So the year is coming to an end, and there were some memorable moments throughout. I’m pretty proud of a few projects I’ve done, and I would like to share them.
Im still proud of my Learning Portfolio, because of how simple and fun it is. I really enjoy being able to post my work on a blog, and I like that I can post other posts about what I like to do. One post I am proud of is my DI Provincials post. I think this is one of my biggest posts so far, not only in text but also in photos. I’m proud of the post due to the content of the post. I’m still happy I finished and I’m happy that I did it. I learned a lot from DI and, while I don’t want to do it again, I think it was a good experience now that I look back on it.

I feel im ready to advance grade levels because I know how to manage my time well. I will need to manage time well to get assignments done on time. I also have a little system for prioritizing work. If i have multiple assignments due on the same day, I work on the one that needs more work. If their due different days, I work on the closest one for a while or until its done, then I work on the other one for a while.

I’ll be honest, blue sky was… interesting. For those who don’t know, blue sky is this year end exhibition in which we present a project we’ve been working on for the past few weeks. We are allowed to make whatever we want for this, but we have to come up with a question, get it approved by Mrs. Willemse, and build something to solve a problem relating to the question. I had a few ideas I was super exited for, but they all existed sadly. I finally thought about what problems I have, and i thought about solving a problem i have while swimming.
Lane ropes are a pain, and I hate bumping into the wall. I wanted to find a way to stop myself from doing that. I finally thought about building a fin that I can wear on my back. More information can be found on my designers journal. (This will be here at some point.)

Overall, I feel I have grown as a learner this term. I learned how to use a few new apps, I learned new tricks on my blog, and I am slightly more comfortable with recording myself. During maker I wasn’t able to do much work on blue sky because all my stuff was at home and hard to transport. I was able do do some work on my journal entries, and I helped other people with their blue sky.

In terms of work habits, I didn’t learn many new ones. I did learn that it is incredibly important to check Showbie every time a notification pops up, no mater what I’m doing. If I miss something like an assignment or a comment, I could be in serious trouble. I check Showbie when I get home from school, around 9 am on the weekends, and after dinner all days.

I feel I am ready for grade 9. I learned new skills and techniques to use during classes, and I generally know what I’m doing. I am ready.

Exploration is key to any new colony. Have knowledge of your surrounding is important. But throughout history, many people have explored for one or two reasons. These two reasons are the leading reasons to why people explore. People will explore to either gain as many resources as possible to benefit the home empire, or to spread that home empire, and indoctrinate people under one religion/leader.

Does anyone remember the Roman Empire? They explored the land around them to claim it under Roman rule. They captured cities and took prisoners to spread Roman rule and indoctrinate people under the Roman religion. However, Rome fell due to its massive size and inability to control all the land.

Many people explore for the other reason, as well. France and Britain first explored the new world to find a quick trade route to India, but found North and South America instead. Because they found this new land, they explored to find resources like gold, silver, minerals, spices, and crops. Little did they know that First Nations were already living there.

There is a third reason as to why people explore that dates back to a really long time ago. People, long long ago, explored to follow the traveling food. This caused people to travel across the land bridge between Russia and Alaska. As the food traveled across the bridge, humans followed. This lead humans to explore Eurasia and the Americas. Now just one question remains. How did humans get to Australia and Polynesia(Hawaii)?

Having knowledge of your surroundings is important. Exploration is key to any new colony. But people rarely explore to just gain knowledge.

So D.I. Was a success. We (Owen, Jamie, Tamara, Luca O.G., and Marshall) went to the provincial tournament on Saturday, and it was pretty successful. While our presentation Wes completely different, most of DI stayed the same. Our challenge was still to build two free-standing structures out of nothing but balsa wood, and they still worked together to hold weight.

Our instant challenge this time was to build one or two mechanisms that would push small balls into a cardboard tube. These mechanisms were attached to string and a chopstick, and we could only touch the chopstick. We built two mechanisms, one was just a plastic cup, and the other was sort of a shovel that would push the ball along the ground.
Sadly, we ran out of time to push all three balls into the tube. But we did get the ping pong ball into the tube which scored us a nice 10-40 points.

Earlier I mentioned that our presentation was completely different than before. This is totally true. Before during the regionals we presented a news story about a collapsed bridge on. The border between Nepal and China. The bridge we collapsed because of a large earthquake, ant the two representatives had a conflict when they had different models they needed to test. Because building a bridge would be incredibly difficult in the Nepalese mountains, we had to change the location to something more localized.

More localized being the west coast of North America. What do we have a lot of here? Earthquakes. What do earthquakes cause? Tsunamis. What can we do to stop tsunamis? Build a giant wall of course! We made two different support models to be put into a wall to try and disrupt waves and tsunamis from reaching both the Oregon coast and Vancouver island. One was a rectangular prism, and the other was a triangular prism. The plan was to make the wall segments out of these structures, but we didn’t know which one would hold more weight. Turns out we ran out of time before either structure broke, but they held at least 90 pounds. That’s pretty impressive for the lightest wood on earth.

D.I. Was tough, but im glad I did it. I’m really happy with my teams job and the work we did. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy regionals, which put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Regionals were in a tight, underground, and stuffy gym. This in and of itself wasn’t fun. But I also had a bad head cold. That combined with the stuffy gym was horrible! I had to go home early just so I wouldn’t pass out.

Provincials was a lot better, though. We were still in a gym, but doors were open andI wasn’t sick. One down side, however, is that most of another team didn’t take any of their stuff to or from D.I., so we took about half of their stuff. My mom was not happy, and had a stern talk with the three that didn’t take any stuff. Kiefer took the other half of stuff, and Raina couldn’t take anything cause her car is too small.

So yea, D.I. Was a good experience, and now I know what to expect for next year. I also learned lots of valuable knowledge for next time, too. Bring it on, D.I.!

This year is Canada’s 150th birthday, and we have been asked to make a short video explaining what Canada means to us. This video will go up on Here’s my Canada, and will be entered to win a prize!

My video is very simple, just me talking to the camera about how multicultural Canada is and how close to nature most of it is. I didn’t do any fancy editing because I thought that special effects would draw the viewers attention away from the point of the video. There was also some nice ambiance in the background, so I didn’t add any music.

When we were first assigned this video I got a clear idea of what I wanted it to be like, but I couldn’t film it until it was nice enough weather. Because of this, I just wrote a plan for what I was going to do. Underneath I wrote a script that I loosely followed while filming. In the end I decided to not film it where I originally planed. I had planed to film it on McCartney Creek Trail which is a short walk from my house, but I decided to film it in my back yard.

I chose to talk about multiculturalism because in the recent times of war, poverty and, in some places, racism, lots of people are moving/fleeing to Canada. And a few months after those people move, they will no longer be living in fear and war. They will be safe, and they wont have to be scared or sad. This to me is really important, people being safe and not scared of war or needing to participate in one.

If you’ve seen the video, you will know I talk about how close to nature most of Canada is. I thought talking about it would bring up something I hear a lot of when people talk about their visits to Canada. “It’s beautiful” “Its so close to nature” “I’d love to live near a forest there”. Lots of popular places in Canada are close to nature, and if they’re not… you’re not in Canada.

That’s what I love about Canada; its very multicultural and safe for immigrants. It’s also beautiful and close to nature. Happy 150 Canada!

In PLP, we are always showing our work to other people, but today I will be showing you some of mine. I have three different examples of work that I am most proud of that I would like to show you.

Firstly, I am most proud of this learning portfolio. Its been really cool to be able to post what I’ve learned, and I enjoy posting some of my thoughts and opinions in some casual, not school related posts. I’d have to say that my favourite post is probably either “Overwatch for Christmas” or “Why I like tofu“.

During our Oregon trip we had to make three ads, one business, one tourist, and one advocating tsunami safety. My favourite was the tsunami advocation ad. I’m not entirely sure why its my favourite, but it is probably my favourite because of how realistic it seems. I got a picture of a Jetty from the Oregon coast, and put “this Jetty won’t save you from a tsunami” at the top. I then put “Knowing this will” at the bottom next to a picture from www.oregontsunami.com. The picture was just some info on what to do during a tsunami.

Last stop! Destination Imagination!

I think the thing im most proud of was just completing our challenge. I was in a team with Jamie, Marshal, Tamara, Daniel, and Luca O.G., and our challenge was to build two free standing structures that will work together to support weight. These structures had to be built out of balsa wood, and glue. I am honestly surprised we managed to get into provincials with what we had. Our structures were way to big and way to heavy, so nearly HALF our possible points were lost before we even began. However, we did manage to improv a really good presentation, which did incorporate our failures involving the structures. I’m also proud of myself for not passing out during the day. I was really sick.

In terms of my learning on this blog, im very proud of learning some of the little things in customization, as well as in posts themselves.

I’m proud of learning how to add photos to my posts, as well as embedding videos into the posts so they can be watched from the page.

I’d say the post that demonstrated my learning the most was the “Google year-in Review” post because it taught me how to embed both videos and links to different pages. I think this will be very important in the future because it will allow me to make posts that are better and dont take you to a different page, so you don’t get off topic/my blog.

Finally, Growth mindset. I have a growth mindset about my schoolwork and classes in school. Honestly, I didn’t have much of a growth mindset during D.I. There were some ideas presented, and some props that had a different design then I anticipated and I wasn’t too happy about it upon seeing them. However, we made them work, and we pulled through and managed to get into provincials.

On November 19, 2016 we left for Oregon. During our trip we went to several different places in the American State known as Oregon. I’ve all ready talked about most of what we did in Oregon, so click here to see that post. This trip wasn’t technically a field trip. It was actually a field study. A field study is when you are doing most of your classes outside or just out of a classroom. Because we were nowhere near the classroom, the entire trip was a field study.

Some of what I didn’t talk about then was the Oregon advertisements that we made. We had to make three ads; one business, one tourist, and one advocating for tsunami safety. My business ad was for a Thai restaurant called Nisa’s Thai kitchen. My tourist ad was supposed to be for south beach, but since it was raining really hard on the day we were meant to go to the beach, we were then supposed to make an ad for cannon beach. Finally, my advocacy ad on tsunami safety, I chose to make sort of a grim ad, cause I’m most scared of tsunamis here in Vancouver.

I made these ads using an app called Keynote, and I took most of the photos myself. I did get some really helpful critique from my peers and parents, which helped a lot. If I could do anything different next time it would be to possibly get better photos. I think that some of these photos are a bit…iffy compared to what they could have been.

One part of the trip that I would like to bring up was the science estuary study. In this study we had to find ghost shrimp, and see if they had an infection. I just want to say that these shrimp were terrifying. Imagine a giant spider, that SWIMS. I would rather go to the moon without training than have to do this study again. My drawing is a little bit less terrifying.

Finally, the last part about our trip was that we had to make an iBook about what we did over the trip. The ‘frame’ was given to us by Mrs. Willemse, and we filled out the rest during our trip. This book included parts about thanksgiving, Black Friday, the giant rain storm on the second last day, etc (actually the last one wasn’t originally in the book, we put it in after south beach was canceled). After we made this book, we put it onto the google drive. Mine is simply called “Going coastal”

There you go! A blog post on what we did in Oregon. I had a lot of fun and would like to go back, except go back to the estuary lab. Thanks for reading!

Throughout the year in our Maker class we have been working on a unit about growth mindset, and you may be wondering “what is growth mindset?”, well I’m going to tell you. Growth mindset is something one can have for just about anything; if you are willing to work on something no matter how challenging or how may times you failed, if you see failing as a chance to learn from you mistakes, if you are willing to to whatever it takes to achieve your goal, then you have a growth mindset.

Growth mindset is the opposite of a fixed mindset. If you have a fixed mindset, you are not willing to work hard or keep trying, and you need someone to tell you you can succeed. For example, if you say “I’m bad at sports and I’m never going to be good at them” you have a fixed mindset about you sports ability. But if you have a growth mindset about you sports ability, you might say ” I’m bad, but I will strive to get better and I won’t give up”.

One recent assignment we had was to make a long term goal and put it on to a selfie of ourselves. My long term goal was “By working hard and doing my best, I will complete whatever challenge I have”, and I decided to be silly and take a really cheesy selfie to put with my goal.

During this project I learned that making a long term goal can be really hard. I wanted to have a goal that was broad, specific and not strict, so I have to really think about how to word my goal and what to say with it. If I could do anything different next time I would take a different selfie and maybe make it less cheesy or just take one outside.

(I don’t own any of these photos except the last one)