Category: Humanities

Zooming through DI

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

If you’ve read my previous blog posts you would know that on February 29th I completed DI (Destination Imagination) regionals, checkout my blog post on that here. But with the covid-19 pandemic DI provincials was not possible. Instead we did our DI presentation on a zoom meeting, we even did an instant challenge! This was difficult though as we left all of our props at school, we also had to figure out how to act and interact over zoom. 

An instagram post about PLP’s online DI. That is my group on the featured photo.

We did a great job at regionals but there were so many things to improve. Even though we had to revise everything for this DI we still improved many things, I feel like we did a very good job given the circumstances. 

Our Story improved a lot. The biggest improvements were clarity. The clarity was improved through the awesome narration of our group member Annie. We also all did a good job at acting. 

Our backgrounds were significantly better then at regionals. We used a feature in zoom called virtual background to quickly switch are backgrounds. We also switched the backgrounds a lot to get more relevant backgrounds depending on the scene. To replace our last team choice element which was a painting on top of our alarm clock box Evelyn painted an amazing depiction of our main character Nate’s room. Finally I created an ending background which we used at the very end. 

  • This is the background we used in all of our school scenes.
  • This is the amazing background which Evelyn drew.
  • This was our final background.

We also did some minor improvements on the invention. Although, once again our alarm didn’t work we still revised it. Instead of using the circuit which we used at regionals we used a scratch program which had a timer and would set off an alarm. This failed though, I’m not completely sure what happened but likely my phone glitched out and didn’t play the alarm sound. 

After regionals our team made some plans to improve our DI presentation for provincials. We were going to remake the frame of our backdrop with wood to make it less flimsy. We also were going to remake the circuit inside the invention. Finally we were going to improve our impact scenery. 

Our plan for the backdrop was to add wood supports to improve the frame. During regionals our backdrop kept on falling over. During the 2 weeks after regionals we made plans to get the wood and attach it.

This was our original backdrop

For the invention we were debating making a new timer circuit and trying to figure out if we could get the parts needed for that, or make a simple machine out of an old cooking timer. If we couldn’t get our hands on a 555 timer alarm. 

This is a 555 integrated timer IC

Finally our other major improvement was working on using carbiners to improve the pulleys in our impact scenery. They failed miserably at regionals. During class we figured out how we were going to attach the carbiners to our impact scenery, and we were about to start before spring break happened. 

I feel we did a very good job acting on our instant challenge. We figured out how to act in zoom which is very different and can be quite difficult. We also did a very good job at quick thinking.

All in all we did a very good job handling the different challenges which were thrown at us through all of DI, especially the online one we completed on Monday April 6th. I feel like throughout DI are group began working a lot better together and demonstrated a lot of growth. 

It’s the end of our world… and we feel fine

quinn1 Comment

Hi everyone,

It’s the end of our world… and we feel fine. No seriously we just did a project on this. We recorded a remix version of the song, It’s the end of the world as we know it, by R.E.M. Our driving question for this project was, “who or what changed or challenged your worldview from elementary to high school?” We also learned about the Renaissance, and how it to was a transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age. 

This project involved us taking many creative risks. At the start of the project I was not very happy about having to record my own song, but I kept a growth mindset and tried my hardest.

The competencies we were being assessed on were create, and cause and consequence. I feel I did quite well on both competencies. 

The best example of the competency create was, my group song. I edited the music together, and Amy edited the video. My other group member was Evelyn. Go checkout both there blogs.

There were quite a few reasons I feel like this was a good example of this competency. First of all, I edited many different parts together. I also created lyrics to communicate my point about the transition from grade 7 to 8 through text, and later through music. 

I demonstrated the competency cause and consequence cause and consequence in many milestones. One of them was my individual lyrics, I wrote about the consequences of transitioning to high school. Another example was my Renaissance cause and consequence right up. I wrote about how the Renaissance caused lasting monarchies and the consequences of that. 

This is my Renaissance C+C

This project had 6 milestones. I will explain them all of them now, except for milestone 6, because this blog post is milestone 6. 

Milestone 1 was our worldview mindnode. We had to make to make a mind map about the transition of our worldview from grade 7 to grade 8. I did an ok job on this, there was many things I could’ve improved. 

Milestone 2 was our individual song lyrics. We had to write our own lyrics which would work with the R.E.M track. I feel I did a good job on this one, although, my lyrics could’ve flowed with the music better. 

Milestone 3 was our individual song. This milestone was when we sung our own song, from the lyrics we created in the previous milestone. If you want you can listen to my song below. I think I did a good job on this milestone but there was many things I could’ve improved. My audio didn’t always sync perfectly with the track which made it sound a little off. 

Milestone 4 was our Renaissance C+C (cause and consequence). In my opinion I did a great job on this milestone. I already mentioned how it was a great example of the cause and consequence milestone.

Milestone 5 was our group song. In groups of 3 we made a song. I worked with Evelyn and Amy. I think we did a great job. Originally the audio was a little weird as it had the track playing slightly off time in the background. Also, I think my singing could have been more similar to the original track. 

All in all this was a different project which forced me take to many creative risks. I think I kept a growth mindset and did some pretty interesting work. I could improve many things, but you can always improve a lot.

Fantastic Feudalism?

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

Over the last 5 weeks we have learned about a lot. Actually we didn’t we mostly learned about the ways you could die in the Middle Ages and compared them to today. I’m kidding but we did learn about the Black Death, the crusades, and many more things. Our driving question for this project was, “What was life like in the Middle Ages? How does it compare to today?” We were being assessed on two curricular competencies which I will mention later.

For this project we had many assignments. Most of them centred around continuity and change. We started this project with reading a book. The book was called the book of the lion and was about a squire. We also wrote a letter from the perspective of a made up person in the Middle Ages of a certain class. My letter was about a squire named Huxley Hardaway. We also made a keynote about the continuity and change of objects from the Middle Ages to now. I did part of this project with Josh. 

This was my keynote on continuity and change in the Middle Ages.

My favourite Milestone in this project was the character letter. The reason I liked this milestone so much was because we could be really creative with it. 

In this project like all projects we were being assessed on a few competencies. The competency for English was Comprehend. This is basically about how well I can understand text. I think I did quite well on this competency. I understood the book we read quite well. I also did quite well at researching for the continuity and change keynote. I also figured out some strategies on how to better remember content from textbooks. I would read it aloud or, write the general idea down somewhere. 

The competency for Social Studies was, Continuity and Change. In my opinion I did very well on this competency. I made a good keynote, and I did a quite well at explaining the continuity of crop farming and the change of Artillery. I also made an excellent research doc in which I described the continuity and change of many items and ideas. 

This was my presentation on continuity and change.

The Media is the Message reflection post

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

Since the school year started on September 3rd 2019, we have been working on a project called the Media is the Message. This project was all about advertising. I have learned many things about advertising since then.

We started this project off with watching an ad for the Apple HomePod and reflecting on the ad. Looking back on it, I don’t think I did a very good job. Although, when I first wrote I did think I did think I did a great job. The reason I don’t think I did a very good job the reason so, is because I didn’t know enough about advertising and even the software I was using to do well.
Our next Milestone was an advertising survey in which we asked our parents questions about their perspectives on advertising. The first time around I didn’t read all the instructions and did terribly. The second time, I read the instructions and did a decent job.

During this project we had to be able to recognize media and, analyze text of all kinds. Our driving question for this project was “How does what we hear, read and see influence us?” How does it? In my opinion anything we hear, see or read will influence us in someway. When we hear, read or see anything our brain tries to remember it. So the basis of advertising is to put ideas in our brains, wether we realize it or not. A great example about how hearing something can influence us is, younger children. Say, when a 3 year old kid hears their mom, dad or anyone else they look up to say something they will want to say something like them. If their mom always says super nice things about everything, they will likely do the same. But, If they hear there Mom say super negative mean things about everything, they will do that. With advertising companies our trying to put messages in your head through hearing things said aloud, seeing things being done or reading things put on billboards or in newspaper, they want to influence you to like their brand more. Also, the companies likely want you to trust them. Some of the companies which do this the best are, Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola and many other big companies. 

Our 3rd Milestone Involved making a persuasion chart about Advertising. On the persuasion chart we had to get examples of ads and convince the audience what kind of advertising they where using. I would say I did a really good job on this Milestone.

During this project we had to chances to analyze text. The first time was Our first Milestone, the welcome home dissection. The second one was Milestone 4, the Highest tide analysis. I improved at this skill a lot through the 2 assignments. The first time I wasn’t sure what to do. I kind of just did what I would have done for a book report in elementary school, which was not what was expected. This second time I learned from my past Mistakes and improved upon it. I’m still nowhere near perfect, even in 10 years from now I’ll still be far from perfect. But the biggest thing is that I learned from my mistakes and improved upon them.

Our 4th Milestone was analyzing a book we read called the highest tide. I think I did a pretty good job on this although I’m not really sure exactly how well I did.

Ads

  • This is my first Ad. There is many things which could of been improved upon but overall I like it
  • This is my second ad. Although I improved upon some features of the first ad I think it is worse.
  • This is my third draft of my ad. It is pretty similar to my final draft but the image in the background is different and the fonts are different. I think this was a pretty good attempt.
  • This is my fourth ad. I think it is worse than my 3rd ad although I did make some things better.
  • This was my Fifth and final draft of this series of ads. I definitely think this is my best attempt although there is still so much I could improve upon.
  • This is my first draft. I don’t think it is that good although it is better than quite a few of my later drafts. I did this ad without interviewing Chalet so, I didn’t have all the information which I needed
  • This is my second draft for my ad. Although it looks ok it’s not a very good ad for many reasons such as the fact that it doesn’t focus in on an image
  • For this ad I fixed the font to make it look more like the font chalet uses. I focused in on one image but I still did a few things not so well such as that weird grey filter in the background. It was a major improvement since my last ad but still pretty bad.
  • For this ad I kept most of the good things from my last ad and removed the horrible filter but I didn’t ad the address or give enough information about the business.
  • For my final attempt I added more information about the business such as a their address. I still don’t think it is great as it doesn’t look like a real ad but it was my best attempt yet.
Our next 2 Milestones were both about making ads. Our first ad was about a Parkgate or a Deep Cove business. My group did InGrain, a restaurant and a company which makes pasta. I really liked making this ad and I thought I did a pretty good job. My second ad, has not been going very well so far. It’s about a Restaurant in Newport Oregon called, Chalet.

So to wrap things up this was a amazing but long project in which we learned a ton about advertising in.