So recently we started a project on creating metaphor machines for the revolutions we were assigned, and this is the mid way Blog Post to fill you in. So at first we were assigned groups to do the revolutions in, and we learnt about the revolution. We then created a timeline and were informed that we were creating a metaphor machine based off the revolution we were assigned. So after we discovered that, we starting writing down metaphors we could possibly do for the machine. We came up with some, and finally came to a conclusion as to what the metaphors were going to be. Some of the metaphors were – a bucket rising with the ball in it as a metaphor to the rise of Napoleon, two gears next to each other as a metaphor for The Tennis Court Oath, and many more metaphors. Here is a timelapse of us thinking of different metaphors and editing the timeline.

So we knew what the metaphors were, so now we had to create the machine. We started building a wooden structure, and we spray painted it black. Over that we cut out a stencil and spray painted cogs over it. Here is another timelapse of the spray painting. After that we hammered the structure together with nails, and put string on the structure to support the pipes where the ball would go down. And here we are now. We also have to do a video on the process, explaining the metaphors, and other things about the machine and the process we went through. Anyway, thank you for reading this blog post, and here are some pictures of what the machine looks like right now: See ya 🙂

So recently we had to do an Explain Everything on the cause and consequences of the railroad, and we got to choose three different subjects for the Explain Everything. I chose British Time was standardized, political movements spread, and Railways became a big employer. I chose these subjects because I thought they were really interesting, and showed the causes and consequences of the railway a lot.

Draft One:

The journey of draft one was a short one, but an interesting one. When I started creating the first draft, I could hardly find any good images that were Creative Commons, and it was quite frustrating. I did manange to create a stable draft though, but it was counted as a second draft as it wasn’t handed in in time. I unfortunately wasn’t able to have a voiceover for this draft, but either way, here it is:

Draft Two:

The second draft was quite a bit better than the first one, as I was able to find a lot more creative common images for the different sections. The reason I have called it the second draft instead of the third, is because technicallly the second one I mentioned in the last section, is the first one. I also added more slides so I could have more room to talk, and so it would be more consistent throughout the video, instead of having me talk during just one picture. Here it is:

Final Draft:

Here is the final draft of the video, which is a little bit late. The reason it is late is because I didn’t realize we were supposed to have a final draft done, only a second draft, but I’m not going to get into that. I added narration and animations this time, so the video looks much better and polished. Here is the link to the video on YouTube. So that is about it for this blog post. I hope you enjoyed, see ya later 🙂

So round 2 of the revolution blog posts has arrived, and this time we had to ask and answer a question about Steampunk. My question is how does Steampunk technology relate to current technology, and what are the different similarities and differences? I thought this was a very interesting question I was actually quite excited to do this blog post as I quite like Steampunk and enjoy learning more about it. Anyway, I designed different comparison images that lists the different components of modern and Steampunk technology, so I could ultimately compare them. Here are the different images:

1. Phones:

So here is the first piece of technology I compared for my blog post. I found in this comparison that current technology beat Steampunk, because smartphones can handle a lot more tasks than Steampunk phones can. This is an example of some technology that wasn’t futuristic in the Steampunk era, apart from maybe its look a little bit.

2.  Cars:

Now onto are second comparison, cars. I wanted to make sure that Steampunk cars were futuristic for it’s time period, so I looked it up. And I found that during the Victorian era, they definitely didn’t have anything like cars, so for being furpturistic for its time, the Steampunk car wins, but as far as which one is better, the modern sports car wins.

Well that is all for my blog post today. Either way, I found during the making of this blog post that a lot of things were a lot past it’s time in the Steampunk world, or era, and that some things were fairly accurate, and I had a lot of fun researching and learning more about that, and I hope we do more Steampunk related work.

Sources:

Research

Research 2

Research 3

So, we recently started a unit about Crane Brinton, and the anatomy of a revolution. We had to ask a question about him or his work and answer it. So I chose to ask who, how or what inspired him to create the anatomy of a revolution. I thought this was an interesting question, as we didn’t get to learn much about what inspired Crane, we just got to learn about his anatomy, and his different work. We also had to make a metaphor diagram of the different stages of a crisis from the revolutions, and my metaphor was a tsunami. So here that is:

Anyway after all that, here we are now. I decided to make a video comparing and describing what inspired him, in a kind of interesting style, with writing on a whiteboard different facts about him, and commentating over it. So here that is:

Video

Sources:

Biography/History

So recently we are learning about a man named Crane Brinton and his theories. We have to ask a question about these theories, answer the question, and write blog post about it, so here we go.

My question for Crane Brinton’s theory of revolution is – How, who or what inspired him to create a theory on revolution specifically? He was inspired by history and many different events involving revolution and comparison to different revolutions, and he really loved the idea of comparing revolutions to different things.

Sources:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Revolution

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_Brinton

https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/presidential-addresses/crane-brinton-biography

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/before-1800/was-the-american-revolution-a-revolution/crane-brintons-theory-of-revolution.php

Now that the summer is over it is time to write a blog post about it, so here we go. For the most part, I really enjoyed my summer, and I spent most of the time sailing around the gulf islands exploring new places, eating new foods, trying the ice cream at the different islands, and mostly of all, catching new Pokémon and getting items and XP from Pokéstops.

We started our journey from thunderbird, crossing the Georgia straight to Silva bay which was the worst island by far, as the island was basically abandoned and only had one restaurant. The people there were also very dodgy, to put it nicely, and the condition of everything there was very withered and old. Here is a picture of the place:

We then departed to Telegraph harbour which was a beautiful place, everything was in really good condition, the ice cream was amazing, and there were swings, ping pong, horseshoe throwing, and really good toilets. There was also a Pokéstop not too far from the harbour. Here are some a pictures:

We then went to Montague harbour where we anchored off. It was very beautiful, but it was also quite boring, as there was basically nothing to do on the island apart from camping. There was a little harbour on the stand with a shop and a small restaurant quite a while away from where we anchored off as well, and there was good food and service there. We also went standup paddle boarding around the area, which was very exciting and adventurous. Here is a picture of the sunset when we came back:

After that we traveled to Ganges marina, which was by far my favourite island. The food was amazing, the Wifi was amazing, there were many upon many restaurants that had delicious food, nice toilets and showers, there was a swimming pool not too far from the marina, and most importantly there were millions of Pokéstops. Here is a screenshot:

And here is a picture of the beautiful marina itself:

We then set off to Otter bay, which was also quite a nice place, as there were two swimming pools, free showers, good toilets, really good wifi, and a really nice view from a little observatory type deck. During the second or first day there (I can’t quite remember) there were orcas out in the ocean, that were just about visible from the wooden observatory deck. There were about two or three of them, and they were so majestic and beautiful, even though they were hardly visible from where we were. We did get pictures of the orcas, but they were hardly visible on the pictures, as they were really far away. Here are some pictures of the bay anyway:

We then started heading back home, and stopped off at poet’s cove. This place was very beautiful, and the marina was very new and clean, there was also a pool, good toilets, and free showers. The highlight of poets cove was by far the Pokémon, as there was a Pokéstop just next to the swimming pool, and not far from the marina. We dropped a lure down there, and we managed to catch many new and rare Pokémon, which was awesome, because we hadn’t caught many before Poet’s. Here is a picture of Poet’s:

We then traveled back, going to many of the same places, except this time we went across another pass so we didn’t have to go to Silva bay again. Overall I was happy to be home, and have my own room, toilet and shower gain, but I also missed the adventure, food and Pokémon at all the different islands we had explored. After coming home on late August, I relaxed, watching and studying films, having an amazing birthday, and played a lot of games, if you want to read about some of the games coming out, and updates on different games click here.

So, the second SLC’s are here, so let’s start.

This time I have two things that are my favourite – the first thing is my Renaissance poster. I feel this was one of the best things from this year or terms work because I spent a lot of time thinking of the metaphor, and making the poster itself, which I had many different drafts for. The metaphor for this visual is that the three flowers represent the different people I had chosen from the Renaissance, and they are close together because they didn’t live very far away. If you want to see the blog post on this, click here. Here are some of those drafts:

The second thing I am proud of, is my blue sky design project. If you want to learn more about that, go here. This is also one of the best things I have done, because I spent most of my time on all of it. Whether it be the script, the dialogue, the locations, and everything else. I also think I did a good job at making the movie in such a slim period of time. Here are some pictures from the movie, and the process:

I would now like to discuss how I have grown as a learner. During this term I feel that I have been doing very well on the assignments that have been handed out. And you may be asking, how does this show your growth? What are you even talking about James? Well, that’s because last term I didn’t hand things in on time, and now I have exceeded that goal, and I am excited to pursue even more excellence in the future of PLP. I feel like I have grown to work harder in class, and spend my working time even more wisely.

Now onto the final part of the confrence. Which is what I was the least good at this year or school term. Well, I feel that during the time period of work for my blue sky, a lot of things were late because I had to work on the design project. I also had two different projects to do as well. I feel like I could have done a little bit better, and as I am a perfectionist, I could have worked a little harder.

So, the second blue sky project is a thing. For this one, I decided to make a short film that was engaging to new people, made on a low budget, and on a small amount of time. So I started to work on a script, which was the first part of the design project. I had many different drafts for this, and I spent a lot of time on this  part of the project. Here are some different drafts for the first page:

Then the second part – finding a cast and scouting locations. This didn’t take much time, as there weren’t many location or members. The locations were key, and we were then ready to start filming! Here is a picture of one of the locations:

Then the second to last part – filming. This took the most time, because we were constantly changing the story, scenes and dialogue. Apart from that, the acting was solid and we didn’t have to do many takes. Here is a picture of one of the shots from the movie:

Now the final part – editing. There was not much music, or many sound effects, so that was pretty quick as well. I think this was the most important bit of the project, and unfortunately the editing on iMovie was quite annoying. Here is a screenshot of the process:

Overall, the result for this design project is that you can make a short film, with hardly any budget, and have it be engaging to new people. But, you can not do it in a small amount of time, as the movie was too short because of the small amount of time. The movie is currently on my films channel, which you can check out here.

So we had to make a museum exhibit as an addition to our science project and blue sky. We had three different groups for this, desire, means and results. I was assigned to be in the desire group. So for this, we started to do research for the desire of the exploration. This part of the process was pretty easy, as we had a google doc to do all of it, and we worked well together as well. Then we went on to do the planning for the exhibition, which we also did easily because we had the idea for it pretty fast. Finally we move onto the exhibition itself, and this was the hard part. For the exhibition we had three boards for each sub heading, and we had to carry these boards outside to the hallway, which was kind of frustrating. So then, we finally got onto the part where people arrived and starting looking around. Unfortunately during this time, no one even looked at the area with the exhibition! Overall I thought this was an okay experience but I prefered the blue sky part of it.

How did the raven bring the light? Well the story is a thing in itself, but my project reflects it on another level. As you can see in this cardboard box, there is essentially a mini theatre. This mini theatre projects the raven from a light shining at the cardboard wall with a raven cut into it. There are two lenses you can look through, the convex and concave lens. The flashlight is in the box, and the light shines from it, which is bouncing off a mirror, which finally reflects to go through the hole. This makes a projection of a raven on the far wall of the box. This happens because light won’t go through a surface that isn’t translucent or transparent, or see through in simpler terms. I know how to do this, because we learnt about the property of light, and how it works because we learnt about it in class. Here is a picture: