Josh’s neat blog

So I am back, it has been a while. This time I am writing about Destination Imagination. This is my first time doing destination imagination. So lets just jump right into this post.

So destination imagination is basically a tournament for smart students, no just kidding its a little tournament to get kids imaginations flowing. You can be any age to enter as long as you can do every thing required. You have to have a team, for me I had a team of five. This team consisted of Logan, Dries, Erin, Sophia. we worked pretty well together but we are not even done yet, we have the provincial tournament on April 4th and Carson Graham Secondary. Anyway we had a long process, this process consisted of lots of planning prepping and work sheets. before we could even start to build are solution, in DI you get a challenge in which you have to solve by creating a solution with your team. Are challenge was picture this, btw click this link to check out all of the challenges. We also had to sign an interference form so that are parents or friends could not help or interfere. Th

 

This was an amazing opportunity but with this opportunity comes work. We were being marked on the competency of Research and Understand. When starting this project, we had to research about are challenge. We read lots of rules about the tournament. For example we had to ware shoes it was weird. From all that work comes triumph, we did well on are challenge. Now we are starting the same cycle, we are building onto are challenge to make it better. This is the video of are presentation:

this video was filmed by one of my class mates Annie. She filmed this for my group so credit to her. If you could not tell, I was the alien the creature with a mask and long claws. It was not hard to do but the noises I made are inspired by the movie and character the predator, it was a film from 1987. The mask was also some what inspired by the character.

We are working on upgrades for are presentation we are building an actual rocket prop to hide behind. It is made out of card board and will have a window. It will be one of are team choice elements, that means its an accessory that the team decides to make we have to make two the other one is a space rover. we also had two astronaut helmets.

That is the main astronauts helmet, we also had an alien but that is being changed. We now only have astronauts and launch control. Two American astronauts and one Russian astronaut. I play the Russian astronaut and logan and dries play the other two. This is a better version and a more realistic version.

Any way that is all for now, I will surly be back writing soon. I still have to write one more post before I am done for spring break. That is all for today see you next time bye. 👋 👋 👋

Well I said I would be writing another one. Hello readers, today I will be talking about the renaissance. So lets get right into the history.

So the renaissance started in the 1300’s. It was a time were humans started to believe in science more then God They started to paint and build, this is were the great artists started. Leonardo De Vinci and Michelangelo are to artists that started this great era of art. Michelangelo painted the inside of the roof on the Sistine chapel. Leonardo De Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, a beautiful piece painted in a way so that the eyes follow you when you walk past, or from side to side. Other artists of this time like Raphael also used the same style. Every painting in this time shows humans as big and unopposed species. This is the theory of humanism, a belief that humans are superior to every thing else. In the Middle Ages they always would paint God or Angels bigger then humans. With ideas Of humanism God is no longer believed as a being spirit in all of us. Anyway with this new way of thinking came the dissecting of human body’s to find out what is inside the human body. This is what pushed the scientific revolution, this revolution is what gave birth to scientific method. It is a list of procedures that allow science to be what it is today.

 

The competency’s for this renaissance project: Create and Cause and Consequence

in this project we made a song that ties in to the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the renaissance. It uses the song “it the end of the world as we know it” a song by R.E.M. its an old rock song. Anyway we had to make and create a parody of this song. It was pretty easy, I enjoyed the project mostly because I like to listen to music. Sorry I am getting distracted, we Made it from scratch, we started by modifying the lyric then we sang those lyrics in garage band. We put the music file in the background and bam it was finished we made a group version as well but that one was not as good as my first. I am sorry the song would not transfers or upload so we will have to go without it. Anyway lets move on, the renaissance was an awesome time full of creativity and belief we got lots of amazing pieces of art from it like I mentioned before. I still have one thing I need to say before this paragraph ends. It is that the rich men of this time could use the art and artists to gain power. This one thing we had to research the Cause and Consequences of the renaissance. The cause, Middle Ages people and priest start to question the churches. This is when Martin Luther  became a big part of this history. The church started handing out these pardons called indulgences.   A pardon from purgatory, a place between heaven and hell. Martin Luther decided he would read the bible and found out that this was not the case, by the way no one could read at this time other then scollers, priest, nuns and rich men. Anyway he nailed his 95 thesis on the local church door. This caught a lot of attention from the pope, who pulled him in front of the emperor. Martin Luther was German, this all took place in Germany. That is one of the main causes of the renaissance, now for the consequence. Corrupt leaders, yes they had corruption in the Renaissance, rich men would commission artists to paint famous pieces of art. Like the Medici’s, here is the article I read about. It was very surprising when I first read this, I did some research and found out how many corrupt leaders we have had. Spoiler alert 🚨 a lot the article I read from had eight. That’s a lot of corruption the one that stood out the most was Ferdinand Marcos, he was the president of the Philippines. He took tax money from the huge businesses and used it for him self. That is not right any way those are the competency’s

So that is the renaissance covered, lets talk about the rest and smaller parts of the project. We have had a lot of milestones the biggest one was the time we had to hand in are song. I will admit I did it in one day. I think I did it quite well, any way that is going to all from me today, I will be surly writing soon until then this has been it bye.

Hello I am back, this post will revolve around math.

This is fun math, this involves 3D shapes lots of them. We started by learning about the prisms known as triangular and rectangular prisms. These were the main shapes I used to make my part of the project the bindings. These are the things that you clip your boots into when you ware skis. My partner Raymond designed the skis that the bindings go on. Those were more complicated but Raymond managed to make a nice looking pair of skis. After we made the design we had to 3D print them. After that we calculate the measurements and found the volume and surface area. Then we had to find the surface are to volume ratio. We made a key note to present to are class and to show are teacher Mr Gross are work.

These are the two models and the characteristics.

We are being marked on the competency of Communicating and Representing 

this means we had to show are communication to are teacher. Represent means to represent are work which I think we did really well. Over all I would give are work about a 7/10. We did well but I did some things wrong. Anyway I communicated with Raymond a bit to much, that is how we made such compatible models. We made these separately so we could split up the work. We calculated each separately to make it a bit easier. I will admit that I got the easy shapes, Raymonds ones were hard but he did it very well.

 

Okay lets talk more about the project. Are skis were powder skis the best ones designed, me and Raymond are both huge skiers we ski together all the time. We both wanted skis that glide over the powder so we came up these super wide and flexible skis. The definition of powder skis are wide flexible skis. They are built that way to absorb rough landings and so they bend when you get caught in powder. I want a pair, the only person I know that has a pair is mine and Raymond’s friend julien who is a pro at skiing btw. His are made by a skiing company named blizzard anyway my point is we had an example to build off of. The bindings aren’t different then any other binding you would find on other skis. The skis are twin tip which help you glide on top of the snow. Enough about skis lets get to the numbers.

 

 

these are the calculations of the skis they may be a bit blurry. Are V to SA ratio which means volume to surface area, is 3.56:1. The bindings are 2.28:1 so we completed are goal, we wanted more surface area then volume. The skis have more surface area then volume.

 

we have more competency’s Applying and Innovating, reasoning and analyzing 

we applied a lot of innovation to are world of skis with this project. Not only did we make are own skis but we made skis that would better are performance, I am happy with are results and I think Raymond is as well. We analyzed a lot we analyzed skis, skis and more skis. Trying to find the perfect inspiration for are pair of skis. We also had a big idea, this idea in-tailed the relationship between surface area and volume. His was found in the ratio, every object has some volume and some surface area. The difference is the object will most likely have more of one then the other. I am getting distracted more about the curricular competency’s. We reasoned with loads of numbers we had to divide, subtract, add and multiply. We also had to find lots of formulas like Bxh, LxWxH r2. Those are some of the formulas we used. For apply we applied those formulas to are model to find these math problems and to solve them as well.

This was the project I have been doing for the past four weeks. I have nothing more to say about this project. I am happy with what we made and liked doing this project. Until I write again which will probably be in like twenty four hours. I have to say good bye 👋 👋 👋 👋

 

Hi I am back with another blog post, this time it is about the Middle Ages and knights and kings ⚔️.

The Middle Ages was a time and age that stretch across Europe in the 12 century. It mainly was just Europe, the core was England. It was the time of knights and horse back riding. They farmed wheat and other crops. Are project was about what life was like and to compare it to now. Life was ruff in the dark age, people had to work hard and not get payed enough for their work. The only way people where able to escape being a peasant is to become a squire which is was very rare. That was only for men for women they either could get married and become a wife or work for the church. Back in the Middle Ages they focuses heavily on religion. They would use god to chose if people were guilty or innocent.  It was unfair and brutal but this is how things were back then. Every thing was run by the Feudal System it was a basic system and it went Like this, here is a photo of the pyramid of the Feudal System:

 

the is the pyramid of the Feudal System. It is king/queen on top. Then Lords and Vassals to the king,  then the knights and vassals to the lords. Finally its the peasants/ serfs they are the every day village people that couldn’t read or write. The pope was above the king, the leader of the church and the supposed representative of god. He would help the king make decisions and rules. Here is a photo of England’s Pope

The lords where the kings representatives in Different towns. They would run theses places for the king. They could use the title of Lord, Count or Duke. They would send letters to the king giving him updates about the towns they were running. If they were attacked they would send a desperate letter to the king for help.

The knights were the protectors of the kingdoms, they would travel to Jerusalem and fight in the holy war. The holy war was the knights purpose they were supposed to fight. Each knight had a squire which would hold their equipment. After that knights would just protect their kingdoms or be die form old age.

Anyway now I will talk about what we did for are project. We made a project and by we I mean me and my partner Quinn check out his blog btw. We had to present it in 4 minutes, it was about Continuity and change from the Middle Ages to now.

We were being marked on the competencies continuity and change and comprehend

comprehend, we had to research and comprehend what we were presenting. This meant know what each subject was, learn its history and what lead to its creation/ use. I was in charge of the Catapult and Siege Tower. This meant a lot of research about these old pieces of artillery. These pieces of revolutionary weaponry were built for a reason, the reason that the Siege Tower was built is for a heavy duty target for the enemy to shoot. While the foot troops walked up without challenge. They would then use Catapult to knock down the kingdom walls. Here is informational video I made about these pieces of artillery:

 

Obliviously lots has changed from the Middle Ages to now. We have cars, buses, trains, airplanes and amazing medical science. These are things they didn’t have but could have used back in the Middle Ages, they suffered from the Black Death. This is something that was rarely cured. It was spread by rats, this is a continuation, to today we have the corona virus and so far 2 people in canada have died and over thousand in china to. Even though the plague killed millions this shows that mass viruses still exist today. The change is building materials, they have changed a lot. Back then they use stone and wood, we use those same materials but we design are buildings differently now we have more modern building codes and design preferences. We use flat materials and smooth paint to colour and build, they use round stone and rough wood and sand made paint. This is a big difference in comparisons from what they did then to now.

My Conclusion

The Middle Ages were dark times, they slaughtered prisoners and wrong doers all for god. It was a very barbaric times, I learned a lot from this project, it has given me a view of old civilizations that I have never had before. It was cool reading about knights and kings but I would not like to live in that age anytime soon. I am fine where I am right now. I like knights and kings but after learning and reading about what they did I had different thoughts about them. They killed millions of muslim prisoners for what they called the holy war and land I don’t personally think it was worth it. They thought it was or else it wouldn’t have been recorded. Any way that is the blog thank you for reading till the end, I will have another blog post out by the time I am finished my next project. Bye for now 🖐🖐🖐 🖐🖐🖐🖐🖐

This project is all about chemistry and coding And science btw check out my matter simulator on scratch.

 

Hi I am back with another blog post. This time it is about Chemistry 🧪 and coding. I throughly enjoyed make my project, which was a Matter Simulator. This was an interactive piece of technology that was made using a program called scratch. It was not hard but I am proud of what I made. It can change looks, bounce around atoms and explode when the pressure gets to high. It took a lot of time to make. I used the J.J Thompson model for my atoms. If you didn’t know J.J Thompson was a scientist, That revised the atom model and made a new version. It looked like the top of a blue berry muffin or plum pudding. He revised the atom model because he thought the way that John dalton, the scientist who had experimented with it originally missed some things. There for it is known as the blueberry muffin model or plum pudding model. We also had some competencies and a driving question which I will mention now.

 

the first competency is Communicating:

we had to communicate with are teacher and pears about what we were Making. I asked my friend a lot about advice. I didn’t make a flawless simulator it has some bugs but I am happy with how it turned out. Communication wasn’t the most important competence but was needed none the less.

 

the second one is Evaluating:

We had to evaluate are own work and build on it. After doing something we had to ask are selves if we wanted to add more to that segment of the code. I did this multiple times when making something in my coding. I looked over what I had coded and fixed glitches. We also had to complete a test at the end of the project it was evaluating are knowledge I this subject.

 

The third one is Questioning and Predicting:

I questioned things a lot while planning and making this project. I also made a mind node about planning for this project. It contains questions about the project and other things. This is required almost every time we make and create a product and project.

The driving question was “how is the motion if atom and molecules related to temperature”:

Atoms move faster when the temperature and environment get hotter. They slow down when the temperature and environment gets colder. The motion is related to temperature because the heat adds kinetic energy, as proven by the kinetic molecular theory.

This is the Mind Node:

We made this mind node at the beginning of this project. It is not super detailed but it explains what I was going to research and make for my project. It has different segment for different parts of the project. This is all done on an easy to use app called mind node.

Hello

This post is going to be about reflection.

We have a presentation coming up called an MPol. An Mpol is a “Midway Presentation Of Learning”. We have to think of a question and answer it with examples.

The My question is, “Improving my writing and spelling by the end of the year!”

I have a habit of making small spelling and grammar mistakes, I know this because my mom always reads my post and tells me that I need to fix these errors. So I do and when I do I slowly see where I make these mistakes. When I see where these mistakes are made, I take notice and that is helping me learn. This does not mean that when you read my posts, it will be mistake free but I try my hardest to stop making these mistakes and to proof read my posts before publishing them. If you read my old posts you will see my grammar mistakes and there are a lot of them. As I have continued to write these posts, I have become better at my writing and I don’t make as many mistakes anymore.

Quick mention to Felix L go check out his amazing blog.

 

My answer to “Improving my writing and spelling by the end of the year”

I believe if I continue to write these posts and in class paragraphs then I will learn to improve my writing.   I have been improving as I write a lot each post. Every time I write I get just that much better at it. In humanities I  had to write about meaning of the media and how it can affect your life and control it. I didn’t do so well on that post but I improved on the maker post about Star Wars, check out the link.

My next goal is “Being less shy in groups”

without question I am very shy 🤐. I have never been super confident. I have no examples of me being confident and brave when in a group presentation or group. I have been shy my whole life I was born a sensitive boy. I have never been able to make lots of friends. I am willing to not let anxiety get me down. I have been learning from my mom how to manage social anxiety.

My answer to “Being less shy in groups”

As I learn how to be more confident, I need to very brave when I present projects. I have gotten a lot better my example of this is the Winter Exhibition. I was able to keep myself together as people were coming and looking at my project. This helped me grow and practice managing my fear 😥.

My last question is to “manage my time better”

I am not good at doing my work right when It is assigned, I procrastinate a lot with school work and I am looking to change this habit. I have lots of examples from this post alone. I kept taking long brakes between questions. I have done this with reading books, writing and art. I need to stop doing this every time I am assigned work.

My answer to,  “manage my time better”

I need to work and keep it up until I finish the assignment. I could listen to music when I work to help keep me in the chair and typing but I think it would distract me so I won’t do that. My mum has told me it is not easy to listen to music and concentrate on thinking at the same time. I could boil some water and make a cup of tea to help me keep focused 😶.  I am not good at concentrating on one thing, my brain jumps to one thought after another. I am not good at subjects that require focus like math.

The force flows through the Star Wars universe, we had to build a product and make a project around the world of Star Wars. I chose to make a bunch of impractical Star Wars ships, to display at the Winter Exhibition.

We followed the LAUNCH cycle a list of steps to help you make a project or a product. We documented all of are work in a journal, in an app called explain everything. Here’s is the video.

 

The project is just building models out of card board but that launch process is a very great way to learn. It is a step by step list to put your idea into motion, here Check out the video about the LAUNCH cycle. John Spencer is the man who designed this brilliant cycle. He created it because he thought the way people were teaching student was not effective and he made a better way. I personally find the LAUNCH process very great. I like how it lets you make your own idea 💡 and it lets you do it yourself with guidances. The launch cycle is great for student who want to grab their learning by the horns. Taking in all the world has to offer and embracing their future.

My project was all about impractical ships as I said before. The models that a made were made out of cardboard now I’m going to talk about the exhibition. The exhibition was small but very full of views. Me and my class mates Logan, Nate, Julien, Owen and Noah go check out their blogs btw. We made a replica of Tatooine the planet from Star Wars. I thought it was great that we put it together is such little time. Here are the photos of my project.

We had to dress up as an iconic character from Star Wars. I dressed up as young Obi Wan Kenobi he is a Jedi master in the universe of Star Wars and a very cool and relatable character. His own Padewan turned on him and tried to kill him, Obi Wan Kenobi was forced to fight his Padewan Anakin Skywalker. If you cant tell I am a bit of a Star Wars nurd.

 

Here is the time lapse of me building my models.

This ship that I’m building is called a B-Wing. It is an off balance star-fighter. It is mostly used to fight other small ships in space but when it enters a planets atmosphere it should fall over and out of the sky. I also made a walker and a bomber ship but I do not have videos of those ones being built. .

This is all for my blog stay tuned for another blog post.

Hello I’m back with another blog post this time it is about math.

I know that when people say the word math they probably think of being bored, math can be fun if you look at it form the right perspective. We have used this math to make Star Wars space ships 🚀 which will be displayed at the PLP winter exhibition. Theses ships use right triangles📐to make laser 🔦paths and shoot lasers like in the movies. We have spend lots of time studying the phy theory which is my nickname for the theory btw. It is kind of complicated but i can simplify it for you readers, the theory is you can use this math to find the angles of right angled triangles.  Like a ladder or a triangular level, it is not a very known theory in math but it is significant

the competencies are Communicating and representing, applying and innovating, questioning and predicting. I will write about each one, and the big idea.

The first competency is Communicating and representing.

I used this when i was communicating with my group and building our Star Wars ship, we had to talk with each other and tell each other what we were doing. It was kind of hard to do because I was sick🤢 a lot of the time we were building, but we worked hard and finished our project. I could really improve this competency a lot I don’t talk a lot in class or in groups I usually just stay quiet. I represented my group at the exhibition standing next to our ship, I was explaining to anyone to walk up to me about how we built it and what it was.

The second competency was applying and innovating.

We had to apply lots of ideas to this project, including our idea of which ship to chose. I wanted to make the millennium falcon a ship from Star Wars 🌠. My group wanted to make something else they wanted to make an All Terrain Scout Turret. Which is a vehicle from Star Wars but we agreed on the millennium falcon. We had to innovate a lot during are building phase of this project, our ship is the definition of the millennium falcon it was very math based to build. Which required a lot of innovation to build we had to think a lot outside the box 📦 to finish this project.

The third competency was questioning and predicting.

We had to predict first in this project how long it would take, what it would look like, how it would work. It took upon 1 third of the time to make are ship but it was important, after that we questioned what we were building in this project, I went over this part earlier in this post just scroll up to find 🔍it.

the big idea “light energy can travel as either a wave or a particle”

We had to research about light for using the lasers in this project, we learned a lot.

The End Of The SBC

This post is about reflecting on what we have done over the past weeks. We had to make music, research about copyright, use emoji’s to create brain teasers and make creative art pictures.This week I will be summarizing what we have done, The 1st week we wrote about ME, the second week was images, the third week was about           , the fourth week was about free choice, the 5th week was music, the 6th week was emojis and the 7th week was Christmas and so on……………

These pics are a slideshow show of our blogging challenge:

The passed week we have done some amazing things in the PLP program. I have learned how to blog and I was also lucky to be included in a workshop to learn about blogging. It gave me a lot of good ideas to use while working on my challenges. I am sorry to see this project come to an end because I really enjoyed it. Looking back I am proud of everything I have done, and I am thankful that I can have a chance to revise if necessary. As I look back , these challenges may have been easy but each one taught me a thing or two about how to blog. We learned how to use sliders, what copyright is and that there are lots of holidays around the world that different people celebrate.

As the weeks went on my writing became more in depth and it started to flow better. I have always had a challenge with spelling and grammar and during the blogging I was able to practise my spelling as well.I am looking forward to the next challenge after a nice two week christmas break.

 

 

 

      We have been learning about the power of an Apple Pencil, this fantastic and sleek device has a very sensitive tip on the end of it that connects to the I Pad  by blue tooth and it is a very useful tool that allows you to create amazing designs. The Apple Pencil is very nice to look at and apple claims that is feels like a real pencil. The Apple Pencil has a special sensor that detects movement on the screen. It can be used simultaneously with your finger on the screen. I have been using this technology over the last five months, it has a really nice feeling when you use it but that is just my opinion, you may find the feeling different. I have added a photo of the box of the pencil and the iPad.

      I have been very lucky to use the Apple Pencil together with the Apple I pad to do my studies and I have learned so much about technology and how to write well and blog, share links and make documents and advertisements. I am very excited for the future to see where this PLP program takes me in my education.

This is what the I pad and pencil look like in the box:

I have used this amazing piece of technology to create many pieces of art in class, we have labeled these assignments with the word “Milestone” and these are the pieces of art.

These are the MILESTONES:

 

 

 

 

 

We had one driving question, “How can we use to enhance to our learning?”

These are all the Milestones that we have been working on for the last three weeks. We have been using the Apple Pencil to create these, these are examples of what is capable with the Apple Pencil. I enjoy drawing and sketching and I have learned a lot from this unit that we have been doing. We used Sketches Pro to create our name art and it was really fun learning how to use the pencil. I had the other Logitech pencil before but have just got the Apple pencil🍎which works better and has so many more features.  Each off these projects may be small but they took a lot of time and effort to finish them. These will be part of something even bigger than just art.

We were being assessed on the competencies of empowered learner which means, How do I take responsibility for my own learning? This is what I have done taken responsibility for my own work.