Month: April 2019

Learning about me!

Everyone asks themselves what they want to be when they got older. People always thing about what pays the highest, what is the funnest, and what there dream lifestyle would be and how a job would fit into that. I have done this every time I wanted to think about where I see myself in the future, but until I took the My Blue Print survey’s, I really don’t think I was doing it properly!

In Maker class, (which doubles as a health education class) we got to ask our selves deep questions to see all kinds of outcomes, such as: What kind of learner I am, What personality type I am, What job would best suit me, etc. Through this blog I will dive into these questions and the answers that I received from them and see how they will help me in the future!

The first survey I took was the Learning Styles survey. This survey talked to you about which learning style you would find suits you best. (Kinaesthetic, Visual, and Auditory). Surprisingly our class was quite divided. There was at least 3 people that strived in all of the categories. Now I have always believed that I was a kinaesthetic learner, because I though when I learned hands on I took more in, which is still true, but the survey told me that I was actually a visual learner.

I actually totally believe this is true. I could not learn how to build a table by being given a already built table and then being told to re build it, (kinaesthetic), I also could not listen to someone tell me how to build a table, (auditory), but I could totally build a table if someone showed me how to build a table, (visual). For the learning styles survey, I think that it was correct, and with this knowledge know I can transition this to my future. If when in university my Professor is teaching the class auditory style, and I don’t understand what is happening, I could know to ask the professor to try to explain the concept visually for a better understanding. 

The second quiz I took was the personality quiz. I scored the ISFP (the composer). This personality is made up of I which stands for Introverted. Introverted meaning comfortable alone, when working and when with others. A introverted person can be very reflective and reserved as well. I didn’t quite agree with the personality quiz in this part, because I think of myself as a bit more open to group situations, and I think that would lean me towards being extroverted. The S in ISFP stands for sensing. I use my sensing ability’s to gather information, which I agree with. The F stands fro Feeling. When decision making I prefer to use subjective criteria, then objective criteria. This just means that I base it on finding an area where everyone can succeed, instead of a standard. For the last part of the personality quiz I got a P which stands for perceiving. What perceiving means is that I am open to new information and as well as being flexible and spontaneous. It states that a perceiving person can go with the flow, which I feel does not really apply to me. I feel that I need a bit of planning and more time to understand things that are coming up, instead of just going along with it. In the end the personality quiz didn’t really express who I am, and what my personality type is.

Through this survey I sort of realized that these answers were not prescribed to me because I went through numerous steps and many interviews, instead I just typed how much I agree or disagree to close ended questions, and then a website spit out a answer based on the way I answered maybe 20 questions. So these answers are not set in stone, but they are helpful and do give a little light into ones leaning. 

On the contrary these quizzes, right or wrong, really help us as young adults to figure out who we are and who we want to be. The reason for this is because we are now forced to talk about it. We took the test, we then may disagree or agree with the test. If we agree, then perfect you just realized something about yourself, but if you disagree, then you are now curious to see where you belong and who else is the same. By taking this next step you are figuring out who you are yourself, and in that way the surveys are quite helpful! 

There were 3 more surveys I took, the interests the knowledge and the motivations. I felt that the above 2 surveys were more important and will help to shape my life a bit more, because they are important to know, and shape who you are as a person. Though each survey focuses on a topic that will greatly affect your future! 

In the interests survey I scored a counsellor, because I care about others and want to hear about what people have to say. I feel this fits well because I am very passionate, and if I hurt someone else, I immediately feel terrible and I feel like I just hurt myself. So I feel that councillor is a perfect fit! 

In the knowledge survey I scored language arts which really just means I am into english and socials. This makes a lot of sense because I really like to write and am a big fan of books, stories and reading! I have always wanted to be a journalist, and so I can see how I got this score on this survey. Knowledge plays a big role in your future because if you understand your stronger subjects in school, you can focus on subjects that may be more challenging, in this you are making your self a more well rounded person that is can be more successful. 

On the last survey I was told that I am motivated by success. I totally agree with this, for example if I am trying to run a half marathon, of corse completion of the half marathon would be the ultimate achievement, but along the way to make myself continue to push myself I will set goals that are achievable, and then I feel better because I feel like I am improving, and pushing myself past these goals. For the future knowing your motivation is huge. Knowing that I am driven to do my best by setting goals and being able to achieve them is very important. For example if I want to do well in a class that I’m not doing to well in, I can reset my corse by setting small goals and achieving them!

Now taking all this information and planning my future. I have learned a lot about myself through these surveys, wether they are correct or not. I really enjoy learning about myself because I want to be able to help myself in the future, when careers come into play, and postsecondary. Now each of these surveys helps me in there own way. Each of these surveys cover topics that are important to us, and I know I am better off now that I have addressed these topics and experienced them!

 

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The peoples podcast

In humanities 10 we have been trying to expand our learning by exploring minority groups in Canada, and how different their experiences are, compared to ours. Our driving question for this project was how has the Canadian experience been different for minorities.

 

We covered many different ways to express our learning through this project. We did buckets of research, interviewed people on our minority topics, wrote a essay, and made a podcast. We began our process of creating a podcast (becuase the podcast was the end goal) by sifting out the minority groups that interest us. I chose to do some research on Sikhism, because I was interested to see what the sikh religion is like, and what sikh values are. I also did research on Korean people in Canada, and Buddhism in Canada. When I got placed into my podcast group we chose Sikhism to do our podcast on, and I am very happy that we did! My group consisted of Isy, Daniel and I. The next step was to do research on your topic with your group, and to learn about facts and stories about the topic that will lead to a better understanding when interviewing. The next step, like I said is finding the right people to interview. It wouldn’t make sense if I interviewed a old man who is atheist on sikh religion, would it?! So my group and I found 2 teachers at my school that identify, or identified with the Sikh religion. Ms. Bhangoo identified with the Sikh religion, and Ms. Parmar is a part of the Sikh religion.

 

The interview with Ms. Bhangoo went incredible well, she was a awesome interviewee, and told us many eye opening things about her experience with Sikhism. I was blow away by what she had to say, and only after the interview did I truly understand what Ms. Maxwell wanted us to learn about through this project. 

Ms. Parmar wanted us to meet, and interview someone at her local Gurdwara, who she felt was very educated on the topic of Sikhism. Isy and I ended up skipping gym and driving with Ms. Maxwell to the Gurdwara near the Second Narrows Bridge.

At the Gurdwara we met Puran Singh Gill. Puran has worked at UBC for the majority of his career. He has his masters degree in Studies in the Sikh religion, and is very well educated. Puran really opened our eyes to the more historic and statistic facts about Sikhism.

We had a 40 minute interview with Puran and I personally found it very hard to edit down because everything he said was fascinating, much like Ms. Bhangoo’s. These interviews opened my eyes to the Sikh religion up close and personal. They showed us what it would really be like to be apart of the Sikh religion, and this is just one of the many examples of how PLP has helped me to better understand a topic or subject in school. I really needed to go out and interview people who have had or have ties to the Sikh religion, and I got the chance to. 

After our interviews we split up the parts and began to write a finer script that ties all our points together, because remember this podcast is about the Canadian experience for Sikh people in Canada. Isy, Daniel and I, wrote up our scripts separately, then recorded them on our own and I edited the clips together. We realized soon after completing this edit that it really did not sound very nice when we were all broken up like we were. The second draft brought a while new start to our podcast. We re-recorded the whole thing, we decided to use a bigger mic and record together and break up our lines so the podcast flowed better, we added music, and we added a better introduction to our podcast. The second draft was much better I thought and I was really proud of my work as editor. 

Now while all of this was happening we were also writing a essay. Our essay followed the same sort of path as the podcasts, but it dove into a more personalized tale, that you as a writer could relate to. The question that we, as writers, had to answer was: “How do our positions impact our experiences with literature?”

The position options were things like experiences, gender, race, religion, age, etc. I chose to focus down on family relationships, which sounds a bit narrow, but was really quite vast. I spoke about how the relationships that a person shares with their grandparents, their parents, and their siblings, alters the way they interpret literature. 

Basically what I’m saying is that if you, for example, don’t have a very strong relationship with your grandparents, and you don’t see them often, it may be harder to relate to literature where the grandparent and the grandchild hold a very tight bond. Through this the reader would build a different perspective of the relationship then someone who, for example, saw their grandparents every day. 

Through these 2 projects I have learned a lot. Firstly a lot about the minority groups in Canada, and poorly there have been treated. I learned that Sikh people as a whole are on the terrorist list in Canada. I also learned about the ins and outs of Sikhism and how they project themselves compared to how they are depicted real life. I learned about Chinese culture through Jade Peony, which shared the story of a Chinese family living in Chinatown, Vancouver in the 1930-40’s. I’m also learned about podcast editing and how to create something that people really want to listen to. 

In the end I feel successful in creating a podcast that reflects the knowledge that my group and I gained, and I hope that you enjoy it!

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Cell phone slope!

Recently in scimatics we have been exploring the costs for phone plans with when you need to roam for calls outside of canada. To start our work off we decided to pick the companies that we would be researching during the project. We chose to research Rogers, Bell and Telus. 

 

The plans we found for each are as follows:

Rogers = $2.00 per minute roaming, and a starting cost of $165

Telus = $1.50 per minute roaming, and a starting cost of $180

Bell = $1.45 per minute roaming, and a starting cost of $195

The next step was to turn this information into a slope intercept equation. The slope intercept equation makes it so that you can graph the equation. In the slope intercept equation  each letter has a meaning they are : Y=MX+B.

Y = the grand total, what you want to find out.

M = the slope intercept.

X = the first variable, the amount you have per will have.

B = the Y intercept

Here are the equations for the cell phone companies.

Rogers: y = 2.00x + 165

Telus: y = 1.50x + 180

Bell: y = 1.45x + 195

We then graphed these equations to see the slope of them. These are the graphs that we made. 

Rogers is purple, Telus is red, and bell is green. The best cell company, most affordable, would be Bell after 300 minutes roaming!

The final step of the project was to make a keynote to show our leaning to the class. Our keynote was a simple step by step version of this blog post. To make our project unique, Morgan and I decided to create a rap to help other people understand our project and alos to create a more unique lens on this project. 

Here is our keynote

 

 

Throughout this project I used a few curricular competencies. I would like to mention what they are and how I used them below!

The first competency I used was explore, analyze and apply mathematical ideas using reason, technology and other tools. I used this competency because throughout the project I was constantly learning about analyzing new mathematical ideas such as the slope equation, and then applying it to our project, and finding where our facts and ideas would fit into the equation.

The second competency I used was represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial and symbolic forms. I used this competency because for my end project I was able to show my learning in many different forms. We had concrete forms of our math in the form of graphs and equations and to spice it up a bit, we decided to do a rap, and rap the math to have a more creative form of our project!

The final curricular competency that I used was using mistakes as opportunities to advance learning. Throughout the project we made a few mistakes with our math, but instead of getting down, or continuing to present math that was incorrect, we decided to ask around and figure out how to properly present the math in graph form!

Thank you for reading!

adlih

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Destination imagination provincial tournament

Destination imagination happens every year. This was my second experience with DI. I would like to talk a bit about last year to help my reflection with comparaisons. 

Last year was my first year with DI, I was a bit nervous because of what people had said about it, which mostly just it was a crazy amount of work, and that it sometimes didn’t turn out so well and people could get harsh. I got my group and was a little nervous to get started. Our DI team did not succeed very far last year. We had our priorities in total wrong order, and ended up coming in fifth for provincials, which didn’t really bother us because we felt we had actually done worse! 

Switching back to this year, we only had 1 other competitor in our group, and they were grade 9 students in PLP, so we knew them all quite well. This point will play a big role later on in the post.

I felt we had an exceptionally good DI presentation. We had the the “Game On” challenge, (If you want to read more about our first steps and the regionals competition the blog post is here!) and for our challenge we chose to focus on the Game Of Life as our game, and have humour integrated in. Our perspective on the challenge was a humorous approach on stereotypes and situations that you get put while playing the game of life. An example being we tried to make many jokes on the marriage aspect of life, because you can’t leave life without being married! We also made jokes about retirement and juggling everything as a adult. 

Kai, Lucas and I during our Provincials Preformance

 

We lost a team member for our provincial tournament. Jessie was not able to make it to the tournament, so we had to plan around this. It put our team in a bit of a tight spot because Jessie was very important to our story and was definitely the main character. She had also memorized the whole script in the case that someone else had forgotten their lines, she could prod them with a line of her own to help the presentation move along. 3 days before the final presentation, we had to start to prepare without Jessie. We all took a bit of her lines, but Marshall took the most, becoming the main character. We all worked really hard for the last few days to prepare for a presentation, staying late after school one day, and working in our own time to remember the lines. 

 

Then out of the blue Destination Imagination just rolled right up. I wasn’t feeling to hot the morning of DI, but I felt a bit better later on in the day, but our presentation was almost right away in the morning. Our presentation was at 9:20 am, so we ran through our lines for awhile then presented. All things considered our presentation went really well, we had a few stutters and parts where people forgot their lines, but aside from that we were able to make people laugh, which felt really good. It felt good to get the presentation out of the way, and then all that was left was the instant challenge. I watched quite a few performances and ate lunch, and then it was our time for our challenge. The challenge its self felt like it went well, but afterwards I stepped foot into a situation that I have learned much from, and hope to try to avoid as much as possible in the future. 

 

I was speaking to another team about the instant challenge, we were caught, and disqualified. Talking about the instant challenge is against the rules and so we were disqualified from the whole competition. 

What I have learned from this is very important. I learned that when you know someone is upset, or angry, it feels worse to put it off and ignore it, then addressing it and trying to figuring out a win win situation. What I mean by this is, if you know you’ve done something wrong think about how that makes you feel, and then instead of being scared or fearful, address those feelings and find a way to let the other person know your sorry, or how you feel about that situation. I feel bad that I had to learn this lesson with the fate of my DI team resting on my shoulders, but I think we all may have learned. 

I also learned that even though DI is something that is extra curricular, and we can sometimes feel a little negative toward it, there are other people trying to enjoy it and to appreciate it, and are putting work into it, even if someone doesn’t want to be there, they have to realize that other people have really tried to put work in, and tried to make this a incredible experience for us, and that one should appreciate their work and effort. 

The last thing I learned is actually from PGP, and Ms. Willemse reminded me of it. If I had gone ahead and put my self in Ms. Willemse and Mr. Hughes shoes the outcome of the day may have been different. This is very important for the future and I don’t think I will ever forget it. 

All in all its the journey that matters not the destination, and even though it ended with a sour taste, the whole experience was actually very helpful, and informative. 

So in the end I learned a lot am a more educated person because of it. 

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