Category Archives: Maker

A Vision For Tomorrow

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As is the PLP tradition, every winter we have the Winter Exhibition, a night in which students of all grade level complete a different project and put it on display for the community. And as is another tradition (grade 8 exhibition), we had a week to complete this project. But this year, the teachers tried a new thing. Instead of starting a completely new project for the exhibition, we were working with an idea that we had been for a while, ‘Why Does It Take A Crazy Person To Change The World?’. And when I say a while, I mean a while. As Luca put it, we had all ‘overstood’ this topic. We had been learning about this for several weeks, and it came full circle. 

To start the unit, we created a short PechaKutcha presentation, a term I will explain later. These presentations were based on people from Apple’s ‘Think Different’ campaign. This, as we now know, was a precursor to what we’d be doing at the exhibition. 

As I mentioned before, here’s where I’m going to explain what that weird word is. So, a PechaKucha is a form of presenting where the slides auto play, which you may not think would be an issue. The real issue was, each slide lasted for 20 seconds, and there were 20 slides. 20×20, seven minutes in total. The first ones we did, mine on Jim Henson, only had 9 slides, and lasted for about 2-3 minutes (if I remember correctly, like I said it was a long time ago). 

Another key part of this project was our Seattle Field school, which I (will) explain in more detail in another post. But as an overview, we studied people (before the trip) and visited places (related to said people) to gain a better understanding of our question. All these deliverables, including an essay and a video, helped us ‘overstand’ this topic. 

As little or much as this may seem, I believe it was really important for us to have all this knowledge going into our exhibition. Because as you’ll see, our knowledge was what got us through to the other side. 

Okay, now that we got through the history lesson, we can go to the spectacle that was the exhibition. Our task for the exhibition was to take all that we learned over the Cray Cray Yay Yay unit and create a PechaKucha presentation on ‘Why Does It Take A Crazy Person To Change The World’. Along with creating these 7 minute presentations, we also had to set up our room, which happened to be the back of the library, but I’ll come back to this later. 

Creating our PechaKucha presentations were, not difficult, but challenging. We were tasked with using all of our own images and have most of them be from Seattle, which, at the time, I thought was mental and going to ruin my project, but I think really made it stronger. I had a solid connection to the picture, I knew exactly what was in it and what the purpose of it was. It did take a while for me to choose images that actually fit, and it was a bit stressful. But we had several drafts and lots of feedback, so I am pretty proud of how it turned out. 

That was more of the maker side of things. Now, let’s talk about the ‘dire events’ that befell us on our journey, and their reason; the script and speaking. The script was one of the most difficult parts of our presentation. And we weren’t even supposed to have a script; only bullet points. In my first draft, I did try this. I didn’t really work out, though. I found myself saying ‘um’ to often, and seeming like I didn’t know what I was saying. So I did write a script to practice with, which was beneficial in the end. The controversial part of this was we had several plan-changes, which many people took very seriously. In the first round, we were allowed to have our iPads up with us when we were presenting in front of a podium, with presenter notes open, so we knew what to say. Next, we weren’t going to have a podium, and our iPads had to be on the ground, with our notes there. Finally, we had no notes, no nothing. Just us, up there, with a monitor on the ground showing what was being presented and our memorized ‘notes’ in our heads. Many people had problems with this, said that the teachers were being unfair, changing their minds. I do understand where this is coming from, seeing as the last revision was just days before the exhibition. But I found as I practiced my script, I got a better understanding of what I was saying, and articulated my words. 

The hardest thing that I found was the public speaking. I’m not a great public speaker, I get very anxious standing by myself in front of people. In the days leading up to the exhibition, my stress kept getting higher the more I thought about it. But as soon as I got up there and started speaking, that all melted away. I knew what I was saying, and I was passionate about the message I was getting across. Everything kind of fit together once I started speaking. And as far as I know, it went great. I didn’t say um a lot, and I used hand gestures. I really think I conveyed my message, which I’m super proud of. 

The last thing I will talk about was the room, which earlier I touched on. So, as you probably know, at the Winter Exhibition, each class has to set up a room to present in. Most times, you have to set up places where to display each persons project, and it gets kind of crowded. But for us, since we were presenting one at a time, we didn’t have to do that. With Jessie as our unofficial leader, we set up the Crazy Café, a lounge-like setting with comfy chairs, stools, tables, and even coffee and tea. It was an amazingly chill room, great for de-stressing pre and post presentation. For PLP 10, the exhibition was a huge success!

Overall, I thought this project went really well. I’m really proud of my PechaKucha, I think it went really well. I also got to work on my group work skills, when setting up the room. One thing I think I would do different next time is add a little more diversity into my work. It would’ve been nice to include at least one woman. Another thing is my photos. As confident as I was, if I’d known in Seattle that we’d need these photos, I would’ve probably tried harder to get those photos. But I’m proud of my work, and excited about how many people I actually got to tell my ‘crazy’ story to!

End of SBC

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For the past 10 weeks, wow it’s been 10 weeks, anyways. For the past ten weeks our class has been participating in the Student Blogging Challenge. Every week there is a different topic and different ways to complete that week’s task. This will be my final SBC Post, and will reflect on my experience with this and all that I learned. 

One thing I learned throughout this experience was how many classes around the world blog. I never really thought of blogging as a school thing until PLP, but still, I thought we were weird. Now, I see that tons of people all around the world blog for school!

My favourite post was the Your Choice Post. I had a lot of fun animating my story about Gerald and Norbert. The story really developed as I went along which was cool. First, it was going to be a story about 3 elephants needing to cross a bridge. Then, it was one elephant who blew the troll down into the gorge to get across. Next, I decided it would be a love story. Because of that, I didn’t want Gerald to be cruel. So he apologized when he moved the troll. All Gerald wanted to do was to be on time for his date with Norbert!

I think the coolest part of the challenge was being able to connect with people from around the world. I visited blogs from tons of different countries, and people did the same to me! (Most of the visits  from Canada are me because every time I have to make a post I have to visit my site)

This was an interesting blip in the timeline of my life, and I’m curios to see if we’ll be doing the next one.

Week 9 of the Student Blogging Challenge

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This week’s Student Blogging Challenge was all about coding. Now, I didn’t know much about code other than the stuff we did on Swift Playgrounds in Grade 8. This was super fun, so I did all the challenges!

The First Challenge was about posting a comment for Alex. Alex is a coder who works for Incsub. He is visually impaired, and works with having sites readable for visually impaired individuals. I think it’s really cool how he hasn’t let anything get in his way of achieving his goal. This was my comment.

Fingers crossed for a response! I’ll update this if I get one.

The next thingamajig I did was the Hour of Code activity. In this, we pretty much went on this website and did a coding activity. I decided to do the flappy birds one, because I thought it looked cool.

This one was pretty easy to understand, easy enough that I got it right away. You had to have commands and stuff. It was pretty cool.

In the end, I got to code my own Flappy Birds game! Try it out!

I also got a certificate, which was pretty awsome.

The final task was to do some HTML coding. So, I decided to manually make links for this post!

Usually, I would just select the text, press link, and put in the URL. What I did this time was more time consuming, but was a lot more fun. I used the cheat sheet from the SBC challenge to help me out.

Yup, it was very time consuming. But now, if something ever happens to thiw website, I’ll know what to do. Until then, I think I’m gonna stick with the link button!

Gerald and Norbert!

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So for this week’s task, it was kinda interesting. We had either a week to catch, up or a free choice. I decided to do free choice because I’ve finished all the other ones. And I also decided to make an animation!

This is a story about Gerald and Norbert. Gerald and Norbert are in love, and, well, anyways, just watch the video. 

I made this using a super simple tool called FlipaClip. It’s very user friendly, and you get to make awesome little animations. For the music I used Splice, and voila. Now you can make your own animations!

Live Loops!

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This past week, we’ve been working with a medium we haven’t really in the past: Music. 

Garage Band is a really cool app where you can make awesome music. It’s really simple. You just go to garage band, create a new project, and go to live loops!

Once you’re in live loops, you can play around with it. You honestly can’t make a mistake. Anyone can make music using live loops. I really like the Rock loops.

One really awesome way to customize your songs is to add different loops to it. You can add different instruments, sounds, and even vocals to your tracks.

To make my song, I used the Rock loops. Adding different sounds, I customized it to make my own great tune!

I had a lot of fun with this project. Now that I know how to make easy music, I can enhance my videos even more.

Commenting on Others Posts!

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For this week’s Student Blogging Challenge, as well as writing a commenting guideline, we had to comment on 3 different peoples posts. I chose three random people, and away I went. 

The first blog I commented on was The Life Without “R”… by Raegan Riley. I chose to comment on this blog because I thought it was cool how they went about doing the challenge. Instead of doing a graphic, as I did, they wrote about quality comments. 

This is a quality comment because of a few things. Firstly, I formatted the comment as a letter. Second, I complimented their blog and said what I liked about it. Finally, I gave them some feedback. 

The second blog I commented on was Celeste’s Blog. I wanted to comment on their blog because I thought it was super cool that they completed this on paper, instead of doing it on a device. 

I though this was a good comment, because it was formatted like a letter, along with the first comment. I also asked a question, that may start a conversation. I hope, if they hadn’t thought of doing it in an app, that I can tell them about some cool apps they can use. 

The last blog I commented on was Preston’s Blog. This was a really cool post. I wanted to comment on Preston’s blog because I really liked their graphic. 

This was a quality comment for several reasons. It was formatted as a letter. Also, I tried to help Preston by pointing out how I saw it as blurry. 

I hope my comments help these people, and that they start conversations!

BORSCHT! A Story

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Recreating videos is hard. But this project matched it. Welcome to; Project Live Event. 

For this project, we had to film a live event. This is really useful, because a lot of the time when we go on field studies, like Calgary and Ottawa, we need to film stuff that is happening in the moment. Now, unlike the Recreation Video Project, we only have one chance to get that perfect shot. 

You can’t really use a storyboard, because you can’t be 100% sure of what is going to happen, and when. So instead, we made an Action Plan. Using Notes, we wrote down all the shots and points we wanted to capture. This was very helpful, because we knew what to film, and while editing, we knew what shots we had to work with. 

I decided to film Borscht: A Story because I thought it would have a very interesting story and, well, it would be fun. And it was! I love borscht, and making borscht, so it combined my interests with a school project. My mom was great about it too, so it worked out great! Except we had a bit of an issue with the slowcooker, which you will see in the video. 

Then, it came time to edit, using iMovie. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Turned out, I actually had about 20 minutes of footage, and the videos could only be 2 minutes long. I had to cut a lot of footage, and trim the stuff I had. In the end, I did get it to 2 minutes, but just barely. 

Honestly, I was pretty happy with my first draft. Other than the music, which I though didn’t really match, it turned out great. I never got any critique, so I just edited it slightly and bam. Draft two.

I had a lot of fun with this project. Other than the slightly stressful part about only having one shot, it was a really cool project. I definitely learned a lot, and I’ll be able to use these skills on our next field study!

“And Action, Wait, *thunder* Okay Go”

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In PLP, we make a lot of videos, which is a good skill to have. Usually, we have to create everything from a story spine, to music for the videos. But for this project, we didn’t. 

Project Recreation was a project where we literally, just, recreated a video. Our first video was chosen for us, Catch by Joe Haltzer. Everything was supposed to be exactly the same, with angles, costumes, editing, music, all that jazz.

I was in a group with Tamara and Kai. For this video, it was not a requirement for us to make a storyboard, so we didn’t. We just had our script, and the video. While filming, we decided to join another group. We each had only one male in our group, and the videos needed two. So we filmed together, and edited separately. Honestly, looking back, I don’t think that was a great idea, but that’s in the past. Learn from your mistakes. Anyways. 

Editing is not one of my skills, but that was my part in the group. The video was to choppy, and the sound effects weren’t great. We got a lot of critique, which was great. I think a second draft would have made great improvement. 

Also, mic’s. Our audio isn’t great, and mic’s would’ve greatly improved that. The audio was a huge part of this story, and it could’ve been better. 

Our next video was a huge, well, huge half-step. This time, we had to find a funny video. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention. These are supposed to be humorous. Our unit is called ‘Funny or Die’. So, keep that in mind. Anyways. We had to find a school appropriate, short film with a beginning, middle, and end. This was harder than you’d think. In our same groups, we spent a long time looking for videos. Finally we found this BBC short.

I have watched this video so many times that I find it funny, but I’m not sure if everyone would find it funny. Moving on. 

This time, we had to do the whole shebang. Story spine, screenplay, storyboard. But in the end, it helped a lot. Understanding the story made helped us understand the characters better, and the purpose of the story. Plus, having them help film. Except for the storyboard. And I only say this because the video was in one shot. Usually they are very useful. This one was just, less useful. It was still helpful. 

Filming was intense. There was a thunderstorm happening when my group was trying to film, and they had to wait for the thunder to stop while filming. After about a dozen takes, they finally got it, and then we went to editing. 

There was not a lot of editing to, because it was one shot. There were lots of sound effects though, which were a bit difficult to find. But it turned out well, I think anyways.

In the end, I learned a lot. I learned about how the internet is a scary place. I realized how important mic’s are, and how mad the teachers get when we don’t use them (which is understandable). I definitely learned a lot about time management. Overall, this was a really cool project, and I am glad we did it, because were gonna be doing a lot more videos!

Winter Exhibition

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Every year in PLP, we have two exhibitions; the winter exhibition and the spring exhibition (which isn’t really in the spring but whatever). We just had our winter exhibition. And I’ll bet you’ll never guess the theme! Star Wars.

Yeah, it sounds a bit funny. But the actual project made sense. We had to come up with an inquiry question to do with Star Wars, and relate it to the real world. This was the first step in our inquiry star plan.

There are five points on the inquiry star; connect and wonder, investigate, construct, publish, and debug. So guess what? That’s how this blog post is gonna go!

Connect and wonder

We started the journey by talking about what makes a good inquiry question. We talked about how open ended questions and closed questions are good, and bad. Then we had to come up with some of our own questions, to do with a picture of a red robot.

Then, we labeled the questions, and explained them. Our assignment after that was to come up with questions on Star Wars that we’d be interested in doing a project on. I made a document using Pages, and got a bunch of ideas. I ended up using the question ‘What is the way of life for gungans?’, but I adapted it to fit with the real world. My final question was ‘How can we learn from Gungans how to better balance our environment?’. I chose this question because through a little research, I found out that Gungans are very environmentally conscious.

After we got our questions approved, we had to complete a project pitch form. This was just a summary of what we project was going to be about, and so forth. That also had to be approved. There were a whole bunch of forms in the process, but they were in later parts of the project.

Investigate

At this point we had are questions, bu no answers. That’s what we had to find out next. So using our ever-useful resources, our iPads, we got to doing just that! I found out lots of information about my topic, tons of which I didn’t end up needing. Wookiepedia was a huge help to most everyone’s project. I found out so much about gungans on there, is crazy.

But then we had to relate it to the real world. I had to research humans effect on our environment. So I headed on over to Green Peace’s website! I got tons of information from that, but then dug a little deeper. I emailed Green Peace to ask them a few questions. They answered, and redirected me to an article they had just published. It was very interesting.

Construct

At this point, the exhibition was only a week away. And, as the name explains, we had to exhibit something. We took all our research, and made it into something. I wanted to show how gungans use their environment to their advantage, while still protecting it. For example, going back to the ‘Phantom Menace’, you can see the gungans city, and some of their vehicles.

I chose to build a model of the ship that Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi Wan Kenobi and Jar Jar Binks took into the city of Naboo. I chose this because gungans based most of their technology off of things seen in nature. You can see that the ship kind of resembles a stingray.

I used cardboard, paint, and hot glue to make it. I also created a diorama-type thing for the ship to sit in.

But as much as that explained my question, it didn’t relate to the human side of things. So I decided to make a car. This is because cars resemble nothing in our natural environment. Except maybe a rock. Anyways, I made a car. The car is very boxy, but the wheels moved and it was great. I also had a diorama road thing for the car.

Publish

Now we get to the nitty-gritty stuff, the actual exhibition. Our teachers divided our classes into two groups: the Dark side and the light side. I was on the light side. So, we decided to make our classroom into the rebel base on Hoth. This took a lot of work, before school, during school, and after school. We had a bunch of trial and error, but it turned out pretty great.

With all this, we wanted to have costumes. So everybody dressed up. It was actually super cool. We had Jedi, an Ewok, BB-8, a Wampa, and a bunch of other awesome characters!

So of course, we wanted to act out some scenes. Then, we had this idea to do improv. No. Improv bad. We did it once, and cancelled the rest of it. But the scenes were pretty decent.

The night went great! Everyone was in costume, people ate food, it was awesome. I’m very proud of how it turned out.

In conclusion, this was an awesome project. There were some aspects of the group-ness that I need to work on, though. If I were to do it again, I think we should have appointed DRIs (directly responsible individuals) to different aspects. I also would have created more of a display that could run itself. I’ll know better for next time!