Category: Social Studies

mmmmmmmmm…POL

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Wow, it’s already 2018! It seems like only yesterday I was in grade 8 (I still think I am sometimes). Since I walked back through the school doors in September, I have been building, learning, creating, and having fun in PLP. Now that I have done all this amazing learning, you might want to know what I have done so far and what I plan to learn next.

So what have I done so far? I have gone to Calgary, made a monster (Frankenstuffy), learned about hot air, crafted some cards, made some revaluations and “star”-ted some “wars”.

Since the focuse of this post is not to dwell in the past it’s to think ahead and show how I can improve my learning, I won’t go into to much detail –     I have other blog posts for that.

So what now? I’ve learnt a lot but I still have a lot more to learn. I am here to show off what I learned and ask some questions to help improve my learning for the year to come.

Let’s start off with Frankenstuffy. I think this project showed a lot of how I learn and what my strengths and weaknesses are. Let’s start off with my strengths. I felt that during this project I was very invested into it. I was wondering why I felt more excited to do this project than most other ones. I figured it was the amount of creative expression I could have on the project. For example with my Revolution metaphor machine project, it had to be about one pre chosen revolution, so I had less influence on the outcome. With other projects such as D.I where I have full creative expression, I found myself more motivated and happy to undertake a new project.

This leads me into one of my weaknesses: motivation when the goring gets tough. I find that when something goes wrong or the project is not as interesting, it is lot harder to complete it. Some things that I think I could do to improve how well I keep on task and motivated is set aside one hour every day after school for homework and chores just to make sure that evryday I at least get one hour of homework done if I have any.

Another one of my weaknesses is not asking for help. I know that I’m having trouble with something but I don’t ask I think this is becuse I feel  that if someone helps or spell checks it takes away from my contribution to the project. One way that i think would make me feel more inclined to ask other people for help on my project would be to be near peaple who want to help. So then I’m in an inviroment that encourages help not in the basement alone.

 

 

Now that I’ve talke about how I learn I want to ask you for some help. I have a question for you and it’s about my learning and how I can improve for the year to come. The question is, Out of my weaknesses witch one is the most important to overcome.

Thank you for teaching me how to learn.

 

 

 

Russian Revaluation

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So we finished our metaphor mashine unit. You might be thinking “What is a metaphor mashine?”. A metaphor mashine is a Rube Goldberg a shine that has an event of action of meaning represented by the section of the Rube Goldberg mashine. So our metaphor mashine was about revolutions and spasificly we learned about crane Brintons revaluationary revalution theroy. His theory was that you could see revaluations befor thay stoped and so there would be no chaos.

Crane briont wrote a book called the anatomy of a revaluation. This book compared revaluations to desises. He said that revaluations had a few stages one where the revaluation started. This stage was when there was something Rong that needed to be changed. The second was where the revaluation started to happen and the final was where the revaluation ended in ithere peace or war.

 

 

so now that you know the history of this project you might want to hear what we actually did.

We were a asignd the Russian revaluation. The Russian revaluations included the start of WW1 and the rise of the Soviet Union. Another part of this project was that we had to give our mashine a steam punk design for the English portion and it also had to include circuits for the math portion.

Now that you know the history of this assignment here’s the history that we researched.

Now that you’ve seen our video I’ll give a play by play of what happens. The first step of the revolution was Bloody Sunday, so to represent this we had dominos falling down. We chose dominos to show Bloody Sunday, because the dominos are a metaphor for all the people who fell as they died protesting.

The second step in the revolution was World War One. A metaphor for the beginning of World War One, was a book falling. This symbolizes the quick snap that surprised many when World War One started.The book lands on a wire completing a circuit.

This triggers a pulley, which is a metaphor for the soviets rising to power. The pulley also raises a red flag symbolizing the rise of Vladimir Lenin, which is a red flag for the rest of Russia.

When the flag goes up it knocks a ball down a ramp. This is a metaphor for
the provisional government falling down, and how russia is going down hill.

The ball rolls down and hits a cup full of confetti, and knocks it into a fan. This is to represent all the people who died in the Russian civil war. The confetti is people and the fan is well, bad news.

Though the fan does blow open a flag, representing the beginning of the Soviet Union.

So thats the end of my revolution project, I hope you learned something new about the Russian revolution!

Steam Punk Inqury Question?

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How does the style of steam punk effect the function of the machine? That is the question I’m going to answer for you today.

In this post I’m also going to discuss what I learned in my steampunk unit.

lets start with my learnings in stem punk so you can get some background knowledge on this unit so you can understand this question better. So we started this unit by reading the book Leviathan the book was a difrent take on World War One in this book the Us Britain were Darwin’s and Austria and Germany were clankers(use mashines a lot) this book showed a lot of steampunk astetic with its small illustrations littered through out. Well you might be wondering what is steam punk we’ll steam punk is.

Steampunk stared as a writing style about the Victorian area but if everything was powers by stem and if it also had a more gothic look. It also involves a lot of Cary technical things that have a lot of the parts exped and are normally made of copper and silver.

So now that you have a background on what steampunk is I can explain my question a bit better.

So the answer that I found to this question was it really doesn’t change much except make it more dangerous and a bit less efficient.

Its more dangerous becuse all of the exposed gears means you can get appendages and clothing stuck in the mashines a lot easer. It also  is less efferent becuse if gears have grease on them so thay would dry out quicker in the open.

Overall it just makes the mashines a bit more dangerous and a bit less productive.

 

The Second Installment of the SCLs/tPOLs

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The school year is coming to a close, so most people are happy for the summer break to be here and have some more free time to do personal activities. This final blog post for the year will be a reflection on the year’s learning and will be explaining why I’m ready to go into grade nine.

One thing this year that I think that I have improved on the most is my cooperation skills. Over the year my part in group projects has become more prominent by helping others get work done or doing a bit extra if need be. One of the goals that I set in my last SLC was to make sure everyone in the group had an equal role and I feel that I have accomplished that and I am quite happy about that goal.

 

One goal from my last SLC that I did not accomplish, was the enrichment of work documentation. I think I failed this one because I was normally too distracted on the work being done to remember to document it. I think this was because I normally felt a bit rushed, so I focused on the work and not so much on the documentation.  If I had scheduled better I think that I would be able to manage all my activities, and I  could balance work and therefore giving me more time for documentation.  I hope to apply these skills for next year.

One assignment that I had a lot of fun with was my science and light project at the end of the year. I feel I enjoyed the project a lot because of the open-ended nature of it, and how I could pick something related to light and just learn about it. For my learning style I think that was better for me than just doing a work sheet and handing it in.  Having choice dramatically increases the enjoyment and actual learning that I get out of a project.

In conclusion I know that I am ready for grade 9 because of my willingness to improve old skills and develop new ones.  I have had encouraging feedback from my teachers which also makes me believe I am ready for grade 9.

Google Trends “What is an Internet Meme?”

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So Google’s Year in Review has come out and you are now thinking…

“What is this and why should I watch it?”

 

I think this video is very similar to YouTube’s “YouTube Rewind 2016” becuse of how it makes a compilation of all the major trends and events that took place over the year. So if you have seen that I think it would also be a good idea to check out this.

I think we should care about these things because some had a meaningful impact on the lives of many people, including ourselves. These events included wars, elections and the deaths of many prominent people.

One thing I didn’t recognize was the Space X program launch that spectacularly failed.  This was shocking because it blew up before it was even ready for launching.  This is very rare, and made the Space X failure something unusual. I think I missed it because I don’t watch news channels and it may not have been trending on YouTube even though it did have over 5 million views.

This video was made from the top hits on Google which are displayed on Google Trends.This is searchable so people can easily find popular information and news  from their own country or around the world.  This is a cool and convenient way to learn about current events.