Nationalism.
Gotta Go Fast
Hello people of the internet.
I’m back again with another awesome blog, and we have just finished another project in humanities. Also, it’s our last one in semester one. We still have it in the second semester. This project was very fast-paced because we only had 3 WEEKS to finish it. 3WEEKS! Can you believe that? Everything was in such a rush. I’m was really relieved when it ended.
We did this project with Ms Madsen, whom we have not have before, and is also new to PLP, like me! This project is about slam poetry and the cause and consequences of the Industrial Revolution.
Keystone 1
The first keystone was a graphic organizer of the cause and consequences of the steam engine, plus a few more innovations of our choice that were introduced during the Industrial Revolution. But first, we had to learn about the Industrial Revolution and cause and consequences before that.
We started with learning about the Industrial Revolution. We read some textbook pages and watched two videos individually. Then took notes using the PDF format that our teacher so kindly provided. Of course, the textbook was online, because we are, as we like to call ourselves, sticky iPad kids. We don’t like using actual paper and textbooks.
Next, we learned about cause and consequences. There are two classifications of cause and classifications of consequences. The two classifications of cause are underlying conditions and human actions. Underlying conditions means certain conditions that existed that made something happen. Human actions means someone did something that made something else happen. The two classifications of consequences are long term and short term. Those are pretty self explanatory.
This keystone has two separate parts. One, the cause and consequences of the invention of the steam engine. Two, three inventions of our choice from the revolution. We have to have the reason it was invented, and list three consequences for each one. For mine, I chose the light bolt, steel, and cotton gin.
Keystone 2
The second keystone is a formal paragraph that informs the reader about how the Industrial Revolution has made consequences and/or impacts on these things:
- The environmental consequences
- Consequences for urbanization
- Workers
- Impacts on and consequences for war
- Impacts on children
- Or choose a innovation and its impacts
We had time to think and decide which topic we wanted to choose over the weekend, but I totally forgot, so I only had a few minutes to decide. The ones that I was interested in was the one on war and environment. When the teacher asked me which one I wanted, I still haven’t decided yet. I panicked a little and went with war, but later changed it to environment.
Then we did some research on our topic. Well I didn’t, because I wasn’t done with my graphic organizer. So while everyone else was doing their research, I was trying to catch up on my work. I barely did any research on my paragraph, but that was ok, because I already learned about most of the informations that I need to write it.
This keystone was pretty easy. We had to have our friends read and give us feedback on what we could change. I only had time to do it with one of my friends before class was over, so the other person to do the proofread was my mom.
Keystone 3
Similar to the first keystone, keystone 3 also has two parts. One is a slam poetry analysis. For this one, we watched three poems in class and we had to pick one to do the analysis on. The three poems were “To This Day” by Shane Koyczan, “We Can Be More” by Solli Raphael, and “Why Am I Not Good Enough” by Olivia Vella.
The other part of this keystone is our slam poetry planner. This is where we put in the response we want from the audience, the theme, etc. By the way, the theme of our poem should be the topic that we chose earlier. That all there is to this keystone, pretty simple and easy. Didn’t take that long to do. By the end of this project, two weeks had already gone by, leaving us with just a week to do the poems.
Final product
The final product, or the finish line, is the slam poem. On the first day of the week, we had to finish writing out our rough draft. Then, the next two days were to revise and practice our poems. We were suppose to preform our poems on Thursday, and leave Friday to do our blog post, but as a class, we decided to do the performances on Friday so that we would have more time to finish our poem.
All of our poems needed to be presented to the class. My poem is called”While There’s Still Time Left.” We did our performances in the Vortex, the theatre in our school. I didn’t know we had to put our names on a list for who’s going when, so I was one of the last ones to preform.
Overall, I had fun during this project. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be, and it wasn’t that bad as well. Slam poetry, or poetry in general is pretty scary, but I wouldn’t mind doing it again.
Circus circuits
Hello everybody.
IT’S THE END OF THE LAST PROJECT OF SCIENCE!! I love science, so this is very sad. I kind of wish we would’ve done a project on astronomy, but this was really fun.
For the first keystone, we did a infographic on an energy source of our choice. I chose nuclear energy because I found it the most interesting out of the other ones. Nuclear energy uses a steam engine to get electricity, which goes to show just how important the invention of steam engines are.
I spent too much time making the design and background, and I did it before adding all the important information in, which was kind stupid. I’m happy with the way it turned out though.
There wasn’t really a second keystone. We just learned about series circuits and parallel circuits, volts, currents, and resistance. We had a practice of making the circuits for the board game before we started the real thing. I couldn’t get mine to work for some reason. While everyone had their’s working, I stood there trying to figure it out.
Final keystone is a operation board game. We each had to choose a theme of the board game. My first choice was to save the earth of asteroid impacts and aliens, but decided against it. My next idea was to save people from a nuclear bomb, but scrapped that idea as well. By now, it was the second or third day of making our games, and that’s when I finally had a new idea. This one is Among Us themed, and it’s where players have to save the crew mates from the imposter.
Our board game must have 5 operation spots, so I added five crew mates that need rescuing.
Below is the circuit that we used to make this function. The battery lies under the black tape next the the light.
Fun story. The light was suppose to be a red light, but one of its legs snapped off. I guess I blended the leg too much and it got weaker and weaker until it couldn’t hold itself together anymore. I went to try to find another red light, but the only colours that were left were green. There was no other choice except green.
I really enjoyed this project and making the board game. It’s sad that that was the last time I would ever have science with Ms. Kadi. She’s a great teacher. Can’t wait to see what science 10 has in store for me.
MPOL #1(scary)
It’s time for MPOLs.
It’s my first Mpol, and I’m really nervous about it. This is the pol declaration that we have to say every time before we start our presentations: Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner
My Learning Goal
In my learning plan, I wrote that my goal for this school year is to hand in most of my work on time. Most of my works are handed in on time, and I have to admit, it’s better than I thought. But I want to do better than that. I want to have almost every work handed in on time, like the maximin of work that could be late is 5.
Now, this is a pretty hard goal for me, because I get distracted easily and I often think ahead about my work. When I do that, I think of how much work I have to do, and that always discourages me. Then I would just start playing games or watch YouTube on my iPad. I would do that for the whole time that I have. This happens very often, so I don’t get much done at home.
Maker
At the start of the year, we did a few film making projects. Pretty much the entire maker 9 was used on this. The first film video was the final product and the one to present during the Winter Exhibition of 2022. This was done like, around the middle of the semester. My video was late and it wasn’t that good either. I have this whole plan to add voice over at the beginning and end of the video to further explain things. I had gathered all the background footages, but I ran out of time to add those.
Well, not really. I did have time to do it, but I felt very nervous about doing the voice overs with people around. I don’t know why though. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid of what other might think. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of stupid of me. I wasted my time on stressing about what other might think, but I never even tried to do it.
I haven’t really made growth this year as a learner. When we were doing the stop motion videos, I wanted to recreate a film trailer that’s about 1 minute long. The requirement for the length of the video was only 30 seconds. It took longer than I expected, so it was late. The thing is, I didn’t have to do that video. I could have chosen an easier and shorter one. This wasn’t even worth any marks.
Humanities
I did pretty good in humanities. On the first project, the only thing that was late was my blog post. The second project was also not bad, most of it was handed in on time. I’m pretty proud of the humanities work. But then things took a bad turn in the final project of the semester.
The project of slam poetry was very fast paced, because we only have 3 weeks left. Things moved too fast for me to handle, so all my work in this project was late. I don’t really blame myself though. It was hard to keep up, but I did manage to get good marks.
Science
On the first keystone of science, I handed it in late. It was an interactive food web that was done on scratch. I’ve experience with coding before, so I thought to myself, “ This is going to be easy”. I was finished with the food web pretty fast, and I saw that I had more time, so I added a little game with it. I was able to get a good mark, but still, it was late.
Like I said before, I haven’t really made any growth as a learner this year yet. Take for example, the first keystone of the last project of science. I spent way too much time on the design and background. Those weren’t even what this keystone was graded on. It was graded on the information. That was the important part, but I used my time doing the background instead.
Another this is that I sometimes over estimate just how much time I actually have. This is seen in my science blog post for the last project.
What Can I Do To Reach My Goal?
I have noticed that there are different reasons why I wasn’t able to made deadline. Let me list it here.
Reason #1: I think of how much work I have to do and it makes me discouraged. Then I won’t want to do any work.
Reason #2: I make my work look really nice and spend way too much time doing that.
Reason #3: I overestimate how much time I really have to complete my work, so then I say to do it the next day.
Reason #4: I am camera shy, but this one only applies to video making works.
Here are some ways in which I can achieve this goal.
1. Try not think ahead and just do what ever I have. If I do think of it, then I should suck it up and do it one by one.
2. Get the important informations or things in first. After I’m done with that, I can make the design and background that can be done within the remaining time.
3. Don’t estimate how much time I have. If there is time to do work do it. Get it done as soon as possible.
4. Don’t think about what other might think of me. They won’t think of anything bad about me. Use positive self talk.
This goal isn’t just about handing in work on time. I know that handing in work late may not affect my marks in high school, but it sure will when I get into university. That’s why I want to achieve this goal. It would really help me in the future.
Coasters roller
With Maker coming to an end, we didn’t have enough time to start another project, so we did something fun. Building rollercoasters! It was really similar to some STEM projects that I’ve done before. No driving question this time. This was a group thingy, and my group was pretty good. There was Brooke, Keaton, and me.
Back story
A little back story came with it. We are engineers that are designing a brand ew rollercoaster for an amusement park called The Scream-a-rama. There are 11 groups competing in a contest, and the CEOs of the park will judge and decide which one was the best. With a limited budget of just $1,000,000, the track being judge on points, and limited supplies, this was going to be a challenge.
Points
The points work by the design and type of thrill. A loop and corkscrew are each worth 5 points. Each full circle in a spiral is 4 points, a hill worth 3 points, and a turn worth 1. If the marble, representing the car, makes it to the end successfully and safely, you would get 10 points.
We don’t know how many points we got, but we do know that we did not win or get on the podium.
Supplies
we only had five available supplies. Toilet paper rolls, toothpicks, tape, scissors, and a marble. Each supplies had a cost. Toilet paper rolls were
There wasn’t a lot of time to do this, only a few days. We thought that there would be a whole week to do this, but no. Our rollercoaster name is Cardboard Carriage. Keaton came up with it.
Presenting Time!
It didn’t go well. The Cardboard Carriage fell about at the last moment, and because there wasn’t a lot of time, we weren’t able to build the track that we planed.
Vive La Nation!
Hello everyone.
At the start of this project, we did a simulation in the fictional world of Nation X. I did a blog about it, and if you want to learn more about the simulation, go see my Nation X—simulation blog post. The Driving question for this project is: How did revolutions bring down empires and change societies around the world? Before we got introduced to the revolutions, we first learned about Crane Brinton’s Anatomy of a revolution.
This was our first keystone. Briton studied lots of revolutions and noticed that every revolution he studied had four different stages to it. The first stage is the incubation stage. Second is moderate stade, then crisis stage, and the last stage is recovery stage. For this keystone, we had to create a visualization of his theory. My visual is a pandemic, like the covid pandemic we’re in right now.
We had looked at four revolutions that we could choose from.
The French Revolution (1789-1799)
The American Revolution (1765-1791)
The October Revolution of 1917 (Russia)
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
The only two revolutions that I was interested in was the American and French Revolution. I thought about it for a while, and at first, I chose the American Revolution, but when I thought about it more, I decided on doing the French Revolution instead. The next day, the teacher put us into groups depending on our choice of revolutions. We got in our revolution groups and my group members were Cameron, Christian, Jackson, Mackenzie, and Evangeline.
Then we started our second keystone. It is a graphic organizer of the revolution of we chose, so mine is the French Revolution. In it, we had to have:
• Underlying conditions
• Revolution name and date
• Key triggers
• Key characters (Name at least two people)
• Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness of revolution
• Continuity and Change
I also included a timeline of the revolution. We had around three to four days to do this. Once all of our group members were done their graphic organizers, we came together to discuss a final version of one graphic organizer using all of ours.
The final product
The final product for this is a video of a court case for our revolutions. This was a project where we had to collaborate with the other half of PLP 9 who were doing the same revolution as us. They have humanities at a different time, so it was really hard to work and make things line up, and we weren’t able to do some things that were planed.
One half of the class were the defence, meaning they had to prove that the revolution was effective. The other half were the prosecution, meaning they had to prove that the revolution was ineffective.
The steps to making the video were simple, but it took longer that we first initiated because Mr. Harris, our teacher for this project, was not there. This made us very unorganized, and we had to think of a way to present our final product. We thought a few ideas we could do with a different teacher, and in the end, we decided to make separate videos. But first, we had to write a script. We had a few days to do this, and once we were done, we filmed our videos. All of the videos were filmed in the vortex.
The filming process
The filming process only took two or three days to get it all done, but there was also editing the video as well. On the first day of filming, we had to wait for a couple groups to finish their filming before we could go. We were in a race against time, because one of our group members was not going to be there the next day. Also, there was only like 10-15 minutes left until class ended. We had to stay in at lunch for a bit to get it the parts where he’s in done.
In day 2 of filming, we had a lot more time to do it, since some of the other groups were done. We managed to finish filming with a little bit of time left, and we used it to edit our video and put the sections in the right places.
I really liked learning about the French Revolution. It was fun, and although we didn’t get to see if the revolution was proven effective or ineffective, what really mattered was that we learned something new, ad it was fun.
First Exhibition(kind of)
Hello everyone of the Internet.
Welcome. It’s time for yet another blog, and we had finished another project. The driving question for this project is: what does James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar reveal about our society today? This project was a video, and it’s the project that’s we would be presenting for the Winter Exhibition of 2022. This was kind of my first exhibition. I had a mini exhibition before this, but this is a real, full exhibition.
Video
For the exhibition, we had to make a documentary style video, and in the video, we had to have an interview. We watched James Cameron’s Avatar movie and extracted a few themes from it. We had to choose a theme that we wanted to explore. The theme I chose was corporate greed. After I had my theme down, I connected to the real world. The one I came up with was when the Europeans first came to North America. Then I found someone who I could maybe interview, but they never got back to me. My second interview person was one of the teachers, Ms Maxwell. She’s is the socials teacher for PLP and I got an interview secured this time. The interview went well, but it was only a few days before the video deadline, so I wasn’t able to meet it. Just a few days before the exhibition, I was still not done the video, and I became really stressed. I have never been so stressed before in my life, and I wondered if I was going to finish in time for the exhibition. Luckily, I was able to finish it right on time.
The original video was around 6 minutes long. The second half of the video was me talking about how corporate greed still exists today. I had a bunch of background footages that I filmed and got deform the internet. All that second half hard work was deleted, because the video was too long and it got kind of boring.
The teachers had this idea of a viewing box that we would use in the exhibition. while most people were working on their viewing boxes, I still had to do my video. when I finished the video, I didn’t have much time left to make my viewing box, so I just covered it with some black paper. Most other people had more decoration to their boxes, but I felt like the plain black box matched my room theme and vibe.
Exhibition
On the week of the exhibition, we used all of our class time to prepare for it. A lot of people had the theme corporate greed, including my self, so the teachers split us up into three groups under three sub themes. For my group, we got exploited resources. During some of our classes, we fathered with the grade 8s in our group to come up with ideas on how our room would look, what drinks and snacks we should bring, and who would bring the necessary resources to do all that.
After some discussing, we decided that we could have a clear cut forest background or just bedsheets to cover up the walls and windows. For the food, we had purple Rice Krispie bits to represent the unobtanium that the humans from Avatar want. For the drink, we had iced tea to represent gasoline. We also needed a game, and the idea for the game was dart. The dart board represented the forest and the darts were axes. The next thing to plan was the layout of the room. Our original idea looked like this:
But in the end, when we finished setting up the room, it looked something like this:
The decoration at the center of the room were a few stumps and branches. The grade 8s were being crazy when we told them to grab some branches. Instead of bringing in branches, they brought a whole tree! The lighting of the room was darkened with orange paper covering it.
As the room was being set up, I went to grab my viewing box from the PLP room, but it was gone! I double checked it again and I triple checked too, but it wasn’t there. I told Ms. Kadi and she told me to check again, carefully. So I did, and when I still couldn’t find it, I went back to her and asked what I should do. Luckily, one of the grade 8s wasn’t here and they had a decorated box that I could use.
Around 15 minutes before the exhibition began, we were called down to the cafeteria for pizza dinner. By that time, our room was almost done. We just needed to set up the game station and organize a few things, and that’s what we did afterwards. Before everyone got back to their rooms, Mrs. Willemse and Mr. Hughes gave us a speech on how to behave, like what to do, and what not to do.
With the room set up and ready to go, all we could do was to wait until the exhibition started. The grade 8s in our room started going crazy. They were yelling and running around the room. The grade 12 in our room tried to calm them down, but they didn’t listen, if they even hear her. It was only when the first parents showed up that they settled down.
Over all, I think the exhibition went well. Lots of parents showed up, but most of them just hung around the front. I got to have a break in the exhibition, so I went around to my friends and ate the food in the other rooms. Each break was only suppose to be 15 minutes long, but some people went on breaks and just never came back. The thing that sucked was the rule where we couldn’t sit at all throughout the whole exhibition. Half way through it, my legs were already getting tired, but I managed to make it through to exhibition without sitting once.
Vibrant Videos
Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog.
`We have finally completed the first sector in Maker. In it, we did some goal setting and video making. All of our skills that we had to show were the videos. In total, we made 3 videos. Along the way, we did some goal setting and read a book called “ What Do You Really Want”. It taught us about goal setting and how to do it properly.
The what inspires me video
This was our first video that we made. In the video we had to talk about what inspires ourselves. We used the “what inspires you” form from the book to help us with that. We just had to use what was on the form and put it into the video. This was an individual project, and it had to be made using Clips. Want to watch it? Click here.
A silent film on goal getters in action
This was our second video, and we did it in groups. We had to choose a story in which a person had achieved something by setting goals. We could either choose someone in our group, or someone that was in the “What Do You Really Want” book. There were these people that accomplished something in their lives and their stories were in the book. My group chose someone from the book. The video’s silent, except for some background music. This one was also made in Clips.
The story of this person:
When Kylie was just eight, she was diagnosed with cancer. While in the hospital, she hated having to lug her IV pole while walking around. It was heavy and awkward, and she would often tripped over the pole’s tubes. Years later, when her fifth-grade science class was instructed to invent something that solved a problem, Kylie knew what she wanted to do. Her goal was to invent something that made it easier for kids having chemo to move around. That something turned out to be a backpack that Kylie, with her parents’ help, made to work just like an IV pole. Kylie’s teachers saw how helpful her backpack is, so they submitted it to the Connecticut Invention Convention. Since then, people have contributed over $50,000 dollars to Kylie’s fundraising campaign. The money is being used to produce the backpack.
Tutorial video
The tutorial video was our last one, and it was also done in groups. This one had to made using iMovie. The teachers expected our videos to:
- Use iMovie storyboards to create our tutorial
- Teach our viewers a chosen skill in a clear and effective way
- Include titles and posters to help teach the viewer
- Include various creative shots and angles to provide our video with style
- Include voiceovers, and an appropriate soundtrack or music.
- Be 1 -2 minutes in length
My group chose to do a tutorial on how to play the trombone, because two members of our group, including me, are trombone players. Our video storyboard was: someone wants to play the trombone, so they search it up on YouTube. Then it showed the other trombone player showing how to assemble the trombone. Next, I came in and show how to play a simple song on it. Lastly, we showed the person who wants to play the trombone practicing and eventually being able to the simple song.
In between each video that we made, we learned some movie making skills from guides for moving images notes. From it, we learned the history of film making, loglines and treatments, storyboarding, and the different shots and angles. These notes helped us make better videos.
Goal setting
We also did some goal setting in Maker. There are a bunch of forms that are in the book that helped us set goals. I make a document on Pages and titled it “Goal Tracker”. Like the name said, it is a place where I can set goals and keep track of them.
In my goal tracker, there are a couple paragraphs on goal reflections and Think It Ink It prompts. A few of them are about what career I want in the future. We learned that to set the best goals, it has to be SMART, or SMARTER.
S stands for specific—easier to accomplish.
M stands for measurable—trackable.
A stands for actionable—add verbs.
R stands for relatable/relevant—stage in life, current situation. See if it can be done.
T stands for time-bound— needs to have a timeframe, or deadline.
E stands for evaluate—look at the progress, and reflect on it.
R stands for reward—celebrate, reward yourself for completing your goal.
Using the SMART(ER) strategy, we made a goal ladder. A goal ladder is where you can map out all the steps that you are going to take to reach your goal. At the top of the ladder is where your goal is, or the destination that you’re trying to reach. Each rung on the ladder represents each step, so the first step you’re going to take would be at the bottom of the ladder. Once you complete a step, you move up the ladder, getting closer and closer to reaching the top. Both the goal and the steps needs to be SMART(ER)
The last thing that we did for goal setting is looking at the 10 Strategies to Stay on Task. This is in part four of the book. Staying on track can be challenging at times, especially if your goal is a long term goal. I think that strategy #1, Timing out the next week or month in relation to your goal, is very helpful. If you can map out what your timetable is going to be and when you can spend some time on your goals, then you would have a better chance at succeeding.
Through all the lessons in Maker, I was able to learn about movie making and goal setting. I liked learning how to make a good video, all the editing technics, and the different shots and angles that we can use to make a good film. The thing that I didn’t enjoy doing was the goal setting. I know that setting goals is important, but I just don’t like doing it. I’m glad that I now know how to set goals the right way, though. I think that being able to set goals properly is really good for if you want to accomplish something, big or small.
Nation X — Simulation
Hello people. Welcome to my blog.
we have started a new project in Humanities called Storm The Barricades. We started a simulation in our class and we were unevenly divided into four groups and our teacher acted as the universe, or a god. Each day, each group will receive an envelope that has the Nation X News, our salaries, and a rumour card that we would read at the end of the day.
Group A, the group that I was in, had the most people. People in this group were all peasants of Nation X. We has almost no rights and we were really poor. Our salary was $1 a day. In fact, we were so poor that we didn’t eve have any chairs. We couldn’t go out of our territory unless we were going to the shop. Also, we couldn’t speak to group C and D unless we were spoken to first.
The next group was group B. This group had half the people of ours. These people were one level higher than us in the Nation X society. Their salary was $2 a day. They ran the shop for this nation. They make lots of money, but at the end of the day, it was all given to the nobles as taxes. These people also couldn’t speak to group C and D unless they were spoken to first.
The third group was group C. They had four people, and they were responsible for coming up with laws and rules in the simulation. Their salary was $5 per day. They were also like the police of this nation. They could arrest anyone who has broken the laws and can throw them in jail.
Finally, there’s group D. They were the highest rank in this society. On person in this group is the king of Nation X and any new laws or decisions that are made has to go through them first. They are basically the nobles. Their salary was $10 per day and they had the most rights.
The universe had all the powers in the simulated world. If we were caught breaking any of the universal laws, then he would kill us. The universal laws were:
- Touching or Running
- Anytime we want our character or group to “act” besides moving around the room, doing our job, buying things at the shop, or having conversations and meetings with others, alert the Universe.
- If we do something in that would get ourselves killed. The Universe will kill you or demote you to another group.
Day 1
On the first day of the simulation, we received our first envelope and were given a daily task to complete. Our task was to sharpen our own pencil and get a blank piece of paper. On the paper, we had to write about the day with at least 100 words. Everyone did it, of course. Receiving one dollar a day is really less. When I saw the opportunity to steal one of my group member’s money, I took it. At the end of the day, we read the rumour card for our group and it said “freedom will soon be here”. This is our Nation X News for day 1
Day 2
As dawn arrived, we were given our envelope for today. We were also handed our daily task, except this time, my group refused to do any of it. The universe told us that if we do not do our tasks, there would be consequences, but we still refused. Nothing happened though, so we carried on our day like it never even happened.
There was some new laws that were passed on. One of them was that we had to pay an $1 tax to the government everyday. There absolutely no way that I was going to do that, because $1 is all the money that I get a day. So when group C came to collect the taxes for our group, I snuck to another group, and when they came over to the group where I was at, I moved back. At the end of the day, we all went back to our own territories and read the new rumour card. This one said “Groups C and D would like to meet with you“. We thought this was really weird, so we send one person over instead of the whole group. He didn’t come back. Anyways, this is our Nation X News for day 2
Day 3
Turns out Tom, the person that we send yesterday, is alive. He was promoted to group C, which is totally unfair. After the news, our daily envelope was handed out to us. We got our salary and the Nation X News. In the news, it said that we were all running out of food. The prices in the store has gone up, and now most people in group A can barely afford anything. With all the prices going up and the taxes, us people in the lower groups were going to run out of money soon. Luckily, the king saved us all. He’s a descent king. He gave people in groups A and B a $1 raise in our salaries, and he even dropped the taxes.
When this happened, the universe came around to give us our extra $1 to make the new $2 salary. Some people still don’t like the king though, so group B make a letter and sent it to us and group C. The letter said that we should team up and over throw the king. I think all three groups signed, but we didn’t take any actions. When the end of the day came, we all went back to our territories and read the rumour cards. Our rumour card for day 3 said “Your sewer system is busted and waste has started to pile up. You have noticed members of your community have begun to be sick”. Nation X News for day 3 is below.
Day 4
Day 4 was suppose of be the last day of the simulation, and an unexpected thing happened. A deadly disease has been infecting people in groups A and B. This disease is called Kienbock’s disease, and it spreads pretty fast, so Christian from group B I isolated ourselves from everyone else by hiding under a desk. Thanks to the wisdom of the people in group D, a cure had been found. Good thing the king is nice. He has given everyone the cure. Now no one is infected and everyone is safe… right?
I managed to get a hold of a cure, so I sold it to one of the nobles for $2. There has been another letter passed around on overthrowing the king. Even a noble is on board with this plan. But before we could out it into action, dusk came and we all had to go back to our territories.
Day 5
Day 5 was the special day. The most surprising thing happened. Read the Nation X News for day 5 and see for yourself.
That’s right. The disease came back, and we don’t have enough resources to make any more cures. Only the upper classes had the medicine. As the morning came to an end, all the groups attacked group D, but the king managed to escape, along with another member of group D and Christian from group B. I saw the king escaping over seas, so I followed him on another boat. When we reached another island, I showed up in front of the king, and since I am loyal to him, he allowed me to join them. We later found out that we were on Nation Y’s territory. We convinced them to let us join their nation and armed ourselves. We were preparing to go back to Nation X and invade it.
Meanwhile in Nation X, the last royalty Charlie R was holding a meeting with all of the civilians of Nation X. They were planing on what they should do with Nation Y invading. The civilians were angry and they wanted to kill him, but before they could, Charlie M, Christian, and I arrived. We slowly approached them and killed them, one by one. They were not expecting us at all, and they had no weapons. It was an easy task, but some civilians managed to survive, only because the universe stoped us. If not, we would have killed everyone there. The invasion was very successful, and Nation X is no more. Nation Y had taken the land and made it its own.
Through the simulation, I was able to experience the unfairness of society in the past. The peasants no rights and we couldn’t do anything. There were some rules that were very dumb, like the one that makes us not be able to talk to the upper classes. Group D were like to opposite of us. They had every right. The society in the past was unfair, but I’m glad that we have moved on from that today.
Human Impacts On Our Local Ecosystems
Hello people! Welcome to my first blog post!
Our first sector in science is finally over. The driving question for this sector was: In what ways has humans impacted the delicate cycles within our local ecosystem and how can we lessen the impact?
To answer this question, we learned about the different ecosystems that are around us and how we have impacted them. On the first lesson, we learned about the different types of ecosystems and abiotic/biotic factors that resides in the ecosystems. The activity we did for this lesson was to draw an ecosystem with 5 abiotic and biotic factors in it.
Then there was the earth’s spheres. There are five spheres in the earth. The most commonly know is the atmosphere (air). The other four are the hydrosphere (water), geosphere (minerals, rocks, etc), biosphere (all life), and cryosphere (ice). The first activity that we did was to identify five objects by:
- classify them as abiotic or biotic.
- identify which sphere they belong to.
- brainstorm ways in which they interact with each of the spheres of the Earth
Our second work for this one is to look at the image of the Sydney Opera House taken by our teacher Ms. Kadi and consider ways in which us human have impacted the biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
After this we were introduced to our first keystone, which was a scratch project on the food web. We had to make an interactive food web on Scratch. We had to next few days to think about which ecosystem’s food web we wanted to do and our design.
During those few days, we did a activity where we had to come up with a solution to prevent fiber plastics that came from our clothes from getting into the oceans. When our clothes get washed, these little fiber plastics goes from the washing machines and into the oceans. We were once again put in groups and my group came up with a filter system. It had two layers of filter that can be installed in any washing machines’ drains.
Then we learned about bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Bioaccumulation is the process in which pollutants from the environment, such as microplastics, build up in living things over time. Biomagnification is where the amount of pollutant in a living organism becomes grows bigger as you move up the food chain. Our activity for this lesson was to create a GIF showing the process of biomagnification. Here it is:Biomagnification GIF
For the next few days that we had until our field study, we worked on our Scratch project and it had to be completed before we went. Here were our instructions and criteria:
We will be picking an ecosystem of your choice, selecting a minimum of 10 living things, and illustrating the many ways the living things interact with each other. It is suggested that we complete this activity on Scratch.
Our food web must:
- Display an ecosystem of your choice
2. Have a minimum of 10 living things, both plants and animals
3. The plants and animals you choose, as well as their interactions, must be realistic for your chosen ecosystem.
4. State how the living things interact with each other.
5. Be visually pleasing.
We will then be write a short reflection, from 5-7 sentences, answering the following question: “Consider your food web. What are ways in which human beings have impacted it? How does your food web illustrate the interconnectedness and interdependence of ecosystems?”
For those of you who doesn’t know what Scratch is, it’s a coding software. I have had experience with coding in the past, so this keystone wasn’t really hard for me. In my food web, I chose an ocean ecosystem and added a little game to it. I enjoyed doing this project because I like coding and making games. Click here if you want to check it out.
After the field study, we learned about wildlife management and how some animals are overpopulating and how some are endangered. Then we make our second keystone. For this one, we got into groups and made a video. The video was like a news report. We were separated into groups of 3-4 and given an animal to talk about. My group, consisted of Daniel, Tom, and Frankie, was given the caribou. We read several sources on the caribou’s decline in their population and how the government chose to kill the wolfs that are hunting them. After several years, some people realized that this method wasn’t working, so they tried to tell the government, but the government didn’t listen.
In our video, we had to talk about the caribou’s decline, hunting to wolves in order to try to stop the decline, how that didn’t work, and we had to come up with a new way to try to stop the decline. My group learned that deforestation plays a major part in the decline, so our idea to stop it was to stop deforestation. Our video is kind of chaotic and hard to follow, but we made it funny. It includes some memes, so you should see it.
Also, check out my teammates’ blogs!
Before our third keystone, we had just one more thing to learn, and that is the nutrient cycles and how we have impacted it. We learned what a nutrient cycle is and the three types of nutrient cycle: carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. We also learned the short-term and long-term storages, and movements for each cycle. Our activity for this one was creating a poster that explained how humans have impacted one of the three cycles.
For our third and final keystone, we had to make fake instagram posts on a fake instagram post generator. Each of our social media posts addressed a different problem, as well as a proposed way of reducing the impact. We had 5 social media posts on the following topics:
- The Earth’s spheres, and human impacts on each of them
- Bioaccumulation, biomagnification, and how humans impacted them
- Local food web and how humans impacted them
- Local wildlife management practices and how humans impacted them
- Nutrient cycles and how humans impacted them
At the end of this sector, I realized that there are many bad things that humans have done to this planet and the ecosystems that resides within it. There are some choices made that are not really good, and we have done barely anything to help solve these problems. The negative impacts that we put out are also impacting us, and if we don’t do anything to stop these impacts, then who will?