Month: June 2018

Astronomy, Eh

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So recently in my science class we started learning about astronomy. Astronomy is such a broad topic and so hard to learn in a short matter of time. Our teachers solution to that was to have everybody split up into groups of two, and then we do a lottery to see which topic each person gets. My partner Robbie and I got “Nuclear Reaction and How Stars Work”.

We thought that this was going to be an interesting topic as the sun itself is one giant ball of fire slowly getting bigger, and we wanted to know how that exactly works. Most of or project was just doing basic research. We wanted to add an experiment in where we take some object and just cover it in something highly flammable and light it on fire but, its not a greate idea becuase, that is how one fo us burns ourselves, and also it wouldnt really accomplish much.

My partner and I then decided to put this information that we had acquired and put it into a video. We thought that a video was the best way to portray our information, as it is done all the time by proffestionals, and we also thought you could do a lot more with a video than with a Keynote, as that was our other option. So here is our video on how stars are created and sustained:

Lastly becuase there are so many different parts of astronomy we had to learn interconnect everything we learned about astronomy, and here that is:

This project was a lot fo fun, and I plan on learning more about astronomy in the future as there is so much even scientists dont know about it, and this topic intrigues me a lot.

Blue Sky Again, Eh

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Yet again I have done a Blue Sky project. It is actually crazy to think about  but this is the 6th that I have done. This year was basically like any other, I had to come up with a project to do that I could show at a Exhibiton, although this year there were some constraints. This year our teacher wanted us to focus on some development goals based that came from the UN. Of course we weren’t planning on solving world hunger, so we tackled there goals on a smaller, more local scale.

The goal that my group and I were interested in was number 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities. For my project I was in a group as you could do a group project or a project by youself but, a couple of my friends and I crafted an idea together, and we believed that it was enough work to split into 4 people. My group and I decided on improving the public transit system, as we believe that there were areas that could be better. The reason we chose to focus on public transit was becuase in Vancouver, there is a lot of congestion in traffic becuase, the city has a fairly high population for it’s size. That is why the traffic is not very good here, another negative to having that many cars on the road is that it creates a lot of carbon emissions. We believed that if we could get more people out of there cars and into buses it would reduce carbon emissions and congestion. We basically focused on what would make buses more attractive to the average person. In my group of 4, two of us worked on making the buses almost more luxurious kind of like a first class bus. The other to worked on making a better bus route that would be more attainable and useful for most people.

To do this project we have to go through a process, we call this process the L.A.U.N.C.H. Cycle. As you can see, that is an acronym, and that acronym stands for:

L-Look, listen, and learn – Goal: Awareness, seeing a problem and having a sense of empathy
A–Ask tons of questions – Goal: Sparked by curiosity, leads to understanding the process or problem.
U–Understand the problem or process – Goal: Use authentic research experience (interviews, analyzing data, articles, watching videos)
N–Navigate ideas – Goal: Brainstorm, combine, analyze, and navigate ideas to generate a concept for what they might create
C–Create a prototype – Goal: Could be an action, digital work, tangible project, work of art, or event
H–Highlight and fix – Goal: Fix what is failing, for every mistake brings you closer to your final product

Since I have done Blue Sky 6 times now that acronym has been engraved into my brain. That seems like it would also be a long process, but we did it in about two weeks. It was a bit of a shorter of a timeline than last year, so we basically sped the process up a bit more. Most of the project was a mad scramble trying to get everything done on time.

Of course we started with look, listen and learn part of the project which I have already talked about previously in this post. We also asked tons of questions to actually figure what we wanted to do and that was figuring out what are some of the problems in Vancouver, and that was traffic congestion. The next step was to acutally figure out and understand what we had to actually do to complete this project in the short timeline. That is why we decided to split it into two projects for 4 people. All four of us talked for most of a class to figure out what we were going to do, we had man different ideas before we finally settled. We then moved onto creating our first prototype. Our first prototype was just a drawing of what we were going to create. We then moved onto our second prototype which had to be something that was physical.  We then for the third prototype had to create our final product but, once we were done that prototype we had to fix and improve it to make it ready for the exhibiton. Now that I’ve told you the process of this project I will now show you what I actually did.

As you can see that is my partner and I’s first prototype. Probably the  first thing you notice is that it is a chair. The reason for that is tha my partner and I decided to focus on how to make the inside of a bus more attractive. We decided to focus on the chairs becuase you can change them many ways and they aren’t the best chairs in the world either. We then created another prototype that was a lego model of that. It doesnt really look to much different, but the final product is the prototype where everything came together and we created a pretty solid chair. Another thing to add to our project was that I tried to show all of the negative things about driving and I did that by doing a small write up and creating a chart. Here is that information:

What are the Positives to Not Driving?

The problem at hand that we are focusing on is the amount of congestion and carbon emissions in Vancouver. We believe a lot of that has to do with the fact that once people get their drivers licence, they do not use public transit. These past couple of weeks we have been thinking about what will attract people to use public transit more often. We came up with the idea of making a more luxurious bus. That essentially means creating a “First Class Bus”. We have made it more comfortable by completely changing the bus seats, and adding more room per passenger. There are also some negatives to driving cars, such as you cant multi task, you have to find a parking spot and sometimes pay for one, and every once in a while you might have to deal with road rage.We have also decided that a lot of people would get out of their cars and into buses if they new they were saving money, and I have decided to show you exactly how much money you are saving. To calculate how much it cost to drive, I took into account: insurance, gas, yearly, maintenance, and cost of the car. Some of the things I did not take into account was the cost of accidents, from minor fender benders all the way up to complete write offs.

This was all based on average costs in Canada.

That was my project that I did this year for Blue Sky. I feel that it is probably the best one that I have done yet. I think that has to do with the fact that I was very engaged the entire time I did this project, as this topic was very interesting to me.

LOTF, Eh

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Yet again we have finished a unit, and thankfully this is the last one before summer starts. This last humanities units was probably one of the most challenging for me, for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is that I had to read probably one of the most famous and confusing books that I have ever read and public speaking was required in this unit which is not one of my strong suits. This unit was probably the most diverse unit I have ever done, as we showed our learning in many different ways.

Before we started the unit, our teacher came up with an interesting plan to create groups. That plan was to lock us in a room together and have us create a groups based on what we thought would be reasonable or fair. We generally split people up by making diverse groups with their skills and abilities.The book that we read was Lord of the Flies. I assume you figured that out by the title of this post. If you have not read LOTF I highly recommend it, as it is one of the best books I have ever read. It has one of the most interesting storylines to it, and shows off the true colours of human nature. It is very dramatic with times where everybody is civilized and others where people become complete savages. This book is so diverse that even with all of that going on it has fear, sorrow and even anarchy. If that interests you I highly recommmend that you go and read this book, as it is probably one of, if not THE best book that I have ever read. To make sure we were actually reading the book our teacher made us to do chapter tests. It wasn’t too hard as long as you read the book, plus you took the test as a group. Another thing that went on throughout this unit was a point system. Since we were put into groups, that essentially made teams. So each group was competing against each other to get the most points. You could gain or lose points based off of basic things like tucking in chairs or forgetting to hand in an assignment. It made it so that the team members had to rely on each other to succeed, and it made us more well behaved in class which was a plus for our teacher.

One of the other things that we  focused on was Politics. Generally not the most interesting topic in the world but, I acutally enjoyed learning about it. We mostly focused on how different electoral systems worked. Some of them made sense, and then there were confusing and seemed like a dumb idea. We also talked about how a pipeline is trying to be built across BC coming from Alberta. In my opinion there are a lot of people who care about it but, theres probably even more who don’t care. The people that dont want it are worried about oil spills. That is completely understandable, but if it isn’t built then many people could lose their jobs, and the pipeline that has been there for about 70 years has never had a leak except for when somebody drilled through it.

Lastly the biggest part of this unit, the debate. As I said we were put into teams, and those were our debate teams, and at the end of the unit we had to debate against another team. We based the topics off of ideas from LOTF. To prepare we did these things called concept journals. To do them you essentially pick a topic like Humanity vs. Inhumanity. Then you essentially make an argument for one of the sides. Here is what I did for human nature:

Be it resolved that “It is human nature to be good at heart unless tempted by evil”. William Golding made this statement, as it is true and there are many examples of it all around us. Humans are constantly trying to make a difference in this world, they are trying to improve Earth itself, and the people on it. Progressively through history, the general population has shown more acceptance, kindness and love. A good example of that is the acceptance of LGBTQ, with San Francisco leading the charge. That example shows how most people are showing their inner kindness through acceptance. That is again showed the same way through the reduction of racism over some of the most recent decades. A different example is how we are currently trying to mend with First Nations, after we destroyed most of what they owned and part of their culture. Everybody who is not indigenous is currently trying to give back and support them, because humans are naturally good at heart and humans feel sympathy towards others. My last example of humans being good at heart is the fact that a lot fo people donate to charity. That shows that humans aren’t naturally evil or greed, although that doesn’t mean that humans cant be evil or greedy. One of the most common things that will make a person evil or greedy is money. Money can change a person into a monster. Money will make people sabotage peoples plans or even something like a sports game. Referees are constantly bribed in sports because getting money is more important to them than staying true to their profession. Even though humans can be greedy or unfaithful, doesn’t mean that they cant be good at heart. Ralph shows that at the end of Lord of the Flies, as he breaks down in tears in front of a Naval Officer because he had finally come back to reality and realized all of the horrible thing that had happened on that island.

For preparing for our debate we also listened to a debate podcast called Intelligance Squared US. It was actaully very interesting I highly recommend you to listen to one. Then we basically just studied our topic like there was not tomorrow. My group had to argue that it is human nature to put yourself above others. Here is the debate:

I thought that this unit went very well. I am very happy with the results, as I believe that my group had very strong arguments. It wasn’t perfect as I wish that I had said a couple different things. I felt that I have learned a lot and that I have grown a lot in this unit as I feel my public speaking has gotten a little bit stronger as well as my writing. At the beginning I was not to happy about having to debate but I am very happy that I have done it as it was a great expierence

 

TPOL’s Are Back, Eh

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It is now that time of year again where we have to reflect on this past school year. A lot has happened this year and of course that means that I have to think about what were the best, and worst parts of my year. We were given a driving question this year,” Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”. As well as trying answer that question we have to do this to complete our TPOL:Reflect on your growth as learner in Humanities, Science, Math, and Maker , reflect on work ethic, work habits, and areas for improvement, and lastly provide strong evidence (using examples from your learning portfolio) of revision, teamwork, responsibility, and production of high quality work as a
PLP learner.

I believe that this year I have grown a fair amount compared to last year. The reason why I say that is becuase the quality of my first drafts have improved since last year. I noticed this as I have been spending more time on my first drafts than I would normally, and I would put more effort into them aswell. This was shown very prominently in the video I sent to High Tech High. That was probably one of my best examples of a good quality first draft. Another example would be the book review I wrote on Unbroken. I feel that I did a very good job of creating an authentic book review on my first draft.

Now onto what has showed my teamwork skills. I believe that I showed my best teamwork in the renewable energy project I did. The project that we did involved a lot of teamwork as each member of our group relied on each other to get a part of it done. As a group we divided up the work to each person based on there skills and abilities. The end product of that project showed that we worked well together, and I say that because I am proud of our outcome.

Throughout this whole school year a lot has happened. I have produced a lot of good work and a fair amount that was not very good, but I believe that overall the most beneficial part of the year for me was the California Field Trip. That field trip was one of the most eye opening expierences for me. It had so much interesting information from how Silicon Valley was turned into the innovation capital of the world, all the way to the culture and history of San Francisco. That whole trip my jaw was hitting the floor. Even after that trip I was still surprised with how much I had learned, as it was probably the best field trip I have ever been on by far.

Even though I have grown as a learner and have created more consistently quality work throughout this year, I still have a lot to work on. I feel that my focus level is still quite low and I need to become more engaged in class and outside of class. I feel that that is the main thing that I need to work on. To improve my quality of work I am going to try to do my best work on the first draft like I have done on a couple of assignments and projects, and those projects generally have been some of my best examples of work. I am looking to do that in this coming up Blue Sky Exhibiton as I am very excited to complete my project as I am very interested in it and I believe it could possibly be one of my best examples of my best work. I think that to actaully create my best work I have to be passionate about what I am learning about.

To sum everything up this year I think that I have improved on many fronts that has resulted in overall better quality work but, I have not done very well when it comes to staying on track. I have lost focus many times throughout  the year but I believe that I have been a lot more focused this past term. I am looking to continue staying focused in class next year, as I believe that with me being more focused I have produced better quality work. With that growth that I have been doing over this past year I believe that I am ready to go into the next grade level and grow some more.

Phone Plans, Eh

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In Math Class, we ended up starting a unit on system of equations. Our teacher explained to us that systems of equations can be used in many different ways and still involve somebody’s regular life. For example we decided to focus on phone plans. We used the prices of each phone plans to decide what is the cheapest phone plan over time. We got paired up with a partner based on how many gigabytes of data you use every month.

My partner Robbie and I decided to compare three different phone plans, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Mobile Costco, and Koodo. All of the plans had a minimum of 8GB of data. We decided to choose 8GB of data becuase we generally use a lot of data, and its nice not having to worry about going over your limit.

Because we had to incoraporate math into this project we created a linear graph including each phone company. This way it easily showed what is the best choice for us.

It very clearly shows what the difference in price is for each plan, which is exactly what we wanted to help us make our choice.

In conclusion we chose Virgin Mobile, as we though that was the most accommodating to our needs and wants. Now that I look back at this project I think that it was really useful as it shows how you can use math in everyday life. The project was a lot of fun and was very eye opening, and I believe I will use system of equation later on in my life.

 

Renewable Energy, Eh

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Not too long ago in Sci-Mathics class, I was up into a group given the idea of creating something that can turn on a light using renewable energy. I was put into a group of four. We immediately started thinking of the best ways to create a renewable energy source.

We ended up moving towards the idea of creating a water wheel. We tried making many different versions of it but, basically every single one didn’t work. We probably went through 4 different designs before actually coming to one that that actually worked. We made the water wheel out of everyday  materials. It consisted of solo cups, a plastic container, PVC pipe, and a lot of glue.

Every model we made before either, didn’t rotate,  was too complicated, or wasnt strong enough. We found that this design was the best because it was sturdy and held together fairly well, and wasn’t complicated at all, and the solo cups were large enough to hold lots of water to rotate it.

After we were done building it, we were given another task. That task happens to be that we had to create a video advertisement for our product. We had to basically show all of the science behind and explain why you should buy this. In reality nobody would buy it as it can only just turn on a LED light but, it can charge a phone, it just takes you like the whole day to do so.  We made the video without much problem, two of our group memebers were in the video itself, one person edited it, and I did the voice over in a corny voice. It was the most awkward thing to record ever.

The project was lots of fun to do, and I am proud of what my group members and I created.