Monthly Archives: March 2023

Group Project, Humanities, Learning Advance, Pages, Reflections

Power of Imagination Post

Leave a comment

Hello readers, and welcome back to my blog! Today’s post is about the recent project we’ve been doing called “Power of imagination”. This project was all about Disney of course, since we went to Disneyworld! This was our first ever out of loon lake learning advance, and it lasted from February 28th to March 9th. The driving question to this project was: “How do Disney theme parks shape and influence the cultural, economic, psychological, and social experiences of visitors?”. They do this through immersive storytelling and visual aspects that make people feel “like they’re there”. I felt this especially at Toy Story land at Hollywood studios, where you felt like a toy, since all the toys around you were life sized. The final product for this project was a video that answered the driving question through interviews, examples, and references to the past. My group partners were: Alicia, Erik, Carter, Ben T, and Theryn.

For keystone 1, we were tasked with creating a “PKM” collection. A PKM stands for “know, wonder, learn, and is a way of organizing your thoughts through notes, links and reflections. We created our “PKM’s” on craft, an app that’s somewhat new for us. For our pkm’s we had to research topics that resounded with our project topic. Since our group was Psychological, I researched on that basis. Here’s one of the PKM’s I made:

I found this keystone to be really resourceful, as I learned more about disneyworld and places I could visit. 

For keystone 2, we created a group pitch board for our final video. My group partners were: Alicia, Ben T, Theryn, Carter, and Erik. For this assignment, we made an effort to organize all of our ideas:

Our main talking point was nostalgia of multiple generations, and how Disney had influenced them. We planned to interview people from different generations, and get their opinion on how Disney has influenced them. 

For keystone 3, we were tasked with creating a storyboard for our video. This was a chance to visualize our ideas, and get an idea of what our video would look like. This is also where we assigned roles and responsibilities for each task. I was tasked with narrating and filming an interview at Hollywood studios. 

Here’s what our storyboard looked like:

Next, we had to complete our final video script. We all evenly contributed to this task, and provided our own ideas into it. Since I was narrator, I had most of the lines for the video.

On February 28th, after a false start, (our initial flight was cancelled), we got to florida on late Tuesday night. What a relief it was to finally get there…

On the first day, which was at Magic Kingdom, we all immediately felt the magic of Disney:

IMG_2893

During my day at magic kingdom, I filmed one of my trend videos which was my “just wanna rock dance”. 

The work for my trend video didn’t start until we got to Hollywood studios. Erik and myself conducted interviews while in a Walt Disney museum. We asked people about how Disney has affected them, and what makes them feel nostalgic. 

Here’s what Hollywood studios looked like:

IMG_2899

Once we got back from the trip, it was time to put it all together. We had our clips and interviews all filmed, and the hard work began…

When we started to edit we realized that there was some missing components, that would need to be troubleshooted. For example, our audio in our interviews was pretty quiet and we had to add subtitles over it. 

In summation, going to Disney world was an experience of a lifetime and is something I’ll never forget. It was an opportunity to know my peers better, as well as the teachers. As for the project, it was hard work to coordinate different shots and interviews, and we faced some adversity. In this project I got to work on my group work and communication, which was key for us to complete the video. 

Thanks for reading!

PGP, Reflections

Atomic Habits Post

Leave a comment

Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog. Today’s post is about the recent project we’ve been working on in PGP 10 at Seycove. This project was all about “positive brain training” and reading the book “atomic habits” by James clear. The driving question was: “How does balance within my life create opportunities”. With effective habits that have a clear process, we are able to create opportunities. As mentioned in the book, if you keep improving and refining, the results will be remarkable. If you continue to use Habit 7: sharpen the saw, you will keep getting better at your craft. 

To start it off, we explored “positive brain training”. There are 5 ways to do this: Meditation, conscious act of kindness, excersise, journaling, and gratitude. For each day, we would practice one of the 5 traits, and we would record in our “craft daily notes”. I found this to be really effective, as we were able to reflect and mention what we could improve next time. 

We listened to a TED talk by Shawn Achor called “the happiness advantage”. This talk was all about seeing the positives in things, and that positivity=productivity. We did a “4-2-1” activity, where you take the 4 main ideas, then you keep breaking it down until you reach one summary sentence. Here’s what my 4-2-1 looked like:

We also took a look back at the “seven habits”, a topic which we explored last year. In groups, we were each assigned a habit book, and at the end we did a 1 sentence summary on how our story relates to the habit. This was an opportunity to “jog our memories” on what the habits were and what they can be used for. It was important to re-learn these, as the seven habits directly relate to “atomic habits”. 

Our next step in this project was to begin our Atomic Habits reading. But first, we had to create an effective reading schedule. My plan was to read 15 minutes a day, and to be done the book by the end of spring break. For my schedule I used things:

I found my schedule to be very effective, as the reminder would pop up every day, which made it easier to complete and stay true to my plan. 

As I began to read, I noticed the level of detail with personal anecdotes that related to habits and creating systems. He talked about his baseball career, and how he came back from that brutal injury. I liked that use of examples, cause it brought upon a more personal side. He also mentioned the idea that small habits can make a big difference. Usually, we try to do things in big steps, instead of sticking to the process. Focus on getting 1 percent better every day. 

Next, he introduced the “habit laws”, which were for making good habits, and breaking bad ones. The 1st law, make it a obvious, the 2nd law, make it attractive, the 3rd law, make it easy, and the 4th law, make it satisfying. And for breaking bad habits, it’s the inverse. 

Another point that I found interesting, was that we can always revise and improve our habits and systems. Sometimes, I find myself thinking “this is good enough”, or “I can’t make it any better”. But in reality, there’s always room for improvement and refinement. 

To summarize, I found this project to be very useful and beneficial to my goals. Through the positive brain training, I was able to find more balance and cover multiple aspects of my life. And with the schedule and task management of my reading, I became more organized and I got better at working with Things. As for the reading, I connected to the author through his in depth anecdotes and examples. 

Thanks for reading!

Individual Project, Learning Advance, Maker, Reflections

Five Trend Videos Post

Leave a comment

Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog. Today’s post is about s project we completed during our field school to Disneyworld. This project was called “five trend videos”, and was all about making trend Tik tok’s during our time at disney. The driving question was: “How do I make effective personal design choices?” I can do this by finding trends that coincide with my interests and passions. Also, by researching and planning out what my videos will look like.

The first “investigation” was our Personal productivity system. This was all about setting up the tools on our iPads, and using them effectively. This included organizing “things”, clearing our inbox, and setting up our calendars. This was getting us ready for Disney world, as we would have to carefully plan out our videos.

Here’s what my maker section in things looks like:

The 2nd investigation was all about researching and planning our videos. We used the web, and examples from our teachers to conduct thorough research. The requirements for our videos is that 3 had to be independent and 2 had to be “squad videos”. Here’s a link to my document of video ideas:

I tried to make my video ideas trends that were well known, and that people could relate to. I also wanted to have a mix of comedic, dramatic, and serious videos. 

The 3rd investigation for this project was to make our video prototypes. At first I was confused as to how we would do this, since our scene looked nothing like it would at Disneyworld. However, the whole purpose of this was to visualize and see what we could fix in our videos. Here’s an example of one of my prototypes: IMG_2852

We made do with the PLP classroom as our scene, and performed our great dance!

Then for the last investigation, which was making our final drafts! We arrived in Disney and we began to craft our videos. We had to make sure we were diligent with our time, and didn’t get carried away in the magic of Disney. On the first day, I filmed my first video in front of the magic kingdom castle: Just Wanna Rock dance

Here’s the rest of my completed trend videos:

Biergaten review

Blizzard Beach vlog

Disney Hotel Room Tour

Me vs. What’s playing in my AirPods

To summarize, this project was lots of fun, and I learned about video editing, and video creation. Doing this project made me realize how much effort has to be put in for these “influencers” on Tik Tok. I found that it took lots of planning, organization, and putting our plans to action while we were at Disney. Looking back, I could’ve planned things a bit better, as I sometimes found myself doing things on the fly.

Thanks for reading!