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.

Oology of Apology

Hello, and welcome to my latest blog post on the project Oology of Apology. The driving question for this project was: “How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered – and not repeated – today?” So, without further ado, here is the post.

The first assignment was a written reflection on a documentary we watched about Canada’s history. This activity served mostly as a taster of what is to come, and only really scratched the surface of Canada’s rich history.

“The most interesting takeaway I have from this video is how much rich history about minorities Canada is built on. The transgression that stood out to me the most was about Chinese people building the Canadian Pacific Railway. They were forced to build it on a very difficult and dangerous area to build on, despite having a much safer option that is more costly. This really showed me how brutal life could be in those times and what people were forced to do to build the Canada we know today.”

As we learned more about Canada’s history, we talked about the Ukrainian internment, and whether it was a just course of action or not.

https://www.craft.do/s/9g1sgtlpJOg9d0

And then we did the first keystone. This was a keynote presentation about one of three events: the komagata maru, Chinese head tax, or Japanese internement. I chose Komagata maru and ended up with this:

 https://www.icloud.com/keynote/04cyCwXUZhwvpBxmOnQA7a6Kw#Komagata_Maru_Keynote

The next keystone was a written script for and audio file about your given incident. It was also accompanied by a recorded reading of the script.

Script

Introduction:

Almost every country or civilization has had injustices towards their own people or outsiders in their history. Today l’II talk about one from Canada’s past: the Komagata Maru incident. This story takes place just before World War One, and shows the journey of a large steamship that helped change the Indian public opinion against the British.

Body:

Our story starts in 1908, when the continuous journey regulation laws were put into place, which prevented immigrants from many foreign countries coming to Canada unless they didn’t stop in any other countries along the way. this rule mainly restricted minorities from entering canada, but in a way that didn’t specify exclusion based on race. 6 years later, and the year is 1914, and the steamship Komagata Maru arrives in Vancouver, BC. However, upon entry, it is held offshore because of a violation of the continuous passage regulation. While this violation was disputed in court, the ship was held offshore for two months while the passengers barely scraped by on the little food and water they had. Then, the courts decided they were in violation of the law, and threatened to sink the ship if it didn’t head back to India. The ship was escorted out of port by the HMCS Rainbow, a British military cruiser. Once they arrived back in budge budge, an Indian city, disgruntled and starving, their was an altercation between British authorities and passengers, and shooting broke out, leaving 22 dead, including 16 passengers. These 16 deaths, and the opportunities lost for the passengers, are under partial responsibility of the Canadian government, and these passengers only received an official apology from the Canadian government nearly a century later, and never received compensation for their hardship.

Conclusion:

This incident paints a picture of Canada being an anti immigrant country, which is a far cry from the Canada we know today. From the racist policies to the casualties of the passengers, the komagata maru had an extremely rough journey, made this way becuase of our government. My final opinion is that the actions of the government were, and are, unjust, because of the racist actions our government made, like sending the Komagata back because it violated an already racist policy and keeping them in very inhumane conditions for months. But, everyone has their own opinion, so I encourage you to read more about the Komagata Maru and other injustices in our past.

And then, the final culmination of our learning from the project, the monument about the incident. My group decided to make ours a diorama of a ship (the komagata) being held between two countries by large guns.

We presented our monument at the PLP Winter Exhibition in the militarism section. Me and my group explained what it meant and it’s connection to militarism. The theme was the movie Avatar, and everything eventually connected to it.

Overall, I feel that this project has helped teach me a lot about how we can memorialize past  wrongdoings using monuments and apologies.

Lake of Loons!

Hello, and welcome to my loon lake blog post. This post will talk about the first PLP feild study of the year (for my grade): my second Loon Lake Trip. On this trip, we did a three day leadership course, which was something I had never done before. This course was led by an amazing guy named Jono, so if I say that name, you know who it is.

On the day we left, everyone was very excited to be going on out first field study of the year, so we boarded the bus, and one and a half hours later, we had arrived in a completely new and beautiful place.

Arrival at loon lake

Since we were there for an absolutely packed five days, I will only go over the parts of the trip that influenced me the most.

The first part of the trip that I found really cool and that I think changed me as a person, was the workbook and the cool realization that came with it. Throughout the first three days of the trip, there was a workbook filled with self-exploration questions and activities, and with Jono’s guidance, I learned about myself in a way I never knew I could.

Debrief with Jono

The second part I will talk about was the personal posters. These were poster we made to show off who we are, and at first I was embarrassed that mine looked worse than others, or had less drawings, but throughout the course of the trip so many people wrote kind things on it that I felt completely satisfied with its representation of me. (every day we had time to write appreciations of something that person did that day)

Max and Mateo writing appreciations

We also did many outdoor activities, like low ropes, high ropes, and climbing. But my favourite outdoor activity was the two and one half hour hike we did on the last day. This hike takes you all the way around the lake

High ropes milk crate challenge
Rock climbing
Low ropes course

And my favourite: the hike

Amazing photo by Faith Sheewe

I really enjoyed the hike because Loon Lake is such a beautiful place, and I loved having that one last memory to remind me of this.

Thanks for reading my post. Goodbye.

Time Is Money

Hello, and welcome to another post. The driving question for this project was “how can we predict our finances for the future?”. To answer this question, I created a narrated video. So, without further ado, here is the post.

The final product for this project was this narrated video:

Final video

To make this video, I combined all the milestones from this project into this video. Milestone 1 was just choosing my topic. I choose to make my business about wood puzzles.

For the second milestone, I created a spreadsheet that shows all my prices, time, and mateirials required for my business to operate.

For milestone three, I created an equation to represent my earnings.

Equation

for the final milestone (excluding the video) I created a graph that show my earnings over a span of time.

Graph

And then I combined them all together and added some spice and made the final video.

Now, for the curricular competencies.

Understanding and solving apply multiple strategies to
solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations

All time, materials, and equipment are accounted for in the cost of making your product or performing your service.

My video includes all equipment costs and they are all factored into my math.

Communicating and representing: represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic form

Linear equations are used to determine profit per transaction, hourly wages, and predicted NET earnings (minus deductions) over a year. Graphs are created, labeled, and explained.

I showed this competency by explaining graphs and equation throughout my video. My video contains labeled graphs, equations, and other statistics.

Connecting and reflecting: connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests.

Video compares your new business to other careers and considers the value of your time, if your business can cover your costs of living/operating, and its sustainability/impact on the environment.

while my video does do this, I think it could’ve been done better by me directly comparing actual jobs rather than an average salary.

The Spring Exhibition 2022

In PLP at the end of every year, all the students create a large presentation of all our learning throughout the year. The theme for my section was about PLP and how we use tech for learning. So, without further ado, here is the post.

At the start of this project, we were put into groups. My groups had Faith, Cale, Ines, Patrick, Max L, Noah, Erik and Ben T. First, we started brainstorming ideas for what our room could look like.

Here is our first plan:

First plan

Then, we finalized our plan for the room.

Map

Then, we took some photos then annotated them to envision our stations.

Then, we got to work on the room. We started creating signs for the stations, decorations, presentations, and more. Then, on the day of the exhibition, we cleared everything out of the room, set up our decorations, and then opened the exhibition to the public.

All the presentations went well, and I actually enjoyed it more than I expected, and then the cleanup was actually pretty quick.

Anyways, that concludes this post, thanks for reading. Bye.

My First Film!

In the latest PLP 9 Project, I created a 6 minute documentary about nuclear power to answer the driving question: “How can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and storytelling skills”. This blog post will cover my journey making the final film.

The first activity in this project was recording an interview. We were put into groups and had to create a short video about a chosen topic, using interviews. In this activity, we learned how to shoot interviews, which would come in handy in the final documentary.

Interview Video

After this exercise I started thinking about what my documentary could be about. Some of my ideas included nuclear power, rubiks cubes, or parkour. In the end, I chose to make it about nuclear power because I thought I could make a clearer message about this topic. I did end up regretting this though, because it is very hard to get b-roll of nuclear reactors.

Then, the next step was to write a screenplay for my film.

As it turns out writing a screenplay for a documentary is quite difficult, but I managed to get it done. I also made a treatment and logline in my documentary planning DOCs.

Now, it was time to create a storyboard. A storyboard is a plan that consists of images for each shot, a short description of each shot, and sometimes some other details. This is what I made:

Then, it was time to start filming. The first thing I did was create the collage of news articles at the start, then I contacted an expert on nuclear power, Robert Anderson, for an interview. I also needed two interviews from people who are less than experts, so I did those aswell.

Then, I edited my film. My film turned out to be longer than it was supposed to be (3-5 minutes), but I felt this was necessary to include all the interesting parts of the interview. The final documentary is below.,

Thanks for reading this post! This project was one of my favourites of the year, and I learned so many new filmmaking skills that I can use to engage and entertain my audience.

Sex Cells!

In the latest Scimatics project, I learned all about how cells reproduce through Meiosis and Mitosis, the intricacies of both, and how to show them, in order to answer the driving question: “How is the reproduction of cells essential to the survival of organisms?”. So, without further ado, here is the post.

At the start of this project, I created this mind map of what I know and what questions I have beginning the project.

Project Start Mind Map

The second milestone of this project was just completing three Tinkercad tutorials. Tinkercad is a free modeling software that we used to create 3D models of cells. Here are the final versions of my Models:

The fourth milestone was a khan academy quiz on what we learned, then it was time to create the final product, which was a narrated video that describes the process of mitosis and meiosis as well as some similarities and differences between them. Here is my final video:

Sex Cells

And, lastly, for the curricular competencies for this project.

Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest

All class time is used efficiently for learning without distractions

I think that for this project, I could’ve used my time better, because I usually worked on humanities work instead of the important scimatics work.

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)

Microscope slides of plant tissues from clones were prepared and used for photographic evidence of mitosis.

My microscope slides include all the mitosis stages clearly.

Scientific Communication: Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon

A recorded video with voice narration explains the reasons for and processes of mitosis and meiosis with accurate 3D models and Photographs. Similarities and differences are also described.

My narrated video shows accurate 3D models and the Mitosis slides, as well as clear voiceover that describes advantages and disadvantages of both types of reproduction.

Overall, I think that my final products fro this project were good, but I didn’t use my time to the fullest and some assignments were late because of it.

My Vibrant Videos!

Hello, Im Theryn Strobl, and I am excited to write to you about a recent maker project, and in my opinion, the best PLP project I have participated in. In this project, I learned lots of filmmaking history and techniques on my journey to learn more about the movies! So, without further ado, here is the post.

We began this project with some brainstorming, a small lecture n some history of filmmaking, and then we were assigned a video about a hobby or skill we have. Being an avid snowboarder, I chose to make my video about that. The video contained some posters, a beginning, middle, end, and music. It was edited in an app called Clips, which I personally think is a very bad software, especially in comparison to its free counterpart, iMovie. But nevertheless, here is my final video:

A Story About Me!

The next day, we moved onto skill #2: a silent movie. This movie was supposed to recreate an old black and white movie, with no sound (other than a soundtrack) and not to long, making use of a certain poster (it’s the old-timey looking one). I made mine about finding the last lego peice in my contraption, and I think I conveyed the story using the limited storytelling options quite well.

The Last Piece

The next product in our moviemaking journey was a tutorial video that teaches how to do something. In the end, most of them were goofy and taught a very basic skill, but they could still do their desired job, so thats a win. In my group were Dana and Brooke. So, for the first step, we got started on our storyboard, which went through many painful revisions until we got it approved.

Then, we filmed and edited our final video.

How To Tie Your Shoe

And then, for the last and most fun skill, we were put into groups of three, and givin around two hours to make a short “special effects sequence”. The goal of this was to use special effects to help tell our story. We had some preparation beforehand to figure out a story and plot, but everything else had to be finished in the allotted time. This was also in a small group, and I was with Fraser and Nolan. So, we set to work designing a quick storyboard, and then got to filming. We filmed many takes, and got quite the blooper reel, but in the end, this was our film:

The All Great Magical iPad Heist

Then the entire class shared their videos in a mini film festival. An honourable mention of mine is this video:

Overall, this was probably one of my favourite PLP projects ever, and I actually enjoyed learning how to communicate using the medium of film, and creating truly vibrant video.

Thanks for reading my post! Make sure to stay tuned for the next one, I’ll see you later. Bye.

WW1 Can Be More Comical Than You Think!

In the latest PLP Humanities project, we learned about WW1, and what happened in it, after it, and before it. The Driving Question for this project was: “How might we use graphic novels to understand Canada’s involvement in WWI?”, and throughout this project I tried to answer it. So, without further ado, here is the post.

Five weeks ago as of writing this, we started this project by learning the causes and consequences of WW1.

Cause and Consequence Sheet

For the part of the Building Knowledge stage of this project, we read an amazing graphic novel called “World War One: The War To End All Wars”. We read this book slowly over the span of around two weeks, discussing the themes and images throughout the book.

After we finished the book, I wrote a reflection paragraph on the book, which can be seen below.

Graphic Novel Reflection

The book contained many interesting facts and information, but there is so much more to this war that one project cannot really include. So, since we cannot learn everything abut WW1, we had to pick a topic that we would like to learn about, and, eventually, make a mini comic book about.

Then we did some more learning and worksheets, then I started my final comic. I worked on it a ton, and finally finished it. Here it is:

And my answer to the driving question: we can use graphic novels to understand WW1, and many other significant events, by reading them! (Or making them).

Thanks for reading my post! This project was really fun, even though I didn’t have much time to work on it, and I hope to see more projects like this in the future. Anyways, this concludes the post, and I’ll see you in the next one.