Josh’s neat blog

Hi

Every Object Tells A Story. What a project, we had to write a short story and We learned all about what an artifact is.  I found this assignment extremely enjoyable  once we got to writing the short story. So lets jump into the grit of this project.

It all started in the beginning of June! We were assigned a project called,  “Every Object Tells A Story!” We had to  listen to our teacher Mrs Maxwell in class as she taught us about New France. Then we had to take our knowledge and write a short story, mine was called , “The Story Of The Trade Axe!” The Artifact that inspired me to write the story was an axe from New France. The axe was used for trade. My main character is an adventurer named Max. He finds the axe and then has a flash back to the past in New France. This leads him on an adventure to find his heritage and family members grave.

Here is the ePub of the book:

Hello

So we are back, it has been a while. This time we are talking about math and budgets. So we have just finished this project called the Ultimate Road Trip. What we had to do was make a graph of are spending and a map of where we start and where we finished. We also had to make a mind map of are project at the end.

Here Is My Project End Ming Map.

So moving on from the introduction. This was a project about planning a road trip that was under $10,000 dollars in cost. Mine ended up being around $9,050. It was also about crafting your dream trip like buying expensive stuff and go to cool places. I chose to buy diamond encrusted bags and glasses and to have a Tesla. I had basic costs like hotel, car and food but I also had a PlayStation.

The Competencies

Reasoning and analyzing:

I did well on this I estimated my cost before doing the math I estimated the time It would take to write this post. It was two hours btw if you where wondering. So yes I think I did well on this competency. I analyzed my graph to see how much I spent at how many days.

Representing and communicating:

I communicated with my teacher a lot during this project. Asking how to do this math, how to Make a spread sheet. I talked to my teacher a lot as well. So yes, I communicated and represented my ideas with my teacher on what I was doing on my road trip.

Connecting and reflecting:

I connected my mathematical ideas to my road trip. I used linear relations to predict the rest of my trip. It was nice to be able to do connect math to the real world. I also reflected on my work, what I learned, what I need to learn and how far I have come.

This has been a pretty short post but I need to go and write another so I will see all you readers in the next post bye!!!!.

Hello everyone who reads my posts. This is a special post it’s about my Tpol. A Tpol is a “transitional -presentation- of-learning”. So this is very important, I missed my Mpol due to stupid timeline issues. So I want to nail this one. So I am preping a lot in advance to make sure I don’t mess up. I have mapped out my presentation, rewrote my blog post twice, went over my concepts and evidence twice. This should help me get a good outcome and nail this.  So lets get into the evidence of my learning and why believe I should be able to pass to grade 9

Quickly before we get into the evidence I would like to acknowledge the Driving Question:

(Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade)

Ok evidence number one

#1 Destination Imagination

DI or Destination Imagination was amazing having a whole class room of people watching you perform a skit, its ego boosting. The reason I believe this is number one is becuase of how much work I put into the skit. Costumes, backdrop, planning, I was doing it all I helped With 70% of the project along with Logan and Dries check them out. They will be posting a post exactly like this one on their blogs as well. So yes I believe this a huge piece of evidence towards growing as a PLP learner

DI regionals post: here

#2 Scimatics Pythagorean theory project

So this was kind of a two part project. It was done alongside maker but for this post I will just focus on the scimatics side of it. So for this project we had to build a Star Wars ship, my group chose the Millennium Falcon. My group consisted of Nate and Annie, sorry I could not find Nate’s blog. So we used hot glue and cardboard to make this ship. Btw here check out the blog post I wrote about it, it should explain a lot more about the project. So this helped me grow as a learner by teaching me how to keep track and plan my work. It also taught me how easy it is to build something with limited resources.

#3 The Ultimate Road trip 

This project dug a tiny bit into variables in mathematic equations. This project used graphing, mapping, budgeting and linear relations. We have just finished this one and it is my last project of my year of grade 8, for scimatics. It was really fun and taught me a lot about how to use variables and make algebraic equations (the equations for algebra). It also taught me how to make good spread sheets and how to budget sums of money into category’s.

.Sorry no blog post yet I will update it when I write it.

#4 The Star Wars Mini Blue Sky Project 

This is the other half of the second piece of evidence, for this we got to build a piece of the star wars universe. We got to chose something out of Star Wars. A problem, a solution for a problem or even a artsy still project like star wars food. I chose how Star Wars ships operate becuase I was curious but we ended up doing a whole star wars planet, I was part of the Tatooine team. So I learned a lot like preparation and how to manipulate lighting, but the most important thing was planning.

Blog Post here 

#5 Argh Matey

This project was one of my personal favourites. Mainly becuase I got to draw a lot. So for this project it was for two subjects humanities and scimatics. We had to make a comic book about an explorer and a virus. I chose Martin Frobisher and Small Pox becuase I found them the most interesting. This taught me how to tell a story and map out a story.

Blog Post here

#6 The Power Of The Apple Pencil 

This is another of my favourite projects becuase of getting to draw for most of it. It was really nice to learn some art techniques. We made a logo, name art and sketches and learnt how apple pencil’s work check it out here. ———>here <——— I learned from this how to handle an Apple Pencil on a screen instead of paper and how to take art slow. I use those to things to this day when drawing with sharpie, pencil and my apple pencil.

#7 The End Of The World As We Know It 

This project is at the bottom of the evidence list for one reason. I didn’t learn a lot from it, I learned about the Renaissance. That was it though it was a little boring as well but I learned one thing important. Its that art can tell a story all the art and sculptures from the renaissance tell a story and show a bit of the creators personality.

Blog Post Here

That is going to be it for my blog post thank all you readers out their for sticking with me for this long it has truly been amazing. Gtg I need to edit this blog before publishing it I will See all of you on the next post bye, ps. I have really enjoyed this chance to grow as a learner and see every angle of the world and its history and discovery’s and I thank Mrs Willamse and Mr Hughes fro arranging and making it all possible.

Hello It has definitely been a while since my last maker blogpost. Lets start this on with a bang. So I am a 100% sure everyone reading this knows what the Corona Virus is. For those of you who have been living under a rock, the Corona Virus is a deadly air spreading virus that basically is very dangerous. Many people in different country’s around the world have died or come down with the Corona Virus. So we have been stuck in our homes for two months. Lots of time on our hand, bored and have no jobs or school. This project ties into the pandemic so lets get into the meat of it.

So this project is called Witness To History as the title would suggest. So we were tasked with going out into parks and city’s and taking different photos at different angles. We took these basic photos and made a photo essay. I will show the end product at the end of this post.

Milestone one

was a interview a community member. I chose my cousin Max Gagan, he is one of my oldest cousins. He has been the only one of them that has been talking with me about this pandemic. He is the most mature which is why I chose him. He gave good answers and had a steady pace through the interview.

This is Max he is 15 this is a photo he provided willingly. I also had a theme for my essay it was “family apart because of the virus”. This is the main reason I chose him.

The other important milestone is the story board. That we did before making the photo essay. We had to draw out the photos before taking them. This help us picture what we wanted the photos to look like. Then we went to the places we drew and took the photos and added filters.

The driving question was “how can we, photojournalists tell a story during this time of physical distancing”. We can tell a story through pictures and videos but in this case just pictures. We can Arrange photos and titles to show a pattern and theme. This is how we can tell a story

Conclusion

So this project was nice and pretty fun to do. It is kind of sad that it is over but that is how thing change one thing starts another finishes. I believe I did a good job on this project and hope I get to take photos again for another project in the future. That’s all from me I will see all you readers on the next post, bye.

And as promised my essay

Hi there, I have risen from the dead to write again, just kidding!  You are probably thinking,  not another blog post but yes, another blog post. Over the past two months we have been plagued with a virus that I am sure everyone knows about, The Corona Virus or Covid-19🦠 if you prefer. It is the same virus and that is what inspired my teachers, Mrs Maxwell and Mr Gross to assign us this joint project called “Argh Matey” So lets get into the meat of this project, strap yourself in this is going to be an info. filled post.

So in April my two teachers who’s names are above, started a project called “Argh Matey” They were inspired to do so by the Corona Virus. This project consisted of history and cell science but I will discuss that later. So by now I think you all know what I am referring to when I say “Milestone” or a basic building block of knowledge for our projects.This is what I will show you so that you can see what we have been doing over that past two months. Oh, I forgot to mention what the end product is well that will have to be a surprise for the end. We also had a big idea and a mind map at the beginning here that are

Big Idea: life is processed at a cellular level

driving question: what is the significance of global expansionism, how do cells and diseases interact

the Mind Map for scimatics:

MILESTONE 1

Osmosis Jones, Osmosis Jones is a movie from 2001, it tells the story of a body cop who used to be famous and well known. After a few slip ups he is forced to guard the most boring part of the body, the mouth. In doing so he gets carried away and ends up chasing bacteria from the mouth down through the body causing a power shortage. That releases a virus that almost destroys the body. So this was an example of what they wanted our project to look like. I cant wait, I made a comic book, yes, a comic book, I drew all of my comic books drawings and I am very proud of them. So we had to do X-ray panels in our comic book showing the inside of our explorers body.

MILESTONE 2

So for mile stone two all we really had to do was read comic books, it was as simple as that. Then we had to mark down things like the style of the comic book, the art, the colours. This was easy and started us on the path towards creating our comic books.We had to read at least 3 or more if you wanted. My dad had a collection that he let me read so I was able to find quite a lot of ideas for mine. I really liked Black Panther. I really liked the art and drawings in the comics And it inspired me to get started.

MILESTONE 3

Khan academy is a great platform but it is a bit difficult to use. We learned all about the cells that make up the body by watching videos and taking notes. We learned what the difference between animal cells and plant cells are, and that cells have a nucleus. We also learned all the different parts of a cell and their names.

There was also the competencies for this project:

The first competency is Establishing Historical Significance for Humanities. Basically this meant that we had to do a heck of a lot of research about are explorer. My explorer was Sir Martin Frobisher he was a British explorer around the 1500s. He found the Northern Passage and found the land that we now know as Labrador. I believe I accomplished this competency with my comic book. I have several references to Frobisher’s accomplishments. I believe the important parts about Frobisher are his journey and his back story. Those are the reasons he is well know for his adventure, he found Labrador and the northern passage.

The second competency for scimatics is communicating I completed this competency by talking with my teachers a lot through iMessages. To get my project as good as it could possibly be. So we used communication to talk about the project, we also used scientific language in our comics like, nucleus, virus, mitochondria.

The final competency is connecting this meant that we had to look at all the research and connect it to are thinking. I thought that Frobisher’s origin was pretty deep, he was poor, lonely and was thrown in prison. Even though it was his fault for stealing. Anyway after that he is freed by the queen. This is something that I can connect

here is the comic book I made I mentioned it earlier download it and have a read for yourself.

The Story Of Frobisher Epub

The comic is right there ———>

Conclusion

so in the end I really had fun make this comic and hope I can do more assignments/ projects like this. Yes, the Corona Virus made things difficult but it all worked out I can still learn even from home. I absorbed this information through Kahn academy for scimatics. For humanities we used google which you probably already know of. We used google to fin the history in the explorer we chose  Anyway so this has been fun but I have another blog post to write, bye.

Hello 👋🏻, I am writing another post and it has the same topic as the last post I wrote. It is about Destination Imagination the wonderful learning experience. It is great 👍and this time thanks to Covid-19, we had to do it online. It was a bit hard to adjust to at first but it was worth it for the fun. I had the same group of people I had last time and we work well together, Logan, Erin, Dries and Sophia. This time we had to use an app called Zoom to present are challenge. It is like FaceTime but for work meetings, you can set up meetings and codes to send to anyone you want to have join. This is what we used to present our challenge.

I am getting off track, this time our presentation went really well. We had three appraising teachers and one special student appraiser. This is what helped our group do much better the second time around. Over all I enjoyed doing it online because we had virtual backgrounds. A setting that would change the world behind you to a photo that every one in the Zoom chat can see. This is how we had our back drop on every buddy’s background. We had the same story but with a few changed elements. The biggest change is our unseen character we changed  to a Russian Astronaut instead of the Alien astronaut. We have an astronaut that wants to be first to the moon and will kill to get what he wants. The other big change was we no longer have a rover, instead we have a letter from HQ. This is a bit random but I am going to show a photo from our presentation to demonstrate what it looked like.

This is the photo, we have three teachers as I said before in this post. The special guest is Zoe Wooles she is a student from Switzerland 🇨🇭. She is very sweet and kind. She is in the photo above, in the right, middle camera 🎥. She was amazing to have in the Zoom meeting and really helpful for information. I hope she will be involved in the following year DI preparation for next year. I should probably say more about Zoom the awesome app we used. Zoom has a setting called active speaker. It lets you see and only see the main speaker. We used this feature to make our presentation a lot better. I had to use a room in my house I didn’t like, the trash room. It is a room full of our family’s stuff we don’t use. I had to use it to get away from my mum and little brother. I am not saying their names for privacy reasons. Anyway yeah it is a small cramped room that I had to use. I was the Russian Astronaut 👨‍🚀 all I wore was a blue hoodie and black skiing helmet. 

This was all I had to write about so this is the end of this post, I will see all you people in the next post. Bye!!!!!!!!! 👋🏻

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.

 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 🖐🖐🖐 🖐🖐🖐🖐🖐