Category Archives: Scimatix

How to clone a dandelion (Cloning and cell life)

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How to clone a dandelion (Cloning and cell life)

Hello again, you are now reading another science post.

We just finished a project about mitosis and asexual reproduction. So I got to clone plants with my partner Jason Guan. We initially started off with some dandelions and then we did some garlic.

Mindmap:

Well of course there’s the mindmap, that’s always there.

Project:

We started off the project with a bit of planning.

Then we went and picked out some dandelions. Jason and I made sure to grab the biggest and healthiest ones we could find but it didn’t end up being much use because none of our 12 dandelions broke the surface and we only had like 2-3 or three that started growing.

However to get there we went through several steps. Obviously first went to pick the dandelions, but the most important thing was to grab as much of the root as we could. We then cut the roots into about 1inch pieces and put them into cups with dirt. We then watered them every day in hope that they would grow but not enough time.

We then tried to clone some garlic which turned way better, although I was away for a few classes in that time. When I came back we had some garlic pods. And some pretty good ones at that.

After we grew them, we prepared some wetmount slides to look at our garlic through a microscope and actually see the mitosis happening.

We also made a keynote on all the steps to making fro preparing the slide. Below is two of the phases of mitosis we found through the microscope.

Curricular Competencies:

Planning and conducting:

Collaboratively and individually plan, select, and use appropriate investigation methods including field work and lab experiments to collect reliable data (qualitative and quantitative). We decided to clone some garlic which turned out to be a very healthy specimen. We did almost the exact same procedure we had with the dandelions but they grew a lot better.

Evaluating:

Connect scientific explorations to careers in science. Throughout the unit we thought like scientists by making a hypothesis gathering materials, designing procedures to test our hypothesis and drawings a conclusion from what we had done.

Communicating:

Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon. We made a document that showed all the stages of mitosis in our garlic and compared them to some drawing of the stages of mitosis and pointing out the similarities.

Questioning and predicting:

Make observations aimed at identifying their own questions, including increasingly complex ones, about the natural world. Our initial little project toi clone dandelions wasn’t as successful as our garlic. Although we did get one that was starting to re grow.

Well that’s the end of this post. See you soon.

Why matter cycles matter?

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Why matter cycles matter?

Hello. This is another science post about matter cycles.

So the hydrological (water) cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the phosphorus cycle which are all crucial to life on Earth as we know it.

My partner Kyle and I chose the water cycle. Our driving question for our presentation was how can we help fix pollution in waters?

We decided to do a bit of research on biodegradable plastics because these could stop us from throwing out so much plastic into our waters and instead just let them decompose quickly.

Below is our presentation.

Below is my staple mindmap for every Scimatics unit.

Curricular Competencies 

1. Make observations aimed at identifying their own questions including increasingly complex ones, about the natural world. We showed this by identifying a problem in our world’s waters however it isn’t exactly tied to the water cycle.

2. Contribute to finding solutions to problems at a local and/or global level though inquiry. We showed this through our research and idea of starting to use more biodegradable plastic instead of having millions of tonnes of waste lying around for generations.

3. Communicate scientific ideas, claims, information, and perhaps a suggested course of action, for a specific purpose and audience, constructing evidence-based arguments and using appropriate scientific language, conventions, and representations. We showed this by laying down several facts and numbers about the pollution in our waters and how we could try and help.

Well that’s it. New releases in a few days.

A lego house (valuation with like terms)

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Hello, you are now reading another post about

We finished a unit about like terms and polynomials right before spring break. Our project was to use like terms and a polynomial in something for everyday life.

Below is my mindmap. In black are questions I had and in red are what I learned or answers to the questions.

Mindmap:

Project:

Me and my partner Alex decided to build a lego house and then valuation all the pieces. We tried to use as little type of pieces as possible so it would be easier to make an equation for the pieces. We grouped, for example, all the 1×6 pieces and then on the lego website it tells you how much each of them is valued and then we would add it up.

Below are some pictures

Curricular competencies:

Below is a picture of the grading we received for our final project.

Reasoning and analyzing:

This area we kind of struggled. Since also, some of the pieces we used weren’t shown on the website, I had to estimate some and therefor the final price we gave to our house was an estimate. What I did to estimate some of the pieces’ price, was take a smaller version of it, double its price and then take off a bit off my result since a bigger piece is like buying stuff in bulk.

Understanding and solving:

In terms of visualizing for a good understanding of what we were learning, a lego house is very visual. In a way we kind of succeeded in making our product easy to visualize and also the pieces we used were easy to separate into different groups to valuate them. Hnhmjuicx

Communicating and representing:

Our communicating was definitely not good. We mostly  did our presentation in the last 2 days since my partner was sick for so long. We could’ve used a bit of a notecard or something to know what we were going to talk about with more clarity.

Connecting and reflecting:

I think we connected our project pretty well to math. We chose lego, because both of us have always had a love for it especially as younger kids. And if you think about you can use quite a bit of math with legos so it was an interesting thing to link a lego house to like terms.

This project taught me about the usefulness of like terms and how helpful it can be to just group several terms or things together to simplify whatever you’re doing.

Well you have finished another post. Congrats. See you soon.

The Zookeeper (The card game)

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The Zookeeper (The card game)

Hello again, it’s been just over a week. This post is about our latest project in Mathematics. It was a pretty fun one once we started. The focus was exponents and everything related to them.

Mindmap:

As usual we made a mindmap at the start of the unit with questions we had, and things we already knew. However I wasn’t there for the first week back from Christmas break, I was away. So I didn’t actually make that mindmap until the end pretty much. But it’s right below.

If you click on the image, you can look at it in a bigger format.

Project:

Our task for this project was to make a game that uses exponents. The game anybody created had to include at least 3 exponent laws. It was a partner project but since I wasn’t here for the first week and my partner wasn’t here for the whole project, I was put into a group with Izzy and Jason. That turned to be a successful move.

 

Our rulesheet

 

My group’s game I think showed estimating reasonably very well. To win the game you had to have a certain amount of points, but you couldn’t use a calculator to know if you’d reached the amount. So when you thought you were close, you’d call and you’d calculate. If you went over, or under you busted and had to start from scratch. It was very easy for me especially after the first few rounds because I just memorized the results of several equations that were big enough to actually win like 9^3 or 5^4.

The whole project was also tied with a the curricular competency of develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving. Since we were creating a game and then playing it ourselves and showing it to others, I think we met this curricular competency.

The fact we made our own cards for our game could tie our game to the curricular competency of showing mathematical ideas though pictures. To get points in the game, you had to make mathematical equations and estimate what they were right in front of you. So clear cards would help think it out and understand the concepts better.

I think my group could use this curricular competency in reflection, connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests. I think this because our whole group likes cards games quite a bit, so when we were told to make a game we turned to cards straight away, or at least I would’ve.

Overall I think this project helped me understand the exponent laws better because we had severe allergies of them in our game and playing agame will make it easier  to learn just like sometimes a song will help as well.

Well that’s about it, hope you enjoyed this post.

Video Reflection

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Video Reflection

Helllo I´m back. This post will focus on my experience with video making. Up until now we have been making video after video in Humanities, Maker, and Science.

So far for me video making hasn´t been too fun. I haven´t really enjoyed it especially having to edit the videos. That´s why in several group videos we´ve made so far I´ve ended up as more of the actor instead of the editor. A few good examples for this past point were the 2 videos below.

Probably my best individual video so far has been my Identity video. I probably put the most time into this one and took the most photos and videos for it. Here it is below.

I think another problem, was that we had lots of requirements for each video and that made a lot less fun. I think maybe the teachers were a bit too picky for a video. But that´s what they´re teaching. I made a video completely separate without any restrictions with my friend Nik, and making that one was way more fun and somehow easier to make.

Well you have reached the end of my reflection about videos.

Oh No MPOL

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Well it’s back. Mpols A.K.A. Mid-year Presentation of Learning are something that we do twice a year. If you don’t remember from last year, it’s a meeting with my parents and my teacher where I talk about some good things I did and somethings I can improve on.

Scimatics:

So far in Science we’ve worked chemistry and electric currents. I´m prouder of my electric current unit where we incorporated that into the Metaphor Machines project. Although a minor part, we had to make a circuit with LEDs and put into our machine.

However, the Chemistry Unit was harder in my opinion. The task was making an animation with two characters (atomic elements). I had a partner for the project, Fraser. And learning about chemistry seemed more confusing than the electric circuits, and currents.

A chemistry reflection

In math all we’ve done exponents as an actual project. We´re not done yet this part so all I can say is we were tasked with creating a card game that includes exponents and exponent laws. I´m with Jason and Izzy.  Since I got back a week late from winter break they already had a game pretty much so I have mostly just done like smaller suggestions fo the game itself.

I think overall in Scimatics I mostly just need to work on listening a bit more because i often find myself pretty distracted.

Humanities:

Humanities this year has been focused on the Canadian history. We’ve had to incorporate the video skills from Maker into several of our Humainties projects. In Humanities I think I’ve done a lot better than Maker and mostly staying on top of things. I’ve had a few slip ups like my Identity video, but in the end I was actually pretty proud of that video except for the fact that it was late.

I think honestly for Humanities the biggest thing I can improve on is handing things in on time. I think that the work I have done has had a pretty good quality. If I get things on time, I can get more feedback and try and improve on my projects.

Another project I was proud of was our metaphor machines. However I think I could improve on my engagement or idea contribution. For the project I did a bit of everything and went to where my group needed a bit of assistance.

A Metaphorical Revolution!!!

Maker:

Maker’s main focus this year has been making videos. Something that I have particularly struggled with. I have kept falling behind but now I’m caught up and I’m going to try and stay on time for the rest fo the year. Liked I talked about in my video reflection post, I haven’t enjoyed making all these videos. I don’t like doing it very much.

Video Reflection

 

Probably the best individual video I made so far has been my live event video. I handed it in pretty late and never got time for feedback. I kept telling myself I was just trying to improve it on my own time, but I really wasn’t. It would’ve been better to hand in something not that a good and get some feedback instead of having nothing.

PGP

This year’s new class of PGP has had a huge emphasis on goal setting. Which I understand to a certain point however I think maybe it’s a bit too much. Goals help, but so far my motivation has come more from like playing hockey or being able to go play some golf or basketball with my friends. It gives me more of a drive.

We were asked to read the book below, and I’m going to  be honest with you I found it very boring and I didn’t read it. I was given a book pretty similar or at least overlapped in a few things in my opinion but it was s more sport based. That one was less boring.

My dream board:

We were asked to make a dream board for this Mpol. Dream boards ar supposed to remind you what you want to do and keep striving for those things. MY dream board, I’ve got sports at the top. Hockey and socccer are the biggest part of my life that’s not mandatory. I want to keep playing as much possible and I would love to play college hockey when I get into university. Below, I wrote my boys. My little brother and my friends are what keep a day light at school. Without them life wouldn’t be to great. And it’s just good make friends anywhere you go, because they keep you entertained, and friends could eventually open new doors for you, like when you’re looking for a job and then you would return the favour. Below that is future interests. I’m still not certain what I want to study in university but law sounds interesting, and business, could be open lots of doors. And finally in the bottom right, I wrote down Fun stuff. If all goes well there will be time for fun stuff, so I should use those things as motivation to succeed in whatever I’m doing and have time to play golf with my friends or go to the beach.

Well this is the end of this post. In six months a similar one to this one will show up and hopefully I have improved my work by then.

A chemistry reflection

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A chemistry reflection

Hello. Again. This post is going to be about my chemistry unit. Enjoy.

At the very start of the unit we were tasked with making a mind map with questions on what we want to learn in this unit. Below is mine.

Main things I learned this unit:

The main concepts we needed to know for this unit’s project were covalent bonding and ionic bonding.

Ionic bonding:

Ionic bonds on the other hand, tend to between a metal and a non metal. One of them is positive and one is negative causing an attracting effect because they’re opposites.

Covalent bonding:

Covalent bonds when two atoms share electrons in a most common example to hydrogens with one electron each will now share 2 electrons.

Chemistry Stories:

Our main project this unit was our Chem Stories video. It was a partner project and my partner was the tall man Fraser. To pick our partners we did a short activity where everyone got a card with an element on it. You had to try and pair up with somebody that would make your element stable. I got like sodium which had a +1 positive charge and Fraser got like oxygen with a -2 charge. So I needed 2 sodium to complete oxygen’s valence shell.

If you want to check out Fraser’s viewpoint on the unit hit the box below.

Chemistry

This was our finished product. Hope you enjoy.

At the very end of the unit, we were asked to go back to our mindmaps and write down what we learned in a different colour. Below is  the revised mind map.

Well that was my Grade 9 chemistry unit summed up. See you soon.

TPOL: Next Stop Grade 9

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Worldview:

With the theme of learning in Grade 8 being Worldview, several of our projects have been about studying our own and other culture’s worldview. It has helped me realize that depending on the group your in, you have to adapt to the environment and try to use everybody’s strengths. Mostly at the end of the year I would try to apply this in group projects. One of the projects in my drama class, where we had to make an advertisement, I applied this knowledge if different people have different strengths. I was the only PLP kid in this group and had the best skills and resources to edit our video so I was mainly assigned to this job. One of my group mates who was quite confident, we tried to put in the most scenes of our video and have him record several lines. Another group member, who left us not even halfway through project but had several ideas when we were brainstorming lead us in that aspect of the project.

Storytelling:

To go along with our focus on still images, we focused a big part of our time on storytelling. Perhaps for me the main project reflecting this was our Middle Ages Unit where we had to create a story about a hero. I find that I don’t like writing stories down on a paper like a book. The use of still images so as to make a quilt or making a tableau, has helped me in interesting me in the projects.

Still Images:

Since our fist project of the year we’ve used still images, we created poster ads for local businesses. I learned how different colours make people feel different emotions and associate them with certain industries.

While working on our worldview/religion unit I learned how to put two or more images together for a different meaning. This process is called juxtaposition on which our class had a contest to make something up.

I learned how powerful still images can be for storytelling or advertising. I think I would be ready to take the next step in Grade 9 where we would focus on videos and moviemaking.

Presentations:

We’ve been working on our presentation skills throughout the year from D.I. and Our explorer presentation to Colonizing in a Tempest and the Exhibitions. I believe that most of my presentations have turned out successful although I had a few scrambles like my explorer presentation were I panicked. I have learned that I sometimes find it easier to wing a presentation but a few times like my explorer one a script or even a small notecard with bullet points makes a big difference.

Well that’s the end of it.

See you next post folks.

Reflections on light

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Reflections on light

I’m back but this time it’s a science post. As you can probably tell from the title, this past unit we worked on light, mirrors, and lenses. We worked through two labs and learned a bit of history along with it.

Mirrors:

We started off the unit of light with a mirror’s lab. We learned about the different types of mirrors and their uses. Concave mirrors are used to concentrate light and create heat to produce power.

Lenses:

 

Islamic Golden age:

 

 

mPOL

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mPOL

Math

Math Project: My main project for Math so far was My Door is a Bore (Surface area an volume).

My evaluation of myself in math is that I seem to understand concepts relatively quickly and beIng good with operations. I forget some things but I seem to remember most times by skipping the question and coming back to it after. I’ve always found an interest in math so I will work better or put more effort into it.

During the project we worked in groups of 4. We divided our work quite well and put our skills in places we had more experience with than the others in our group. I was more of the person who was calculating numbers in my head and drawing and measuring our shapes.

What I should probably improve in this subject will be make a habit of studying before quizzes or tests because soon I’ll be encountering math that will not have such an easy solution as to skip the question and come back to it.

Science

Science Project: My main project for Science so far was Kinetic theory of matter (iMovie video what it is).

Below is the video I made with my partner Caleb. We had a problem were some pictures and audio recordings were deleted and so you’ll have sections with a black screen with audio or a picture/diagram without audio except for background music.

We’ve covered one area in science so far and our project was to make an iMovie about it. You cou draw a diagram or make a little video represention (little act, stop-motion, experiment, etc.) to make an educational video. Ideally you had to pretend whoever was watching it didn’t know anything about the subject so it had to be simple. I mostly enjoy science and that’s a plus for me because it assures I will put effort into it. Besides I’m currently thinking of being a doctor (surgeon) after university so science and chemistry helps.

Science, being so related to math has me constantly developing applying skills that are useful in both subjects like volume calculations and distances.

I could probably improve my researching skills as most of the things we’ve done so far need to find information for worksheets or assembling and organizing information properly.

Humanities

Humanities Projects: Main projects have been our Advertisements, our Worldview videos and our infographics.

I’ll start of saying that’s procrastination has been a big problem because, unless you’re really crazy (at least in my opinion), watching YouTube videos or following your favourite sports team is a lot more fun than homework and school, and doesn’t require work.

I got quite frustrated at times when making our ads because no matter how good or bad your first ad draft, you were going to have to make ten drafts. I actually liked the experience and marketing skills might prove quite useful in the future. The ones we made were poster ads so we had to engage people with images and limit your text because we humans tend to be kind of lazy and don’t want to read an ad full of text.

For the Worldview however we had to make a video that you have to make completely from scratch. Finding kind of a story of your personal worldview, is not to hard but trying to make it relatively short is. The app we used, I din’t like, because no matter the tutorials I watched and the tips from my friends I found the app confusing and hard to use. My other problem is that I have a really bad tendency to leave things for last minute which eventually will cost me dearly.

The infographics had the same steps as the advertisements. For me one of the main differences between the two projects was that the infographics were in a group of 4 and the advertisements were solitary. I had to step up alongside another person in my group because we had little time left to finish it and our group members weren’t helping much as they were away or sick.

                                                  Maker

Maker Project: My main project for Maker so far has been Blue Sky (Star Wars themed).

Probably my least favourite subject out of all four, I just don’t enjoy what we do. Maybe because at my age I don’t really understand how it could be helpful as an adult. I’ve been told that I may not understand now, but I might as well take the opportunity. My parents a have told me this several times, and as a result I kind of believe it, except I still just can’t put my full effort into it because I don’t enjoy it. I have learned that adults will tell you bad things that they have experienced so you don’t have to go through them but kids always get into new bad things, and that’s way every adult will teach a different thing.

The Star Wars exhbition, I find, just pushed me to learn more about Star Wars, but the truth is I never found something in it that I have a big interest on. The project being so big pushed me to make sure I can control my time well or you won’t be prepared, or won’t get much rest. It may seem harsh in short terms but will help in the long run.