Category: Field Schools

Oregon Returns

ethand on

Recently my class and I went on a field trip to learn about the Manhattan Project. To do that we had to go to a few different places in the states just south of the Canadian US border. We drove from Vancouver all the way to Portland then back up to Washington stopping in Hanford then coming back to Vancouver this was a three day trip that we took as a whole class. On this trip we learned very important information that we needed for our projects as 70 some odd years ago this is where it all took place.

Like I said we first stopped in Portland. We first stopped in Powells book store. If you don’t know what that is, it is an extremely large book store that basically takes up one square block in the middle of a city. It is absolutely gigantic the book store has absolutely every kind of book you could possibly ask for, it has some books that are quite old and others that are brand new. I’m not a huge fan of reading as I only do it from time to time, but this place blew my mind. While we were there we were given two assignments one was to find a book with a cool title the other was to find a title that me and few friends could act out.  Sadly the photos of both have been lost but, I did end up making a purchase at Powell’s, besides the coffee that I had at the Café. Besides that I also bought I book that is about one of my biggest inspirations and my favourite athlete of all time. I bought a book about Bo Jackson as it is one of the few books that actually made me interested and also it was under $10.

We then went to a restraunt called Fire on the Mountain. Fire on the Mountain is a wing place, they have a variety of flavours that I was very excited for as soon as I found out that we were going here. I had so many different flavours I don’t know if I can remember all of them, for starts there was the mild wings which were pretty basic. Then there was the medium hot wings which had nice kick to them but pretty similar to the mild wings, there was then hot wings which had a bigger kick to them, but that is not where the fun ends it is where it begins as there are flavours even hotter that only a select few in the class decided to try. If just straight hot flavours wasn’t your thing they had other flavours such as my favourite which was some sort of peanut sauce that was quite lovely, and if none of these appeal to you, you can stand up put down your device and walk away. Everybody else can continue to read.

The next day we made more stops as we spent a lot less time traveling. The first thing we had to do was go to the Reed Reactor which is Reed College. We stopped there first because it is in Portland aswell, but the reason on the other hand is that Reed College also happens to have a working nuclear reactor. It is also a reactor that uses water to cover it which is different than most as they are generally covered by metal. That doesn’t sound too special until you think about it because having water covering it means that you can look right at the actual reactor. It was a really cool thing to see, and I probably wont see anything like it ever again.


Later that day we went to Maryhill Museum, your probably thinking that it was just some boring museum you walk through, nod your head at the art, yawn, and repeat. This was a little bit different as it had some of the coolest and weirdest art collections in the world. They have the largest chess set collecition in the world, they have really creepy dolls that almost gave me nightmares, on top fo that they have an amazing are devoted to indegenous art. Lastly they have a very large collection August Rodins’ sculptures and if you don’t know who that is, he is the guy who made the famous statue called “The Thinker”.

 

While we were at teh museum we were given the task of talking about a piece of art and give your opinion on what the message of it is.

 

That night was one night I may never forget. It was the first time I ever went to Red Lobster, you may be thinking that that isn’t a very big deal but you are very wrong, as it was during the time of endless shrimp. Every year that PLP goes on this FIeld Study they stop at Red Lobster and students challenge themselves to see how many shrimp they can eat. Our teachers had been preparing us for this night for about a month like we were about to go to war. I made sure I came prepared. I did my best to take down as many shirmp as possible, it took a very long but I was able to cram 142 shrimp into my stomach which was the best in the class by 2.  I was proud of myself even though my body hated me so much at the time.

The next day I was surprisingly fine and ready to tackle the day even though we woke up pretty early for a tour of the B-Reactor. The B-Reactor was one of the main reasons we went down to the US as it is at one of the sites the Americans used for the Manhattan Project.  It was vital to the manhattan project as they needed it to create the Nuclear Bombs. It was a very interesting tour and it was a good way to wrap up our field trip as it made it so we got information consistently throughout each day right to the end. After the tour was over we got back on the bus for a long bus ride home, which I ended up sleeping and watching movies most of the way. This field study was one of my favourite as it truly opened my eyes to what actually went on during and after the war involving Nuclear Sciences.

#BCTechSummit, Eh

ethand on

Not too long ago my class and I went on a one day field trip to the BC Tech Summit. At first I had no clue to what it acutally was, but the more I learned about it the more intrigued I became. The BC Tech Summit, is almost like an exhibition where a few thousand people go to one spot in downtown Vancouver, and look at new forms of technology and how it is changing our world. Another cool part about is that entrepreneurs, and people like motivational speakers from generally BC, come to the Summit and talk about there expierences in life or more specifically with technology.

Of course, we were given assignments while we were there. One of the assignments was to listen and take notes on two of the speakers, after you were done taking the notes you would write about them and about there company. I chose to talk about David Katz, as I thought that his company was rather interesting.  This is what I wrote about him:

David Katz and Plastic Bank

David Katz is the Founder and CEO of Plastic Bank. When he was just starting his company he made an appearance on Dragons Den in one episode. In that episode none of the Dragons gave him an offer as they thought that his company was a scam as it is not a not for profit company and it is made so that he is able to pocket a lot fo the money his company makes. David has spoken at many events, as he is said to deliver a “genuine paradigm shift that inspires his audience to see opportunity, where others see problems”. Now onto what his company actually does. HIs company makes it so that anybody can find plastic on the side of the street or wherever you might find it, and take it to a centre where you can exchange it for money or anything that is use to you look cooking fuel etc. It is supposed to empower recycling ecosystems around eh world and stop plastic from getting into and polluting our oceans, and at the same time it is supposed to help people living in poverty by making it easier to create a better future for themselves. “The Plastic Bank creates social and environmental impact in areas with high levels of poverty and plastic pollution by turning plastic waste into a currency”. Another problem with plastic bank is that he is not really getting rid of plastic in this world as he is just buying plastic off of one person and selling it to other company’s. So he essentially he is just moving the plastic from one place to another. After learning about David Katz and Plastic Bank, I think that he has a great idea, but I think he went the wrong way with it, and if he changed it in some way it could possibly help the world immensely.

Quotes

The other person I decided to talk about was Brent Bushnell who is an entrepreneur for Two Bit Circus. This is what I had to say about him:

Brent Bushnell and Two Bit Cirucs

Brent Bushnell is the Co-Founder fo a company called Two Bit Circus. Two Bit Circus’ main focus is based on youth innovation. The company hosts “Circuses” for youth to come and showcase their work. That is not all that Two Bit Circus does, at these showcase events they also show off some of their own innovations. Bushnell’s company has created a fun way for youth to get creative and try something new, and gain skills that will help them later on in life. Brents reason for Co-creating this company is fully based off of following his passion. I think that following your passion is a great motivation to create amazing work. That is exactly what Brent and Two Bit Circus.

One of the other tasks we had was to look at the options for university’s while we were there. A few university’s showed up to the tech summit, including BCIT, UBC, and UVIC. I mainly talked to the person who was advertising for UVIC. The reason I chose to focus on them was the fact I didn’t know much about UVIC and to be completely honest I hadn’t put any of those university’s on my list. I wanted to hear what they had to say about UVIC. I still dont think I am going to go to any of those universitys as I have thought carefully about what universitys I want to go to. For the past couple of years I have thought about what Universitys I want to go to, currently I would prefer to go to Stanford, even though it is probably to expensive, and the acceptance rate is very low. My next option is McGill. The reason I chose it is, from my perspective it is a very good school, and it seems attainable for me. My third choice is University of Alberta. I chose that based off of the fact it has a fairly good engineering program that I am interested in. My fourth choice is UBCO, I chose that because I believe I can get into it without having to many issues, and it still needed to be decent distance from home as my parents want me to leave the general area of Vancouver.

The last assignment that we had to do while we were there was, to create yet another podcast. We had to interview a mentor who was at the summit to talk to youth about his company. I am not going to talk much about the person as I have a podcast that can explain everything. The person I interviewed was Dave Donaldson from Teck, which is a mining company.

Going to the Tech Summit was truly and eye opening expierence as it showed how quickly technology is effecting th world. It was given to me in many different examples such as entrepreneurs, and people in industry’s such as mining.

Disruption, Eh

ethand on

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.

High Tech High, Eh

ethand on

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.

California, Eh

ethand on

I was gone between February 2nd and 9th. You can probably guess where if u have seen the title of this post. I went to California, more specifically San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco. I went there with my class becuase, my unit in humanities is based around disruption, and California has a lot of examples of disruption.

The first day I woke up at 3:15am becuase I had to be at the airport at the wonderful time of 4:30am. We got to San Diego, went and had lunch then went to Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. The reason why people made a state reserve for pine trees is becuase that is a pine tree that only grows in that spot and one other. We the went to La Jolla Cove and played frisbee until the sun went down, mainly because we could’t see the frisbee anymore.

 

 

Torrey Pines

 

 

La Jolla Cove

The next day we went to San Diego Zoo Safari Park. We got to see tons of different animals, we even got to go behind the scenes in the elephant enclosure and got to see how they take care of them. Probably the coolest part about that day was we got to go up in a hot air balloon. I got some great photos as I could see for miles.

 Elephant Enclosure

 

 

View from Hot Air Baloon

 

 

The next day was one of my favourites as we went to the USS Midway. If you don’t know what that is, its a massive aircraft carrier that has been turned into a museum. It took all day to see it as as there were so many different parts of the ship, plus we talked with a couple veterans on the ship. The coolest part of that day though was being able to talk to a WWII veteran.

 Sunset on the USS Midway

The next day we went to High Tech High. It’s called High Tech High, because it is a charter school that takes a different approach on teaching the students, for example the students are given more freedom with decorating the school, and everything they do is through project based learning. It was very interesting as every person in my class got paired with one or more students from HTH. HTH is very different compared to most schools, they don’t have lockers they don’t really have sports, but almost everybody there is very focused and hard working as they had to apply to get into the school. After we were done at HTH we went to the Cabrillo National Monument. It was very interesting there as we learned about Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, and his role in exploring the west coast of the US

  We went to 5 Guys for Lunch

 

Sun Set at the Monument

 

 

The next day we went to HTH again. We got to be a able to witness what there normal school life was like. It was very different from what I have but at the same time they were just normal high school kids who like to goof around. After we were done at HTH that day we hopped on a plane and left San Diego and enetered San Jose. We got there at night time so we just had dinner and went to the hotel to get some rest.

The next day was really cool as we got to go and see Googleplex, AKA Google HQ. We didn’t really have a tour or anything so we acted like we were meant to be there, and we got to see just what kind of work environment Google employees work in. That day we also got to go to Apple Park. Apple Park is the most incredible building I have ever seen, although we didn’t actually go inside the main building, we did go to the visitor centre right next door which had a pice of aluminum worth $1,000,000. Not just because it was a hunk of metal, but because it was able to create an amazing expierence with a custom made iPad. We also went to the Intel Museum and learned about how Intel has changed through the years.

  Random Dinosour at Google

 

Cool Aluminum

 

 

The day after that we went to the computer history museum which was very interesting. I was very engaged while I was there as I learned about how computers progressed from being the size of a room to fitting in your pocket, and becoming way more powerful. That day we also went to Stanford, which has now become my dream university to go to. It was so cool to see one of the top university’s in the world in academics and athletics. That same day we also got to go to the birth place of Silicon Valley AKA the HP garage.

 

 

HP Garage

 

 

The next day we woke up and drove out to the apple garage, before we got on a train to Oakland. If you don’t know me I am an Oakland Raiders fan, so I was very happy to be able to see their peace of crap old stadium. We then went to San FranciscoThe coolest part about that day though was the fact that we got to go into Twitter HQ even though we missed lunch because of it. We got a tour around the building and got to see how things operate at Twitter. Later that day we went and saw the Golden Gate Bridge which was super cool.

  Twitter HQ

Golden Gate Bridge

 

 

 Oakland Colliseum

The next day we went down to Golden Gate Park, and started a walking tour. The walking tour was based around the history of San Francisco, for example The Summer of Love, Gay Rights movement etc. We learned about things from Smoking Bananas to Charles Manson. It was very interesting and really eye opening of how much really happened in San Francisco.  To end the trip, that night we did a tour of Alcatraz. It was really cool as we got to see one of if not the most famous prison on the planet. It was really cool as we saw what the living conditions for inmates at Alcatraz were like, and how the guards had to deal with them. One of the guards while we were there even locked me and a couple of friends of mine in a solitary confinement cell which was pitch black.

 The Mission District

The Rock

 

 View from Alcatraz

The next day we flew home to our families. I told the story of our journey to my family, and realized just how much I had learned on the trip and how much I had done.

California Book

Camp Capilano, Eh

ethand on

Back during the first week of school my teachers decided to take us on a overnight field trip. The field trip wasn’t very far away, it is a place called Camp Capilano. Before we went to the camp we went to the Cleveland Dam. We then did our first project which was to create characters for an intro to a T.V. Show like the beginning of The Amazing Race, or Master Chef, and even Big Brother has a intro like that. It was basically a short little clip that explained what kind of person they were in a very short period of time.

 

That is what the view from the park.

The teachers then told us to hike to the camp which none of us knew where it was. So they showed us on a map where to walk on the trail to get to it. After we hiked for a short time we found it then we sat outside for a while, then we were called in to have burritos. We all had our burritos and then were told that we had to do another project. Which was similar to the first one but we weren’t allowed to use visual we only had audio to work with. We stuck with similar characters so we didn’t have to change the story and spend time on that. We also we encouraged to add background music and because the way iMovie works and how we ran out of time we have Cody Simpsons Album Cover through the whole clip.

The main thing I learned from that is that I can do a pretty good fat Albert impression. After that we were given a brake and were aloud to go into the pool for an hour. We got to relax for a little while but as most good things it came to an end and we were given our final project.

That video took a long time as we stayed up late and woke up early to get it done. I was then exhausted, but we had one more stop, are teachers decided to take us to the hatchery. We were there for a short time we then had lunch and finally went home. Even after all of that I still had to go to work. 6 hours later I was passed out in my bed.

That was my field trip to Camp Capilano, eh.