I have talked about Destination Imagination a couple other times, as I have consistently been in the tournament since I was in grade 8. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of DI is stress, mainly because I don’t enjoy it too much as it is essentially a project on steroids. Projects stress me out so naturally one that is one steroids will stress me out more than usual. Although, I am doing it becuase it is good for my growth as a learner and a person and, my teachers are making me do it.
I ended getting put into the last category I could possibly want to be in, which is, improv. I personally hate public speaking to begin with, acting is on a whole other level, then improv is way beyond that just because, you have to think on your feet and create everything in the moment. I always like to have a plan that is quite strict, so if I do public speaking, I will end up making script of some sort on the topic that I have to talk about, and I will read it over constantly. Acting is much worse because you have to change your emotions depending on the script which is adding complexity. With improv, There is not much planning I am able to do, except for practice improv itself. I got so stressed out that before the tournament, I developed a virus that caused my toungue to be inflamed thus causing me to have a lisp. I could only talk like “thith”. I was not able to pronounce my ch’s or my S’s. Everybody was teaseing me as I could barely talk, It got onnoying pretty quickly. I was only praying not to have it on the day of regionals.
Worst case scenario happened, I had the lisp on the day of DI regionals. The past few days leading up to that day I had noticed how often S’s were used in sentences. It came down to our presentation and I had to figure out a way to roll with the lisp. Instead of ignoring it and having it be an obvious onnoying factor in the skit, I decided to turn it into comedy. I ended up being a “ghoth with a lithp”. People thought it was funny as I ended up having to say words like “thubmarine”. It was funny now that I look back on it but during the show it was torture for me. I pushed through it and we ended up doing well, we ended up coming in first place for our age group. We also did well in the instant challenge and we came first in our category.
This past unit in science, we have been learning about chemistry. We got to learn about many things, ranging from balancing equations to covalent bonds. I was really interested to learn about chemistry this unit as the job that I would like to do is Chemical Engineering. Obviously you can tell by the name of the job title that it involves chemistry. Anyways that motivated to me to try and learn about chemistry for this unit.
Before this unit I did not know much about chemistry, as I had not been taught much about it until now. I said earlier that we learned about covalent bonds and balancing equations and a lot of other things in between, well at the end of the unit we had to show what we knew about chemistry. This is my mind map.
During the chemistry unit we did a lot of worksheets but, we also had to focus on a project that would be due at the end of the unit. For the project I got paired up with one of my friends Aiden, and we had the task of having to create a video with characters in it creating a chemical reaction. The characters in the video had to be elements like Oxygen, Lithium, etc. The way we started was by picking a chemical reaction then figuring out what the chemical equation was and then making a story about it. However, we also had the option to do a chemical reaction which I regret not doing as I think I would have enjoyed it more. One of my other friends Ryan did the reaction click on eh to see his blog post.
(Insert Video Here)
At the end of the unit I realized that I had kind of struggled through this unit as I don’t feel that I learned as much as I could of. I almost wish that I could do it over again but, that would mean more school and I am not doing that.
This past unit in math, we have been learning about polynomials. There not too hard to understand, but for some reason there are letters which make me wonder if theres going to be numbers in English soon. Anyways, I am going to explain to you how this is linked to a “Fun” Math Game.
In math we learned about three different things, the first was expanding. we basically had to take an equation with letters and numbers and make it look bigger. We then learned about factoring which is the exact opposite of expanding. With factoring you take the product of something that has been expanded and turn it into its original form. We then learned about perfect squares, which brings me to my next topic, algebra tiles. Personally I hate algebra tiles, I don’t know why, I just think it kinda of messes with my head as I would rather just do the equation normally. We ended up doing a lot of worksheets in class for a couple of weeks. After those couple of weeks were over we brought a project into the picture, which was intriguing at first until I found out it had to involve algebra tiles. Im only kidding I don’t care that much about algebra tiles. Anyways the project that we had to do, was make a math game that uses algebra tiles, skill, and chance.
My partner Ryan, and I took a while to figure out what exactly we were going to do. We were thinking of ripping off monopoly, then we realized that wasn’t the best idea. Finally we came up with a fun idea of a math game that I wouldn’t totally mind playing. We ended up thinking of the idea of involving darts into the game. The way we did that was by having the person throw a dart, and whatever number they hit thats how many spaces they move forward or backward on the board. After you throw the dart you go and do a question that includes algebra tiles, if you get right u move forward, if you get it wrong you move backward. The questions will be on cards, and they will be mixed up with factoring and expanding questions. An extra rule is if you identify that something is a perfect square you get to move forward and extra space on the board. After we finished making the game we had to play it and make video.
Of course we weren’t very creative so we called it dart algebra. On the other hand I was very proud of this project as I found it went quite smoothly. Although we did fool around sometimes in class which led to us finishing this video last minute and handing it in late. I am still happy with what Ryan and I produced as I felt it was as “fun” a math game we could make.
This is now going to be my third and most likely final blog post on California, as I have made to others about my trip to California with my class. I did one about what we did everyday on our trip, and the other I did on High Tech High. Anyways this next one is about the main reason why we went to California. The main reason why we went there is becuase California has many different examples of Disruption, starting from the San Diego Zoo all the way to Twitter HQ in San Francisco. What I am going to be focusing on is aircraft carriers, as my friend and I did a project on how it has disrupted Naval Warfare. The place that we got our information from was the USS Midway which is in San Diego California. It is now a museum becuase it has become obsolete as it has Diesel engines, and now ships are switching over to nucleur powered engines.
Anyways, I will now give you a background on the midway. The midway was the first aircraft carrier built after WWI, and just to give you an idea of big it is, it holds 4,000 crew 90 planes. It is also 296m long and weighs 45,000 metric tons. It is basically a floating city. It also went through a couple of changes, as instead of having an angled deck like you see in the photo above, it used to have a straight deck. The british came up with the idea to have an angle deck, as it allows the planes to land with less risk, and other planes were able to take off at the same time. After a couple of years the ship had been modified and it was back out on the water. Learning all of this before I went to California made me super intrigued and excited to learn more about while we were on the ship.
After we were came back from California, we had to get prepared for an essay we were going to write on disruption. We spent a week preparing, which sounds like a lot of time, but before you know it, it’s already time to write it. Here is my essay:
The Historical Disruption of Technology
Ethan Dennis
Technology has been in a constant state of disruption that has affected all of our lives in many different ways. It has affected the military throughout WWI and also at the end of WWII. It also has helped people’s causes around the world and it could have helped the hippies rebel more successfully. Rivalries in the tech world have also caused a disruption, as the top tech companies are always competing to make the newest and best thing. The pace of change is going at a faster and faster rate and as a result technology is constantly changing the world.
In both World Wars planes were a key component in changing how the wars were fought. At the beginning of WWI planes were used to scout their enemy’s, but by the end of the war they were used in dogfights and they had machine guns attached to them. Naval ships could only shoot 15 miles with their large guns, but once aircraft carriers were introduced they were able to hit a target that its hundreds of miles away. When pearl harbour happened it wasn’t as catastrophic as people thought. Although lives were lost, all of the ships that were sunk were now obsolete as the new super power had just been introduced, aircraft carriers.
In the 60’s the youth were known as hippies and back then they did not have the technology we do today. The hippies were known for rebelling against the government, and established norms, and protesting to large extent, but they did that all by word of mouth. In Little Brother the main character did something similar but, he had technology on his side. He was able to use something called xnet to communicate with people instead of using word of mouth. This was much faster and way more efficient then using word of mouth. If the hippies had something similar to technology they could have been more successful, because they failed without it.
Apple and Microsoft have always had an intense rivalry. Although they both took two different approaches to computers. Microsoft focused solely on software, while Apple focused on hardware as well. Bill Gates knew that he only had to make a software once, and license it to other computer companies such as IBM and HP. This made it so that Microsoft would spend less and make more. Even though they took different approaches to computers, they still were competing to innovate faster than each other, and some times they even built off of each other. This caused the technology to progress at a much faster rate.
I have shared with you three different examples starting at the beginning of the 20th Century, of how technology has changed our society’s. I talked about how human conflict in World Wars, has caused people to innovate and change how wars were fought. That was done through improving weapons and transportation. The youth in the 60’s were known as hippies, and they rebelled against the government, but they did not have technology to their advantage which could have immensely improved their results as they failed without it. The last topic I focused on was how the advent of the two Steve’s and Bill Gates with Paul Allen shaped the world with new innovative ideas, which in result has kept changing the world since they started their companies. Now if you think about the industrial revolution, we are currently in a bigger faster version of that, which is causing our world to be smaller, faster, and more dynamic then ever before.
Both of those assignments were great for basically the same reason. The video I made took what I had learned and put it into a descriptive video form. After watching it just shows how much I had learned on that ship. The essay on the other hand took what I had learned and put it on a piece of paper. While I was done proofreading it, I kind of took a step back and went “Holy crap!” I learned so much in just the span of 9 days. It kind of blew my mind and I am hoping that in the future I will have the oppuritunity to learn that much in that amount of time again.
As you know from a previous blog post, I went to California. While I was there with my class, we visited many different places, stretching from San Diego to San Francisco. One of the main places we went to in San Diego was High Tech High. HTH was one of the components to our learning expierence while we were in California, as it is a school that is completely different from any other school that I have seen.
The first thing that we did while we were at HTH was got introduced to our HTH buddy, as they would be with us for the rest of our stay at HTH. We were paired up with a student from HTH becuase, it would help us better understand what people at HTH do on a daily basis. We first got a tour of HTH just to be able to see what the rest of the campus was like. It was very interesting as it was very noticeable that this school was very different from every other school. The first thing you notice is that there are projects all over the place. Yes, normally you would see projects in the hallways of most schools, but this was on a whole other level. For example there was a bridge in the middle of one fo the hallways. Not a small bridge, a bridge that was several feet of the ground and went from one side of the hallway to the other. I was just walking by when I saw it so I am not quite sure what the purpose of it was, but it was really cool as it was fully built by the students. Another big thing that you notice while you are at HTH is that there are not lockers what so ever, I’m not sure why but they just don’t have them. One of the most obvious things that you see while you are there is that each class room has large windows in them so you can see clearly into them of what they are doing. It gives a more open feeling and less compact. You are also probably wondering why High Tech High is actually called High Tech High. You probably think that it is some super high tech place with computers everywhere, but in reality it’s quite different from that. HTH is a school that approaches teaching the students at a completely different angle than most schools. They give the students more freedom of what they want to do. Most schools just end up making the students study a text book and then test them on how well they understand it. On the other hand HTH study’s something together in class than discusses it, and gives there opinion on it.
While we were with our buddies, we wet to each of there classes. The first class I went to was Humanities, which if you didn’t know is Social Studies and English mixed together. While we were in there classes we participated in each of their activities. One of them was writing about what makes a great school. Here is what I wrote:
If I was not in PLP I would not have the same friends, I would not have the same sense of pride that I do when I am in PLP, and I would probably struggle a little bit more as it is not the way I prefer to learn. A great school needs a lot of things to make it a great school. To start off one of the most important things is the teachers, as they are the role models of the school and set examples for the students. The teachers have to be good enough to know if certain students are falling behind or not quite understanding something, and if that happens they need to know how to take action and get that student back on track. The most important thing is the sense of community in a school as it makes the student feel more comfortable.
The next class I went is the class with probably the biggest reputation and probably the most hated class… Math. We ended up doing a math problem in groups that was actually very interesting, that in the end just made my brain hurt.
The next class that we went was very interesting as we talked about events that had happened very recently. For example one event that was brought up was about a Dodge Ram Commerical with Martin Luther King’s speech in the background. When we watched the video, the person who had brought the topic up explaiend how he felt about it and I completley agreed with him, as the way they used the speech in the commercial basically defeated the point of the commercial. This class was very interesting as it gave the students chance to give there opinion on something, which gives other students a chance either agree or voice there own opinion and argue.
While we were at HTH we had a project assigned to us, and that was to interview our HTH buddy. We were assigned to do it because, it would basically force us to get a better understanding of what life was like going to HTH. Sadly while I did my interview, there were other students playing dodgeball on the field making lots of noise. Here is the interview podcast that I made:
Going to High Tech High was one of the most memorable expeirnces I have ever had. I learned about how HTH is devoted to creating a school with students that are hard working and devoted. The way they accomplish that is by making it clear that being in HTH is a privelage and not everybody is able to have that privelage. HTH is a diverse community where everybody feeds off each other to create great results, and most of all to create HTH creates great students which leads to making great people.
