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Seattle 2018

Seattle 2018

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So this year as a part of our Cray Cray Yay! Yay! unit we went on a trip to Seattle. In a group, we had to create a video about why is it takes a crazy person to change the world. Here is my group’s video.

The Trip

I enjoyed every part of this trip. The city of Seattle is amazing, every turn you take there is something interesting to see, even if it takes a bit of searching. Even the times we were crammed in a bus for hours were enjoyable because I got to be with my friends. We were away for 4 days so it wasn’t long. But boy was it an experience. Every day was jam-packed with things to do. Day one we left home at 5 and when we arrived we were visiting the Microsoft headquarters.

Microsoft is so much bigger than just computers and I think everyone should get to see that. That’s why they have the visitors center so the public can know what it is they are really doing and where it all began. However, we didn’t just get to see what the public sees, Nah, we got to go behind the scenes and see the innovative minds of Microsoft. At the Microsoft Garage!

The place was amazing! It was like a lounge you see in a Disney Chanel middle school sitcom like Ant Farm. It was such a creative space that just seemed to ooze creativity. We were given a presentation from one of the workers there about having ideas and taking actions. It was a very interesting presentation because I noticed how similar it was to what we do in PLP. It was really good to hear that we could be doing things that adults are doing it a huge company.

Some Favourites

Here are some of my favourite activities and events that happened during the trip.

The Food

Of course, I’ve gotta start with the food. When on a PLP trip you don’t have to worry about not being fed. Mr. Hughes always plans the best meals. My favourite place we ate was at Din Tai Fung. They have the most amazing dumplings including the soup dumpling and those were amazing. I was sitting at the smaller table and we were kinda sad at the amount of food we got. We got a decent amount however we all agreed we could have eaten more.

The Hotel Adventure

We had a really fun experience with the hotels on this trip. When we arrived at the hotel they had made an error with the booking and didn’t have rooms for us. So last minute we had to go to a different hotel called the pineapple hotel. It was a strange place with a tropical theme and promoted being nude. It became a really funny story for us all. We only stayed there one day because the original hotel had enough hotels for the girls. The boys had to stay at a travel lodge though. It was a wild hotel adventure that made for a good story.

 iFly Indoor Skydiving

iFly was the best thing ever. You go into a giant wind tunnel like thing and blows a large amount of wind up at you, and you fly! Here is the video of me in the tunnel. I look funny cause of the wind ignore that.

The Marvel Exhibit

So one of the places we visited was the Museum of Pop Culture. When we went, there was an extra paid exhibit, the Marvel Exhibit, and I got a chance to go along with a friend of mine.

  • Gamora and Star-Lord

My friend and I are huge Marvel fans and we were the only two who really wanted to go. However, someone else in our class did go as well. It’s crazy how much history the comic and movie industry has. Especially a company like Marvel who has managed to stay true and loyal to their fans. I learned a lot about the world of comics from this exhibit. Like about the comic crusade. What is now viewed as an essential part of childhood was once feared by parents. They burned as many comics as they could because it was said to be teaching the kids bad lessons. This was a huge roadblock for comic creators as they had to begin censoring things and making sure they were “child appropriate”. However, Stan Lee, the father of Marvel didn’t give up and that is why we still enjoy the Marvel universe today.

  • Peter Parkers Homemade Suit

The museum was so much fun, we got to see all the original costumes that were used in the movies and worn by the actors and I learned so much about the film and comic world. I really enjoyed the exhibit along with the rest of the museum.

Then we went home, so I did some thinking…

I learned so much on this trip. I couldn’t imagine learning about crazy people without stepping into their shoes, stepping into their world. Seattle is a hub of innovation and ideas. So many people started there or made it their place there. Seattle is such an open community and is the perfect place to make a change. If you are crazy enough. This trip wouldn’t have been possible without our teachers. They were crazy enough to take 18 students across the border! Thank you to the teachers for such an amazing experience.

As always thanks for checking in, I’m still in school.

Jessie

2018 Exhibition

2018 Exhibition

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This years exhibition was a very new experience for me. We moved away from creating our own project or product or driving question. Instead, we had to create a 7 minute Pecha Kucha presentation based on our driving question.

“Why does it take a crazy person to change the world?”

Here is the video from my presentation for those of you who didn’t have the pleasure of seeing me in all my glory, sorta.

So the goal of this unit was to answer the driving question. We have done a lot of research on this topic and by the end of the unit, we came to the decision we had an overstanding of the topic. One of the things we did during this unit, we went on a trip to Seattle. You may be thinking what does a trip to Seattle have to do with this question. Well lucky for you I wrote a blog post on it where you will find a lovely video.

Creating The Presentation

Creating the presentation was quite the experience. I had to write out what I was going to say and then memorize it, as well as create the seven-minute slide show. In terms of scriptwriting, it was pretty easy. We were told to not write a script but my mind works better that way. Writing scripts has always been my thing whether it’s for a video or a play I write, whether its line by line or a wall of text. Visually I like it much better and im glad my method wasn’t shut down. We did a lot of revision on our scripts until they were almost perfect and ready to perform.

Once I had the script, making the slide show was pretty simple as well. The only thing that was difficult was making sure each image meant something. Each image has to go with what I’m saying and enhance it.

Memorizing my script was the hardest part. I had written a lot of words because as I said before that is how my mind organizes things. But when it came to memorizing I didn’t want to read all the stuff I read over and over. What I would do next time is to write the script then highlight the important sections into bullet points for an easier read.

In Preparation Of The Evening

In preparation of the evening, we were tasked to find a theme for our presentation room and plan to bring snacks and drinks as a class. Working with the whole class and having to come up with one idea was a really new thing for us all I think. There were a good number of us, myself included who took the reins and made sure everyone was doing their part.

Our theme for our room was a coffee house. So we had a bar table with stools and coffee tables that sat 3 people each. We also had a couch in one corner along with a bunch armchairs around the back of the room.

  

For snacks and drinks, we decided to bring things like mini sandwiches, cookies and coffee. For our presentations, we made a menu with all our names on it as different items on the menu.

I think we did a really good job working together and I think the room turned out really well. In the future, I think doing more group work like this would be really fun.

The Evening Of

The evening of was very interesting. I volunteered to be the first presenter. So as soon as the doors opened I was very nervous. I’m very proud of myself for going first. It was out of my comfort zone but I was pretty confident. After that, I just had the evening to walk around and visit other peoples projects.

Reflection

This whole project was really a different experience for me. In PLP we usually have a different approach to projects but it always follows the same curriculum as the regular program. However, this whole unit was different from anything any other classes were doing. This project was a unique and overall impactful project. I really learned a lot. Im not going to reflect too much on the presentation itself mostly because I don’t want to watch the video. I’m very proud of how it went and I got a lot of positive feedback on it. I think its ok if I leave it in the past now. The night was amazing and I had a lot of fun. Can’t wait for the next one.

As always thanks for checking in, I’m still in school!

Jessie

 

 

Alga-Rush, The Game

Alga-Rush, The Game

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So welcome to 2019, this is my first blog post. Before the Christmas break, we were working on a partner project in math. We had to create a game that involved algebra tiles and create an informational video about it. Here is our finished video, enjoy.

Its Game Time

So what you just saw was a run through of how to play the game, but we didn’t bore you with how we created it. I still don’t want to bore you so im gonna keep this short and sweet. My partner, Emily and I came up with the theme of the gold rush after going through multiple other themes like building, or gardening. Once came up with the theme, we got to work on the rules and building. Emily was responsible for creating the rules because her mind works well like that. I was responsible for the creation of the board and the pieces because my mind works well like that.

Connect Mathematical Concepts

I think our project is very strong in this core competency. Emily and I connected our math game to an interest of ours which was a show about Gems. (It’s a lot to explain its called Steven Universe) We found a common interest to base our project around. I think we also did a good job or connecting the concepts to our theme, nothing stuck out of looked like it needed to be thrown in for the marks.

Think Creatively and with Curiosity and Wonder

I think this project was a challenging one to wrap our heads around. It really required you to know the material to be able to make something creative. I think that really showed in our project.

Develop, Demonstrate, and Apply Mathematical Understanding

In our project, we integrated the math in a way that was fairly simple. However, it still had all the components from the criteria. I think we did an excellent job developing the idea so it fits in the theme of the game. Our video was clear and demonstrated to the audience the goal of our game very well.

Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial and symbolic forms

Most parts of our theme were sort of symbolic. The gems tiled we had to make it easy to remember instead of remembering the X or X squared tiles. I think our design and images added to the play and aesthetic of the game in a good.

Overall I think this was a really great project. I really enjoyed working on it and working with Emily.

As always thanks for checking in, im still in school.

Jessie

DNA Twins

DNA Twins

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For this science unit, we had to create a video that answered our driving question;

“Can cousins be twins?”

It is a pretty confusing question when you look at it. It seems like the answer would be “well no cause they have different parents.” But what if they had the same parents? But not really the same parents. What if two sets of twins married another set of twins. Could their children exhibit the same traits to resemble twins?

That is when my partner Marshall and I got to work on our video. During our research, we came to the conclusion that cousins could not be twins cause there is too much variation in their phenotypes. So when we created our video we decided to explore genetic modification. If you could modify the parent’s alleles could they create identical children? Here is our video demonstrating our findings.

This project was probably one of my weakest if I’m being completely honest. I wasn’t really on my A-game during the creation of this video. But I’ve learned from my mistakes and I’m ready to take on the projects we have to come in the future.

As always thanks for checking in, I’m still in school!

Jessie

The Science!

The Science!

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Dear readers,

It’s me, Jessie! I love science. It’s so cool. I really love physics and I think it’s my favourite subject. Being in grade 10 means we don’t study physics yet. But im super excited to take the course in grade 11. I really like the youtube channel Minute Physics. Their videos are easy to understand and super interesting.

This week for the student blogging challenge the theme is science. The first task I’ve done is the Video Prompts task. This is currently my favourite videos from minute science.

I find this video very interesting. I don’t always understand the language but I still enjoy learning about it. I highly recommend watching this video

Another task I chose to do from this week’s blogging challenge was the A-Z of Science words. So in the following images, you will see some words with letters missing. Underneath there will be a description of the word. In the comments write down your answers.

Thanks for stopping by this week for the student blogging challenge. I hope you enjoyed and I hope you learned something. Also, my intro and title of this blog post is a reference to a youtube channel if you know it, leave a comment.

As always thanks for checking in, im still in school.

Jessie

Apple loops

Apple loops

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As you know we create a lot of videos in PLP, and what is a video without good music. Nothing, its nothing. But since we usually share our videos with the world we run into the troubles of copyright music. However, using garage band you can create your own music! Now I know that seems difficult but Apple makes it really simple with a new feature called Live Loops.

Check out the song I made!

Making this live loop was extremely easy. It’s not the most astounding thing ever, and it didn’t take me a lot of time. But you can imagine what great music you could use make if you spent a lot of time working on it.

As I said making this was super easy. I used the “House” Loop. I experimented with the different sounds and tempos and once I found something I liked I started to record.

I find its difficult to map out what you are going to record when using live loops because you can’t really write down the chords or notes you are going to play. But if you practice what you are going to record multiple times it works really well.

I think this is a really great tool for videos because you can make some great music in short amounts of time. This is super helpful because when creating a video, music is the last thing that goes into it. If you haven’t timed it out right then you can often run out of time for music. But live loops makes it super easy and I will certainly use it in the future.

As always thanks for checking in, I’m still in school!

Jessie

Think Different

Think Different

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What does it take to change the world? Power? Money? Well, those things may help it actually takes a crazy person to change the world. You have to be the type of person to go against the grain and show people what you believe in.

Our new unit in humanities is called Cray Cray Yay! Yay!  In this unit, we are brainstorming the idea of being crazy. We were told to make a three minute Pecha Kucha on someone from the Think Different campaign made by Apple in 1997. I chose Charlie Chaplin because I love the film industry and he had a great influence on it.

A Pecha Kucha is a slideshow that auto plays. It usually has twenty slides shown twenty seconds each but since we are a big class and pressed for time we cut out presentations down to three minutes each. This gave us nine slides at twenty seconds each.

What you saw above was the slides from my keynote. Here is a link to my research. I wouldn’t want you to leave here without having learned something!

We started by researching our person. Then once we had all our research we formed a thesis. The thesis, in this case, was used as our concluding sentence. I really enjoyed this project. It was low stress and I enjoyed writing and researching Chaplin. Writing the script and researching was the most difficult part, though even that wasn’t that hard. Once the research was done I gathered some images that fit with what I was talking about and put them into a keynote.

I really liked this style of presentation. It kept you on your toes when presenting. I felt that we had more of a choice with who we were going to research. I got to pick someone I was genuinely interested in learning about. I think that made this project super easy and fun to make.

As always thanks for checking in, im still in school.

Jessie

Similarities and Differences

Similarities and Differences

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Everyone is different. We have different hair colour, different eye colour and we like different things. That’s how we know we are unique. Also, genetics helps us with that but we won’t talk about that just yet.

For week five of the student blogging challenge, we got to pick from four different tasks all relating to similarities and differences.

I chose, “Get to Know Your Readers”. If you click the image below you can visit the google form I made. It’s got 10 short questions so it shouldn’t take too long.


To make the survey I used google forms. Hence the fact that I called it a google form. It was really simple to make and I think it is a good tool to use for more than just making surveys.

I also chose the music task. I love music, im always listening to it. Heck im listening to music while writing the post! I don’t really have a favourite genre but I love exploring Spotify. Spotify is so customizable and they have great music recommendations that are perfect for you. I wish this was sponsored but it’s not I just really love the app.

Every month I make new playlists. Some people say that’s too much work and they just make one big playlist. However, I think this is a great way to keep track of my music. I get to look back on the months and see how my music has changed.

If you’d like to listen to my most recent playlist click the photo below.

If you have a Spotify acc don’t forget to follow my acc. All my playlists are public and you can listen to any of the ones on there.

I hope you enjoy my unique taste in music. I look forward to the responses I get from my google form. Don’t forget to leave a comment and tell me what your favourite music is!

As always thanks for checking in, I’m still in school.

Jessie

Synthesis Essay

Synthesis Essay

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I love writing but as I’ve said before im more of a casual writer. Both in style and in practice. I love creative writing and I enjoy writing blog posts. That’s because I get creative freedom over what I want to say. But one thing I’m, not the best at is essay writing. The only reason I say im not good at it is because I haven’t had much practice.

For your reading convenience here is my essay. I’d suggest reading it first because the rest of my blog will talk about the process I went through to write and prepare for it. Click the photo for the link to the essay.

If you’ve been following along with my Humanities blog post (shout out you guys) then you are aware that I have just finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower and creating a book trailer project. If you haven’t then here are the links to those two posts.

Reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Creating a Trailer

So using the book I just read along with two other sources we had to write an in-class synthesis essay. What is a synthesis essay you might be asking? Oh, you weren’t asking? Well, um I’ll tell you anyway. A synthesis essay is an essay that draws evidence from two or more sources. These sources are used to support your thesis.

How do authors use text to teach us something about ourselves?

– The Driving Question

Up above was our driving questions for this unit. How do authors use text to teach us more about ourselves? Now you cant get the answer from reading one piece of text. No, you’ve got to collect enough evidence and compare what you know. I mentioned earlier that the synthesis essay draws from two or more sources. Well, our other two sources were The Breakfast Club and The Complete Persepolis. 

     

I think the most difficult part of writing this essay in class was remembering my topics. When I get nervous or stressed I forget things so this made it difficult when I got to class and made to remember just the basics and make up the rest as I went along. Im super happy we got the time to revise because I am very proud of my final copy. (Which is the one you read, hopefully) Overall I think this was a really good experience and opportunity to practice my formal writing and I really enjoyed it.

As always thanks for checking in, im still in school!

Jessie

Emoji Challenge

Emoji Challenge

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This week’s Student Blogging Challenge is centered around emojis. With the advancements in technology, specifically, the way we communicate, we no longer need to click three times to type F. Now we just send each other little pictures of faces.

So for this challenge, I chose to create a guessing game. There will be a couple emojis on the screen that give you clues to the title of a film. I chose to do a film because I love movies. I used an app called Canva for anyone that is wondering. It allows you to create images for any kind of social media.

There are five movies to guess so if you get stuck on one you can pick another. Please comment your answers with the corresponding number.

1.

 

2.

3.

4.

This one is a personal favorite of mine but it might be a bit difficult to figure out.

5.

Again don’t forget to comment what you think the answers are. I’ll have the answers written in next weeks blog post so make sure you check that out.

Thanks for checking in, im still in school.

Jessie

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