In my Humanities class we just completed a project of 4 different videos on revolutions. The driving question for this project was; How do ideas drive change?

The first Milestone was to look at and observe different forms of media. We looked at various types of books, videos, websites, and analyzed them to see if they were reliable sources.

Milestone two was creating a video in the style we wanted on the French Revolution. We decided to act out the video, using various people from our class to give an overview of the French Revolution. My group for this project was Ciara, Holly, Grace, and myself. I acted in, filmed and edited the video.

For the third Milestone we focused on the American Revolution. We had to write a song/rap that explained details of the  Revolution. The video included American Revolution images from the web superimposed on top of our rap video, which explained the revolution. I represented Canada by holding a maple leaf.

Milestone four was the Russian Revolution. We found this video the hardest to do because we had to record everything at once, and another reason was that there were other people talking in the background because we were filming in the school library.  Our video was a John Green style video, which could be described as a “crash course “, which is quickly explained with animations, images and videos while the host is on a set in the background.

For Milestone Five we had to do a creative reflection on the book we read, Revolution.

The majority of the the story is set in Paris, wether it be Andi’s or Alex’s point of view. In the book Alex’s role is that of a companion to the crown prince, Louis-Charles XVII (18th). After Louie-Charles is imprisioned in the temple of Paris, Alex decides to start setting off green fireworks to bring the crown prince joy during his inprisonment. Eventually she becomes known as the ‘Green Man’ because of her nightly green firework display. She eventually gets shot, and goes down to the catacombs to die, and hides her diary in the guitar case that she has with her.

Andi then ends up travelling back in time, and everyone thinks she is Alex. She then starts to do the Green Man’s job of creating firework displays. On the night of Louis-Charles’s death she asks fauvel for “the most buetaful fireworks paris has ever seen”, and receives two dozen Lucifer rockets which will rain down silver and gold.

I had an interesting experience reading Revolution, not only because I read it in 3 days at around 1 in the morning, but because it is not a type of book that I would usually read. I will probably only read this book once not because I didnt really like it, but as I said before, it is not a type of book that I commonly read.

A weird thing that happened with this video is that a YouTuber that I’ve never heard of with over 26k subscribers commented on the video. So… yeah.

Milestone six was our final video, and we were allowed to chose what style of video and what revolution we wanted. We chose the Troubles in Ireland. Unfortunately I was away when this video was being created and did not participate in the production of it.

Through this project about revolutions I leaned that when people are dissatisfied with the system,  they will come up with new or “revolutionary” ideas which will often lead to change,

Overall I enjoyed this project because I was able edit and draw.

-Finn

November 6th was Take Your Kid To Work Day here in B.C. For Take Your Kid To Work Day I went with my uncle to Stantec, an engineering services company. Stantec as a company has completed many large projects including; Vancouver International Airport, Cerro Corona Gold Mine in Peru, Panama Canal Expansion, Tesla Water Treatment Facility in California, and the Cancer centre at Guy’s Hospital in London. At stantec there are many departments, ranging from electrical engineering to marketing to what my uncle does, way-finding. Way-finding is a form of graphic design focused on signage and directing people.

Stantec is a large company, so there were 13 other kids there. They had us do a team-building exercise where the goal was to build a lego house in the same style  that a actual construction site would use. The first time we did it we failed, so we then debriefed what went wrong and did it again, but with better instructions. By doing this exercise I realized that my passion to be in charge really showed, I find that I find it easer to work with other people when I have control over the situation.

While I was at Stantec I noticed that as I talked to different people, each person had a different perspective on the projects they were doing. For example someone who worked on interior design would think about how to make people feel comfortable, where as someone in  structural engineering would think about how they could create a building that could preform its intended function as well as being aesthetically pleasing.

Another thing I noticed was the fact that people in certain areas of work would have similar personality types, an example of this being that someone in marketing would be more extroverted than someone in electrical engineering, as they would have to be making contact with others in order to improve the companies outreach and marketing strategies.

Overall I really enjoyed my time at Stantec not just because of all the kind people, but because my dream job is in the engineering field, though not the civil one (read about that here!).

-Finn

Maker… the class where we learn iPad specific skills, and now apparently make a lot of videos. The video we just finished was a recreation of a short horror film RUN, we had to have the video that we produced as close to the original as possible, video length, shot angle, everything. We also had to create everything ourselves, soundtrack, filming locations, and more. The driving question for this project was; What technologies, tools, and strategies can we utilize to create short films? 

The first milestone for this project was to do a personality test, screenshot the results, and write down two strengths and two weakness that the website said your personality type has. Then we had to hand in the document we created to Showbie, our submission app. I decided to do the test twice because the fist time I did it the result didn’t seem one-hundred percent spot on, the second time I did the test I ended up with a different answer, I personally feel like I am am a combination of the two.

I would encourage you to take the test as well, link is here. It is not necessary to put your email address in, you will only get emails from the company if you do and it will not affect your final result or the information given.

Milestone two was to first watch the video that we would be recreating, RUN.

We then had to create a screen lay of the video.

A screenplay essentially explains what is going during a move/video. A screenplay includes the script, locations, background audio/music, actions, shots, and angles.

For the third milestone we had to create a storyboard. A storyboard is where the actors are animated or drawn to show movement, angles and location are also shown. Our story board was made using the app Keynote. Here’s my group’s storyboard.

Milestone four was to create a call sheet. Call sheets have all the information that you could possible need for filming; weather, closest hospital, location, actor availably, filming schedule, prop list, and more.

My group; Brenton, Alex, and Myself then had to film and edit our video. Here is draft one.

For milestone five we had to show our video to another group to receive critique. this is a screenshot of the critique we received.

We then decided to re-film the entire video in a different location. we also added and improved our background audio.

Overall I enjoyed this project because at the start we did a personality test which will be useful in the future, an we were able to go out on our own, as a group and find a location of our choice to film.

-Finn

During term 1 in PLP 9 the one of the main focuses in my Scimatics class was; How are correlation and causation different? There were multiple small projects that eventually led up to a final project, a presentation of our correlation findings.


Big Idea: Analyzing the validity, reliability, and representation of data enables us to compare and interpret. An example of how I used the this curricular competency is in analyzing the raw survey results we received and processing and inserting them into a proper spreadsheet.

Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms. A good example of how I used the this curricular competency is the graphs I created with our survey results.

Communicating and Representing: Use mathematical vocabulary and language to contribute to mathematical discussions. Personally I think I could’ve used this competency in my project to a greater extent to help show my understanding of the difference in correlation and causation.

Applying and Innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through individual or collaborative approaches. I believe that I used this competency well as I believe I worked well with my partner, Alex.

-Finn

On my the PLP 9 Field Trip to Alberta, at times I would find it difficult to focus. However when I was interested in some of the things we were doing, it made it easier for me to stay on track. One of these places was the Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre. I have always found wolves fascinating. For example, we learned from a staff member that the usually the leader of the pack is the smartest, the strongest and the most well-rounded wolf. Personally I found the Wolf Centre was one of the best parts of the trip.

Video editing was another one of the things that I really enjoyed on the trip. When I was editing the videos I was able to stay focused for long periods of time, and in my opinion, produce good results. An example of this is, This Land Is Us,  the video I made explaining about how place impacts who we are.

Another thing that motivated me was that I want to complete assignments on time. A good example of this was the video that we had 15 minutes to film and edit at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. There was a lot of people in the locations that we wanted to film in, which made it more challenging to record the audio but in the end we managed to complete the video.

-Finn