being the peasants, B the merchants, C the law and D the monarch. The simulation went across 5 days and was designed to end in a revolution. Every day group B would decide the prices of the stock of food, group C would collect taxes and group D would sit doin nothing while my group, group, group A was stuck doing all the labor to get taxed our only dollar that was given to us each day.

Day 1

We got the daily news along with the store prices, but it was out of our payroll. Then we had to create a writing on what we did. We also had some members arrested by group C, but they escaped when the guard was not looking. We also had to clean up trash and sharpen pencils as we where forced to do them. We also built an alliance with group B but it was not ready as group C taxed all their money along with all of ours and kept it even though it was supposed to go to the government. 


Our daily pay

Day 2

We got our news and group B raised costs but we bought half of the store anyways so we could make sure group D did not get everything this time, but still they made more than double. We also did less work today as we where tired of making nothing and barely surviving. We also allied with group B to so that was a plus and was trust was being built with Charlie R one of the 2 charlie’s in group D with the other being the king, King Charlie M, who tried his best to do as little as possible while expecting full support. We got taxed along with group B again and I stopped doing work in protest and group B’s money went into a fund to get our group, group A a better life as we had no chairs to sit on unlike the other groups except one member of group B until they bought him a chair. A document was also passed naming Cris the Goat, a position with no power except being the Goat and we where given more freedoms to walk freely as before we where stuck between the store and our work, group B also got freedom of speech something that was changed to cost my group $5 and added fair trial.

Day 3

Me and Andrew dismantled the jail but it was re instated as part of a revolt plan that we had activated that was built up yesterday, (we just took it back down again until they gave up). They also doubled our earnings so we could afford a bit more. Group B also adjusted the store so our group could buy it all and the other groups could afford nothing. We also stopped doing work and Tom bought his way to group C to help us remove it from power from the inside while Charlie R began building up his side of the revolt as he decided to help us get a democracy put in.

our earnings

Day 4

We kept the revolt going and group C was nearly powerless, I was jailed so I could not see the news and we kept the plan going and bought out the shop again so no tax money would be collected again as it was going to nothing as we could not raise enough for another chair. We also began the end of the revolt and the removal of the monarch starting with the signing of an alliance and a no kill between some of the groups so we could have a better chance at taking over. 

a recreation of the document

Final 2 days as they where kinda connected

We got rid of the virus and the king was abdicated by Charlie R; All of the monarch except Charlie R where exiled and Cris and Logan went with them. We started the democracy and Charlie R was voted into power. He had his first speech the next day but Cameron B killed the king and the monarch returned causing death and destruction killing almost everyone including me in a process that ruined everything we had worked for. 

A reflection on the simulation from my point as the bottom of the barrel

Our nation started out as a monarchy that was doing everything they could to abuse their power and live top tier lives while group A just suffered. They also made huge lines between the different classes in the kingdom. With group A starting limited to $1 a day and a $1 tax every day with no freedoms to move, group B had some freedom to move but also had to deal with large taxes and little more money. Group C had power over jailing and could basically do what they wanted while group D could do whatever they pleased. I also had to pick up all trash and sharpen pencils to write up 100 word paragraphs about what we did that day. Eventually we got raise to $2 so we could pay tax and live. At the start we could afford no luxuries until group B undermined the monarchs funding by charging our group the bare minimum and the other groups as much as possible. We also where treated the worst by group C until we removed all their power, I returned the favour by doing whatever I could to exploit loopholes and undermine them even though they just tried to make things go their way and where being unfair. We managed a successful revolt as well and re-built the kingdom into a democracy until the massacre of the entire kingdom in the end so the monarch could gain power again ending with them having nothing and me writing this post.

Thanks for visiting the time of our revolution

A chaotic trip; the power of geography

Hello everyone and welcome to the first Humanities blog post of the year, are you ready because it is time to activate the blog, 3! 2! 1! BOOM lets go.

Our project this sector was about geography, and the driving question was; how has the geography of the west shaped who we are?. To answer this we had to write an e book about it, I’ll embed it below, make sure to read it so you can understand the contents of this book.

Now we did not just answer the driving question normally it had to reflect Economy, History or Diversity. I chose economy, a decision that picked our groups for the presenting of our books in a mini exhibition so we can share what we have learned and the info we gathered on the field  study for this project, then we decided on this answer; The geography of the west has shaped us by allowing us to have a thriving economy with multiple industries that have helped us settle and develop.

Well you might be asking how did we gather this information?

Well here is a timeline of our learning, and a compilation of the photos on the trip we went on to help us learn.

At the start of the school year we launched this project quickly as the first group of 2 going on 2 similar yet different field studies would leave 3 days into the school year. So with haste we began studying geography and its 5 themes: Movement, Region, Place, Location and Human Environment interaction with our books containing info about the themes and examples to help people reading the book understand. I also was on the second group so I stayed back at school while group 1 was travelling and furthered our knowledge of geography and its themes and answered 13 questions to prove it. Then once the trip 1 got back we re launched our project to remind ourselves of the goal and what we needed to learn to do it. Then we left on the field study oh what a ride it was, so buckle up make sure your g suit is on correctly as the speed of the trip causes large amounts of g forces and we don’t want you to die. So off we go leaving behind the trip one learners with the same work we did. So get ready for the timeline

Day 1, We start our trip at 7 in the morning and begin to leave Seycove behind to travel across B.C. to Calgary, off we went excited yet nervous for all the learning (engage loud sighing) and began the drive to Kamloops with a quick stop for lunch at the Costco along with getting food for meals on the trip. Then we went to Craigellachie the home of the last spike that was hammered into the ground finishing the railway across the country going through Rogers pass the most dangerous site on the railway due to common damage to track and snow-slides that killed many until solutions like covering the tracks to protect them and eventually the Connaught tunnel one of the longest and formerly the longest in North America. Then we went to 3 valley gap (very cool place you should go) and learned more about the railway and got to see the collection of buildings and train cars including the one Pierre Trudeau rode across Canada in.

Day 2

We left 3 valley gap and bussed to Revelstoke to visit the railway museum and go on the live stream of the tracks (I did the floss in-front of at least 100 people. At Revelstoke we toured the railway museum to see how it was built along with the history of Revelstoke’s part in the railway along with a giant steam locomotive that was the pinnacle of technology when it came to steam locomotives. After that we bussed to the loop brook trail to learn about switch backs and see the stone trestles that held the switchback loops and the raised tracks up. Then we bussed to Smitty’s and had dinner. After that we bussed to the hostel had a very hostile environment in Calgary, unpacked and went to bed.

Day 3

We woke up and consumed some waffles for fuel in the morning before leaving for the Skyline luge as the mountain coaster that trip 1 went on was closed for the season. The luge involved downhill karting, its like go-karting but it runs off of gravity instead of an electric motor we got to ride down the track 4 times but I only went down 3 times, cough cough may or may not have missed a hairpin turn at high speeds, swerved left into the side and went flying out and scraped up my elbow and leg (we don’t talk about that part). Anyways after we went to A+ buffet and ate as much food as we could. Then we went back to the hostel and I got my arm properly patched up along with prep for going to beakerhead a art and science fair. At beakerhead we got to see the worlds biggest exoskeleton; Prosthesis crush things, after that we went to the hostel and slept.

Day 4

We got up really early in the morning and drove to the Frank Slide interpretive centre, we got to study the slide and what happened along with why and how it happened. Then we ate lunch before driving to head smashed in buffalo jump UNESCO world heritage site, we got to look at the jump and learn about its use and history, it was highly informational and I got to learn more about the plains and the people who used to and some still reside on. After we got to drive to the Nanton candy store, (trip 1 did not get to go the where highly upset that we did) before driving to dinner at buffalo wild wings before returning to the hostel.

Day 5

Today we woke up all fresh and exited for the Calgary zoo, a place we would be spending the day at. We got to sleep in a bit as well so that was a plus before consuming food. Then we walked to the zoo and entered in one of the side entrances. We toured the Africa zone along with viewing the gorillas and the baby gorilla, visiting the lemurs and someone nearly getting pooped on, we went to see the red panda and the jungle area. Later we visited the penguins after going through the airlock before exiting and going to the dino area and walking to the hostel and to bed with dinner. I also got by bandage of today so that was a plus.

Day 6

We went to Cave and Basin Historic site after packing up and leaving Calgary and beginning  the 3 day trip home, a hot spring heated from sulphur rising from underground heating the springs home to an endangered snail. It was at one point a tourist resort that was closed and named the first national park due to the snail in a region that led to Banff and Jasper national parks. Then we bussed to moraine lake after eating lunch and did a 6 hour hike up to the larch trees before going to lake Louise, eating dinner, checking in and going to bed.

Day 7

We went hiking this morning even though we where tired and ready to go home, after we ate lunch and bussed to Golden and went to the skybridge a new adventure park, with 2 suspension bridges a zip line across the area and a high ropes, their also is a mountain coaster and swing in the process of construction. Before checking in to our last night on the trip in golden. 

Day 8

We woke up and everything was normal, we ate breakfast and then went to our rooms. We where packing up when we where told to stay in our rooms, this confused us but we listened and waited while watching comedy and gaming. Later we where told to go outside, outside we learned that the bus’s transmission had broken and we needed to walk to the bus pickup area to wait for a coach, we did and then spent 8 hours driving straight to Vancouver, missing some info, but still having a highly successful trip.

When we got back we got right into learning the 3 aspects of geography and how the geography of the west shaped that aspect; History, economy and diversity, these played a huge part in the second part of the project as they decided how we would end the project and who with. First we learned about how we used to use our land and what we did with it, with essential things like the CPR and the killing of buffalo. Economy; tree farming, mining and fishing. Diversity; the diverse amount of people who came to Canada to build the railway and work across the country. Chopping down trees and mining our resources also brought many people looking for jobs in the past and present creating our culturally diverse society. 

Then we kept on working, building the ebook you saw earlier and each of us has one. We also each chose one of the 3 aspects of geography and where split up depending on what we chose. I chose economy, the largest group in my opinion. Then came the exhibition, we had all just finished our books and chosen everything we would need and wear for the exhibition, we spent the afternoon prepping the rooms and  had just completed those along with  dress rehearsal. Then the 2 dressed the best in our group went outside to greet everyone before the first video was shown. If your wondering video??, well each group had to make a video explanation of the groups aspect, while others where separated and grouped up to make an intro and 2 fun videos each with their own different group. One of those was intro group who made an introduction to the exhibition while the fun groups each made a video of the best moments of the school trip to end off the exhibition. At the exhibition we presented our books to our parents and any one else who wanted to see our books. Before showing the videos and ending of the exhibition and finishing off the project with last adjustments to the books and writing this post. 

Conclusion

In conclusion this project was a good project, it was a good way to learn about geography and the school trip was very fun, I got to see a lot of things and visit some new places I have not been. The exhibition was also fun and a good way to show our work and present it and give some insight into our work. Even with the craziness that was the school trip it was still good and I did learn a lot even if we where stuck with one small assignment to learn while the first trip group was travelling. So it made for an informational but chaotic start to the year just getting the info into the book, so in my opinion this project was successful.

Boom 

The information bomb has gone off

See you next launch.

  

Handle with care (I know its late)

Hi and welcome to a late blog post for Science PLP, if your wondering where Simatics went, we are completing regular math now and only have PLP Science now.

Now this project was all about the cycle of nature and how humans effect it. Our goal was to answer this question; In what ways have human beings impacted the delicate cycles within our local ecosystems and how can we lessen our impact? We would use our keystones to answer this and to study a different part of this.

We got to study, food webs, ecosystems, bio accumulation/ bio magnification, wildlife management to answer this. And create these posts below to help support our answer to the driving question as our final product.

But you must be saying, how did you get all the information for this? Well this is it.

Keystone one; food webs, now you probably know what a food chain is (if not, its a pattern of what animal eats what until you hit the end of the chain), a food web is a set of these that intersect, representing who eats what in a certain ecosystem (a place where a group of animals live in balance). To show our knowledge, we made an interactive version in scratch.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/734139060/

Then we studied ecosystems along with bio accumulation and bio magnification. For those of you who don’t know bio accumulation and bio magnification, is the process on how animals get micro plastics inside themselves. to show this we had to draw our own ecosystem (I lost the photo, will try to find it) and a short GIF about bio accumulation and magnification.

the GIF

https://youtu.be/OhKbIG0Qmg0

Then as the final thing we studied before moving on to our final product; Wildlife management. This is when us humans intervene to save species of animals from extinction, this is usually effective and helpful. To help learn this in groups we studied a real world version of this and made a video in the form of a “news interview” to prove our learning was successful. I have it linked below (also thanks to andrew, gwenyth and blondie, and for the cameo from Charlie R, all of their blogs will be linked below when i find them and you should go visit them).

https://youtu.be/-Fr5sOrSwkM

A conclusion

This project was a great start for the year, I got to learn more about animals and their habitats, co-exist with each other, and interact with society. This also happened at the same time as our trip to Calgary yet I still managed to learn and get my work done while staying on task. This was fun and manageable, making this very enjoyable with a good lead to the final product, I can’t wait to learn more this year. – Thanks for reading

Links to the other blogs

Charlie R, Its not a front

Comic Cells

Hi

I just finished my last simatics project, it was about how cells react. We built these comics to solve the driving question: “how do cells and disease react”. Our end goal was a comic about a virus and cells of our choosing.

Time line

Day 1: We launched the project and watched a movie on how cells react

Day 2: We began our reaserch on cells.

Day 3: We chose what the virus we would be reaserching; mine was sars-covi-2.

Day 4: We made a wanted poster on the chosen disease.

Day 5: We continued our reaserch.

Day 6 We learned more about cells with a video and did a test on cells.

Day 7 We began our storyboards for out comic.

Day 8 We finished our storyboards.

Day 9 – 12 We wrote our comics.

 

All class time is used for learning and creating a comic book story about cellular processes and/or diseases.                                                                                                         I did a great job at this. I managed to complete all 18 drawings with detail and a story. I think I could have done a better job at this and added more drawings if I had put more detail on my storyboard. If I could improve on this I would as I think there is always room for improvement.

Correct vocabulary and accurate diagrams are used.  At least 10 interesting science vocabulary words are included in the story.                                                                            I think I did a decent job at this. I had 10 sciency words and had detailed drawings. My story was complete and clear and had  a good storyline,

Cell/bacteria/virus characters interact in a scientific way. Symptoms and logical outcomes of the chosen disease/cellular/body process are integrated into the story.     I had correct outcomes such as the disease spreading through the body and attacking the lungs and cells. But I also showed the spread from person to person. My comic was accurate but the art was completely fictional as I decided it would be funnier even though disease is not a joke.

The comic

In conclution this project was very fun. I had fun doing the art and studying about covid. I also learned alot about cells and their processes. I would do this project again as I love comics and enjoyed reading some of my friends posts. I would do this project again for sure.

thanks

The Spring Exibition

Hi we just had a spring  exibition.

The spring exibition was about how we learn and that process. We where split into groups and the grade 9s also where doing this project with us except the diference is that they led the project. I was sorted into the tech for learning group something that suited me.

Timeline

Day 1: We started by reading the ideas that the grade 9s had but they where not so clear and good so we where confused.

Day 2: The grade 9s made the plan more improved and clear. They also began describing their plan. We also began brainstorming what we  would do.

Day 3: We began building and working on our presentations. I decided to show how I learned on scratch and began improving my game so it ran more smoothly and began writing my presentation.

Day 4: I finished my improvements and added temporary additions for the exibition. We also finished all the props needed for this exibition. This included an iPad themed door, app icons that would go around the room, sighs and the proficiency scale wich is how we are graded.

Exibition day: We began after school. We started setting up. Then we finished were we would set up and finished up every thing needed to present and printed it. We had food and multiple interactive stations that where used in this. We also had the grade 9s vibrant videos playing along with the grade 9s documentaries.

The exibition started at 5 30 and ended at 7 30. I had a decent amount of people visit my station and the whole process was very smooth and fun. I got to show my game to people and also enjoy the fun experience the caos another exibition is.  After we cleaned up and left.

Links to my group

http://blog44.ca/charlier

http://blog44.ca/danielb

http://blog44.ca/jessieg

http://blog44.ca/makenziet

http://blog44.ca/makair

http://blog44.ca/magnusk

http://blog44.ca/kallumr

http://blog44.ca/francisr

http://blog44.ca/bent

http://blog44.ca/caleg

http://blog44.ca/erikb

http://blog44.ca/faiths

http://blog44.ca/inesm

http://blog44.ca/theryns

http://blog44.ca/maxl

http://blog44.ca/noahd

http://blog44.ca/patricj

Here is also a link to my scratch game

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/655830321/

Along with some photos of our work

Thanks

TPOL 2022

Hi to start here is the tPol declaration of learning

“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.”

This will answer the driving question of this presentation: Why I feel I am ready for grade 9

accomplishments

What I have accomplished, this year I have accomplished so much and learned many things. Mostly how to use different apps on my iPad efficiently and effectively. This will prove to be very useful. I also did well on some projects like the Ultimate Design Challenge. In that project I worked hard to figure out how to properly design a model of an Xbox in tinker cad a 3D design app. I had to find a way to calculate an ovals dimensions as we did not learn that and managed to do that. I also used over 2 thousand shapes and the result was very realistic.

How I failed

One major fail was DI. We had a lot of problems with communication and colaberation. Mainly due to people nevery replying or checking pings and messages to communicate and set up times to work. But we managed a good story even if part of our challenge had failed showing that we could still work together and pull through. But I still learned from this and next DI I know what I need to get my team to work hard on and what points are the most common to fail and to be focused on more. I definitely plan to work harder and better next year next year.

Frustrations

Mostly with my attention span due to having an iPad right in front of me I would get distracted a lot and had a lot of problems. But I found that with taking a break from gaming for a bit and deleting all of them off my iPad that helped. I now know how to balance gaming and school and don’t game as much as I used to and have a better view of when its time to work and when to game. I also got better at focusing and don’t need to rely on having a very strong constricting ADHD medication and even wrote this post without my meds. I also found after practicing hard and  changing my meds to a new type in combo with a decreasing old type I can be more myself and work harder with for some reason an increased attention span. I plan to work more on this as I want to be able to work hard without getting distracted as much.

I also find PLP teaches me more and classes are way more interesting and a lot less boring than normal school work. (I still enjoy that once in a while, I know I’m a nerd and proud of it). My favourite project was the Chemistry coding project as it was very fun and I still am working on my scratch game as I find it so fun and interesting. I learned a lot about scratch and had so much fun. I don’t think there will be another project so interesting as coding is now one of my favourite things. But I think that I found nothing boring this year as I find PLP classes very interesting and fun. I think that my work is also better than my old work and has more content and fun. The classes are also fun as we get to do more than old boring textbook work.

Now to answer the driving  question

I feel I am ready for grade 9 as I have worked hard and had a very successful year. I feel that the amount of success and evaluation has reached its limit for grade 8 and that I am ready for grade 9. I also feel that I have learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I also feel that I am ready to learn more and am prepared for the challenge of grade 9 and want to face it.

That is why I feel I am ready for DI

Thanks