Manhattan Project Squared

In the latest PLP project we learned all about the dawn of atomic energy: the manhattan project, Oppenheimer, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and so much more. Half of the class also ventured out to the birthplace of nuclear bombs: Albuquerque, New Mexico, to experience firsthand what happened there and capture media for the final product of this project, a book about the historical significance of the manhattan project.

This project started with a trip to where the first ever nuclear bombs were invented: Albuquerque New Mexico. This trip was not only an absolute blast, but we also learned s much valuable information firsthand. We visited the Trinity test site (where the first ever nuclear bomb was detonated), the los alamos lab were even today the military still innovates technology, the white sands missile range, and so much more. This trip not only gave us trivial information about the bomb’s development, but also gave insights on the cultural and economical impact present in the towns and people closest to where it happened.

The final product of this project was a book centered around one claim your group decides on (pertaining to nuclear energy of course). After lots of carful thought, our group’s claim was “The Manhattan Project is the reason the science of nuclear fission and fusion are creating positive change in our world today.” I actually disagreed with the assertion our claim makes, but we stuck with that claim regardless.

We wanted our book to feel like you’re reading and watching snippets from a bunch of movies, ads, and magazines. I was in charge of visual direction and I also created almost all the assets the book uses. I also helped edit and fact check every page of the book. Here are some of the pages I am most proud of. (I also wrote one of the top one’s magazine snippets)

Once we got through many rounds of tweaks, peer feedback, and revisions, we finally finished our book. I am very happy with the final result, but I think my group took it in a bad direction. Since our claim only talks about the good of the manhattan project (which is very little by the way) we have much more trouble filling up the ludicrous amount of pages we decided to add, and also make most sections of the book purposeless.

Overall, this has been one of, if not the best PLP project I’ve ever done. I loved learning about the rich history of the bombs and all the struggles that were involved making them, plus getting as close to the history ad possible with the field study gave it a quality I haven’t seen in any other projects (maybe loon lake). I just regret the direction our book went because I feel it didn’t accurately represent or show all the interesting parts of the manhattan project and nuclear bombs in general.

Thanks for reading my post! Stay tuned for the nest post where I learn how to debate like a boss. Bye bye now.

Money money money

In the latest PLP projects, we learned about finances and presented this at the 2023 spring exhibition to answer the driving question: “How Do I Support My Career Life Choices?”. So without further ado, here is the post.

We kicked off this project by talking about budgeting and our financial future (bank accounts, investing, etc…). I created a budgeting chart and logging onto MyBlueprint, a site that helps students with finding jobs, university, school, and finances.

MyBlueprint Tasks

After learning some more context information, we moved on to the stage part of this project: the Stock Market Simulator. Everybody downloaded an app that track real life stocks and simulate stock trading for free. we tracked our stock success using weekly reflections, and this was what we would present at the exhibition.

First we researched stock market terms so we could be better educated on the stock market. I honestly think this didn’t help at all because the top money makers used a very simple strategy to make all their money.

https://www.craft.me/s/crWt75t8jDl3Cn

Here are my reflections:

I made around 3000$ from the starting 12,000, and got 4th place in the class.

Then we presented this at the exhibition, but in my opinion the stock-related stuff was to hard to find and ask about to guests, so I really only ended up marketing my podcast and not my stocks. I really liked all the ideas of the exhibition, but I felt like the execution was a bit rushed. I learned a lot though, like how valuable investing and interest can be among other things.

Thanks for reading my post, and I’ll see you in the next one.

LIES! (And incongruencies)

In the latest PLP humanities project we learned all about Canada’s darker history of residential schools and cultural genocide to answer the driving question of “How can art and text reflect both the history and our current place in time”. So without further ado, here is the post.

The first step of this project was creating an I Am From Poem, which is a poem that describes me using a specific format. The way this connects to truth and reconciliation was very unclear at the start of this project to me, but later it connected back to the main idea of the project.

I Am From Poem

The order of this project was slightly disorienting, with Keystone 1 being the last keystone due and some other things like that, so I will go through this project in the order we handed them in.

🧱 Keystone 2

Part 1: History and Art

For this activity I explored a governmental act (I chose the Indian Act) and find art that reflects or makes a commentary on it. I found an amazing art exhibit called “The Indian Act Revisited” that looks at the Indian act and the current state of indigenous affair to see what has changed and what could be done. It consists of art form eight different First Nations artists. Here it is:

History And Art: The Indian Act

Part 2: Contemporary Issues

The goal of this segment was to find a text (art, music, essay, etc…) that reflects a modern indigenous issue. I found a song by indigenous artist “Dakota Bear” called Freedom that talks about inter generational trauma.

Contemporary Issues: Intergenerational Trauma

Part 3: Civil Dispute and Art

The last part of keystone 2 was a reflection on a civil dispute with sources and art. Here is mine:

Civil Conflicts and Art: The Oka Crisis

The next step in this project was a reflection on how I feel about living in Canada and my connections to truth and reconciliation. This is the part where the I Am From Poem ties back into the project, but to be honest, I felt like there could’ve been better ways to identify personal connections to Canada, like revising our I am from poems from a different perspective or creating rhetorical paragraphs from First Nations perspectives.

Truth And Reconciliation Paragraph

Throughout this project the whole class read a book called “The Marrow Thieves” by Cherie Dimaline. We also completed reading journal entries and reflections each week and finally at the end a paragraph that analyzes the book’s commentaries form the past and future.

My thoughts on the book

Personally, I really didn’t like this book; the dystopian future was somewhat believable, with the exception of one of the main plot points of the book: the ability to dream being lost by everyone EXCEPT First Nations people, with the secret being in their bone marrow. This is extremely unrealistic, as 1. Bone marrow cannot affect any of the brain’s processes 2. The government creates “schools” to place First Nations people in, killing them for their born marrow, but bone marrow can be harvested even right now in the real world without hurting the host, and 3. Bone marrow can infinitely be cloned with current technology as well.

“The Marrow Thieves” Journal

Then finally it was time to work on the final product of this project: the collage. and after 6 drafts, this was the result:

Final Collage

Thanks for reading my post, and I’ll see you in the next one.

TPOLs 2023

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.

Welcome to my grade 10 tPOL. In this post I will cover all my biggest learnings and achievements throughout the year.

The first project of the year was called “gold digger”. This project was about Canada’s history of gold rushes that built up the Canada we know today.

https://www.blog44.ca/theryns/2022/10/29/gold-digging/

The first field study of the year was the Loon Lake trip. This was the second time we’ve gone to loon lake, but it was very different this time, with a workshop about personal productivity and growth.

https://www.blog44.ca/theryns/2023/01/03/lake-of-loons/

The next notable project for me was the project about Romeo and Juliet where we recreated and adapted a scene from the original play.

https://www.blog44.ca/theryns/2023/02/06/romeo-romeo-what-did-we-say-about-poison/

The second field study of the year was to disney world, and on this trip we worked on two projects: the Power of Imagination and the trend videos project.

https://www.blog44.ca/theryns/2023/03/27/the-power-of-imagination/

https://www.blog44.ca/theryns/2023/03/28/trendisney/https://www.blog44.ca/theryns/2023/03/28/trendisney/

The last project I will talk about is the PGP project “Atomic Habits”. I learned more about myself in this project and also about how I can be more productive.

https://www.blog44.ca/theryns/2023/03/29/a-great-balancing-act/

This concludes my tPOL and what I have learned this year to ready myself for grade 11. Thanks for reading.

Saving Juno Beach

Have you ever wondered why it’s so important that we preserve the past? Well, in the latest PLP humanities project, we learned that and much more, from D-Day to guided missiles and The Battle of The Atlantic. So, without further ado, here is the post.

The first thing we did in this project was to learn about WW2: why is was caused, what happened in the war, the motives behind the different sides, and much more. We learned about it using a slideshow the teacher made and took notes on.

Once we all had good foundation knowledge on WW2 worked on our first assignment, which was a write up on why the battle of the Atlantic was significant. Here is mine:

The Battle of the Atlantic

The next step was the first keystone of the project. I was tasked to make a 3-point argument on why WW2 was significant for Canada. After some research, I came up with this:

Keystone 1: Historical Significance

The next keystone was a rhetorical analysis of a text and a table that is supposed to help with the planning of my final paragraph. I found the first part f the activity very helpful practice, but thee second part was less helpful to me. Here is the analysis:

Rhetorical Analysis

The final part of this project was the actual paragraph, which we developed through the writing process, starting with a thesis, then expanding into more than one paragraph, and finally editing to make it as compelling and fluent as possible.

Thesis

Then, I wrote a multi paragraph essay and got many peer critiques.

and finally, I ended up with this multi paragraph essay:

Final Essay

Thanks for reading this post! This project wasn’t super eventful or interesting to me personally because there was a lot of writing involved, but it is very valuable to learn about our history. Anyways, see you in the next post, bye.

A Great Balancing Act

In this post, I will talk about the latest PGP 10 project. The driving question for this project was: “how does balance in my life create opportunities?”. So, without further ado, here is the post.

This project can be cleanly split into 3 facets of learning: atomic habits by James Clear, the 7 habits of highly effective people by Sean Covey, and positive brain training.

Positive Brain Training

Positive brain training is the act of consistently using your brain in ways that increase positivity and efficiency. This can be accomplished through meditation, exercise, being kind or grateful, and many others. We set a positive brain training schedule that looked like this:

Positive Brain Training

I felt that this process helped short term, but I didn’t train my brain consistently for long enough for long term results. But, I have started to keep journaling and noting routines because of this activity

The 7 Habits

You may recognize this book from another blog post I did long ago, but if you don’t or need a refresher, the seven habits are habits that anyone can implement into their life to make their productivity and overall happiness better. They go as follows:

1. Be Proactive

2. Begin With The End In Mind

3. Put First Things First

4. Think Win-Win

5. Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood

6. Synergize

7. Sharpen The Saw

These habits I think help simplify and objectify the process of improvement into clear individual steps, which I found very helpful when I first read the book. When it was brought up again, I used this as an opportunity to reflect on the habits and goals I set previously.

Atomic Habits

Now for the center piece of this project: Atomic Habits by Sean Covey. This book’s messages about how small things can compound for massive impact later was quite eye opening for me personally, and I really enjoyed reading the first 5-6 chapters. However as the book went on, I found it quite repetitive, and the way the author wrote was sometimes convoluted. Even with these minor gripes though, I have implemented many of these habits into my life such as workouts and making negative habits unattractive, and had noticeable improvements since.

And this concludes my post! Thanks for reading, and I hope you learned something. I would recommend anyone to try these self improvement strategies on their own as well. Bye

Trendisney

Recently, most of the PLP 10 class went to Disney world in Florida for a ten day trip. And we didn’t go there just for the rides (though they were a very nice extra), we had two projects centred around this trip: The Power of Imagination & Creating Trend Videos. This post will cover the latter, the trend videos project. In this project, I created five trend videos to answer the essential question: “How do I make effective personal design choices?”. So, without further ado, here is the post.

We started this project by creating personal productivity systems. The first step in making my system was to learn about the tools I already had: like things, calendar, etc… next, I cleaned and organized my physical and mental spaces and started creating time blocks in my calendar and checklists in my things. Then, I started on the next facet of this project, which was creating trend videos

Trend: a general direction in which something is developing or changing.

A the next step in this project was creating Disney themed trend videos: creating ideas for what our five videos could be, and writing it down for the next step. I came up with five ideas: a dance compilation, a street interview about people’s favourite rides, a fake interview and hotel room tour, a prank video, and a day in the life at Disney video. Once these ideas where written down in my craft document, I started planning out how I would create them.

Click here for the full planning document for my videos

I created a storyboard and planning table for each idea, as well as example material and extra details. Then, we went on the trip to Florida,

Or we would have gone to Florida, if our flight hadn’t been cancelled the night before. Thankfully, our teachers somehow managed to reschedule the trip for soon after, and the trip was back underway.

I filmed all my videos, but once I got home and started editing, I realized I didn’t film enough for one, and it wasn’t turning out how I wanted, so I pivoted and created something else instead. You can watch the final five videos on my YouTube channel:

https://youtube.com/@theryns.3895 <~~click this link

Thanks for reading my blog post. Make sure to check out my other posts, and see you in the next one.

The Power Of Imagination!

Recently, most of the PLP 10 class went to Disney world in Florida for a ten day trip. And we didn’t go there just for the rides (though they were a very nice extra), we had two projects centred around this trip: The Power of Imagination & Creating Trend Videos. This post will cover the former: the Power Of Imagination. The driving question is “how do Disney theme parks shape and influence the cultural, economic, physiological, and social experiences of visitors”

At the start of this project we learned how to summarize and understand text better, and we worked on an assignment about a TED talk called the happiness advantage.

Final Summary Document

This didn’t have a lot to do with the project, but practiced skills that would come in handy for many future projects, including this one.

The next assignment, however, has everything to d with the project. We read an article from Smithsonian Magazine and crafted a summary the same way as shown above. Here is mine:

“How Disney Came To Define What Constitutes The American Experience” Summary

The next step in this project had us divide into groups to tackle each section of the driving question: cultural, economic, physiological, and social. I was put into the social interactions group. Each group had their own subsections for individual group members to research. My job was to create five PKMs (Personal Knowledge Managers) about the positive social interactions Disney cultivates for its visitors. Here are my five entries:

Entry #1

Entry #2

Entry #3

Entry #4

Entry #5

answer to my individual research question

Then, it was times to start fleshing out our final product: our group’s video to answer the question “How does visiting Disney World enhance well-being, reduce stress, and provide a sense of escape and enjoyment for some visitors?” We created a flow chart to help clarify our ideas, and then started working on our screenplay, call sheets, and storyboard.

After finishing the planning documents for our video, we went to Disney World, filmed and edited our video.

Final Video Link

Thanks for reading my post! This is one of two blog posts I’ve written about my class’s Disney world trip. If you want to read the other one, click here. Anyways, that concludes this post, bye.

Romeo Romeo, What Did We Say About Poison?

Hello readers, and welcome to my blog. This reflection is on the latest PLP project, “Romeo Romeo, are we still talking about Romeo and Juliet?” (I know, a bit clunky, but it works). The Driving Question for this project was: “How has William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet remained relevant to contemporary storytelling?” And to explore this question, we read and reflected on the play, and then created an adaptation of our own.

The first step to this project was reading the play. We read the most important parts in class, and completed sections of a theme book to analyze the themes of what we read and connect them to adaptations of the play. Here is my completed theme book:

The next step in the project was to get into groups, and brainstorm ideas for out film adaptations. Our job was to take one or two scenes from the play, and think and create original adaptations of them. I was paired up with Sylas, Dana, Declan, and Nolan.

We chose the scene where Juliet fakes her death, and started thinking. The first idea that popped into my mind was instead of faking her death, she could go into a cryochamber. I thought that this was the closest to death someone can come nowadays without actually dying, and proposed it to my group. They thought it sounded good, so we started filling it our film pitch form.

Film Pitch

Then, we created a script, and started filming. And then, when all is said and done, here is the final film:

And that concludes this post. Thanks for reading.

MPol 2023

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.

In this MPol post, I will go over all the PLP project I have done this year: Gold digger, Oology of Apology, and Romeo, Romeo, which I haven’t finished yet at the time of writing this.

First, I will look at my learning plan to show my expectation going into this year.

GOLD DIGGER

In this project, I learned all about the gold rushes in Canada’s history.

This project’s blog post is HERE.

Oology of Apology

This project’s driving question was: “How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered – and not repeated – today?”

The blog post I wrote for this project is HERE.

I learned about ethical judgement, and how to make an accurate ethical judgements, and about some of the bad parts of Canada’s history, and what others and I can do about it.

Romeo Romeo, Are we still talking about Romeo and Juliet?

Despite the long title, this project was one of the shorter ones, and felt like it only lasted a week. It explores how we can interpret themes from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, and connect them to film adaptations, finally concluding with a film adaptation of our own.

Loon Lake Field Study

Loon Lake Post

This concludes the post! Thanks for reading my MPol Post. Bye.