Gold Digging

Hello, and welcome to my blog post. This blog post will cover the first PLP project since the summer: Gold Digger. In this project I learned all about 1800s BC and the impact it has on us today to answer the driving question: “how did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people?”. So, without further ado, here is the post.

To start this project we did a bunch of things to help our understanding, like class discussions and brainstorming on whiteboards. But, the first big art of this project were the three activities relating to major events in Canada’s gold rush history: the Chilcotin war, the Fraser valley gold rush, and the Cariboo gold rush. We completed three individual worksheets on both, which really helped me understand how much I knew and what I should learn for my final story.

Paragraph summary of the Chilcotin War:
In 1862, the Tsilhqot’in people faced a great loss of life, as two thirds of their population had died from a smallpox epidemic spread to them by a Colonial construction crew. After the mass death, the Tsilhqot’in faced starvation. In 1864, they begged a construction crew for some food, when a road builder threatened to bring smallpox back to their community. Full of anger, A Tsilhqot’in Chief named Klatsassin lead a raid on the camp with 24 men and killed 12 of the road crew. Other attacks would bring the kill count to 21. A few months later, the Colonial officials invited the Tsilhqot’in to a peace negotiation, but when 8 Tsilhqot’in showed up, they were arrested and 6 of them were hung. In recent years, the BC government and the federal government have apologized for the hangings and exonerated the 6 men of their crimes

Cause and consequence sheet on the Chilcotin War

The next big step in this project was the first keystone. This keystone was about the effects of the migrants coming into Canada, and to show my knowledge, I made a Cause and Consequence Sheet and a written paragraph with the key idea being how the influx of migrants affected and shaped the Canada we know today.

Paragraph Summary:
The influx of people from the gold rushes is critical to the identity of Canada today. From our political standings, to the ethnicity of our people, and the countries rich history, so many elements of our home have been touched by the gold rushes. For example, according to statistics Canada, over 72% of Canadians are European Canadians, which means they are descended traceable from Europe. This is likely due in part from the gold rushes bringing many Europeans to come searching for gold. Another very important aspect of the gold rushes in BC are the indigenous people. In both of Canada’s big gold rushes, indigenous people played a large role, and also have suffered many losses because of settlers in Canada.

Cause and consequence web

As this was a shorter project than many other PLP ones, this next assignment marked the halfway point and the end of the Building Knowledge phase. For this assignment, we had to create a character card for a fictional or real character that is historically accurate to the gold rush. Here is mine:

Fictional Character Card

Now that I had established who he is and what my character does, I could start fleshing out the details of my final story. The end product of this project is a short-ish story around two pages about your character and some significant event they go through in their life. I wrote a story spine and worksheet to specify all the details of my story, then got writing.

Story Spine
Story Checklist

And now, the final story:

Thanks for reading my blog post, and see you in the next.

Revolutions on Trial

Hello, and welcome back to my blog. This post is about the latest project for PLP Humanities, Revolutions on Trial. In this project I learned about the French Revolution, the causes of a revolution, and what determines a successful revolution. So, without further ado, here is the post.

As with all PLP projects, we started with a driving question that we strived to answer in the project. The Driving Question for this project was: How Might we as Legal Teams Determine the Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness of a Revolution? And this is how I found the answer.

The first big activity we did in this project was called Nation X. We created a simulation of a society with very large class divisions. There were 4 groups, each with different right and abilities.this activity lasted two days, and contained many events that reflect actual similar societies. For example, in our simulation there was a large revolution to put our old king back in place, and this revolution split the country in two groups. My full reflection on this experience from my perspective is below.

The New Republic Of Nation X, in my opinion, was a fair and functional society. We had food, farms, wealth, happiness, and entertainment. I think that we achieved this by rooting out the people who would not fit in this society and creating a society so good it doesn’t even need laws. To ensure a fair and functional society, I think that there are three main elements that need to be there: basic needs met (food, water, etc…), some way of preventing people from doing bad things (laws, rules, or just generally good people), and lastly, an economy that produces these two things repeatedly. I think of these three things, the last one is the most important because to ensure the survival of a society, the society needs to be relatively self sufficient. But, both of the nations together are not functional in the end, so I do not think our classroom as a whole accomplished the goal. But, overall, this was a really fun activity, and I think it was also an interesting social experiment.

Another great tool to understand how and why revolutions happen is the crane brinton scale. Crane Brinton was a historian of France, and among other things, he studied multiple revolutions and fund common traits in all of them. Using his observations, he create a diagram that split a revolution into four stages: the incubation stage, the moderate stage, the crisis stage, and the recovery stage. My diagram of his theory is here.

Now that we had a clearer understanding of why revolutions happen, we were ready to start reading a famous story based off of an actual revolution. This story was Animal Farm. Animal Farm is a widely renowned novel with a movie adaptation written by George Orwell, which follows the events of a farm as the animal rise up against their captors and form their own society. We had book group discussions about what we read daily. It was great to see what a revolution is like from the perspectives of the people in it.

While reading the book, we were also assigned to groups of six that would each be studying a revolution. I was assigned the French Revolution. I researched the French Revolution until I fully understood it, and then created a graphic organizer to show my learning, Which I revised once.

The next major step in this project was the Animal Farm written response. This was a three-paragraph writing were we explained the anatomy of the revolution in Animal Farm using Crane Brinton’s theory. We had an hour to write this in class, and I think that I got it done fairly Easily in that time constraint.

My thoughts on the revolution in Animal Farm, using the Crane Brinton theory

Now, we knew what we needed to know and were prepared the start creating the final product of this project. The final product is a courtroom trial were we put the effectiveness of the revolution up to the test. We created affadivats, scripts, props, and a set to perform out trials in front of our parents, friends, colleges, and even some random people. And after all that preparation, this is the final result:

So that conclude today’s post, about the revolutions on trial project. I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you want to check out my group member’s blogs, click any of the links below. Thanks for reading, bye.

Cole D.

Dana P.

Makenna C.

Cooper K.

Carter C.

People And The Environment

Hello, and welcome to another post. Today, I am going to be talking about the latest PLP project I have done: people and the environment. The driving question for this project is: “How do people and the environment affect each other” and over the last five weeks, I have sought to answer that question. So, without further ado, here is the post.

The first thing we did was a writing activity about whether most people are protectors or destroyers of nature. For me, I almost immediately knew I thought they are destroyers. This is mine:

The end product of this project is a letter to someone important about an issue. The letter must include possible solutions to that problem, evidence of the problem, and a clear and meaningful call to action, with the intention of creating meaningful change within our province.

Throughout the project we did multiple commonlit activities to help us understand message, meaning, themes, and how to use evidence. Each commonlit consisted of a story, and then questions about the things above.

The first milestone in this project was a letter plan conference, were I pitched the idea for my letter and clarified my plan to make the product. I decided I would write to the premier of BC, Mr. John Horgan about a law that could help stop BC’s extremely large amount of forest fires. BC accounts for over three quarters of Canada’s wildfires, so I wanted to try and help. This conference went well and provided lots of much needed clarification.

The second milestone was just an accumulation of all the commonlits: hey, come on out, quiet town, the sea also rises, and Lee Sherman and the toxic bayou. And for milestone three, we were to choose one of these stories, and connect the theme of the story to the theme of our letter in a three paragraph write up. before writing, I wrote an outline for my multi paragraph writing to sort my thoughts.

And, in the 60 minutes of class time we had to write the paragraph, this is what I came up with:

If I were to do it again, I would try to connect the two themes more strongly, and try to cut down the first paragraph a ton. But, all in all, I think I did a pretty good job.

Now, just like in the last project, the milestones were kind of shuffled, so this whole time I was also writing drafts for my final letter. I wrote five drafts of my letter, which are featured below.

So, once my final letter was finished, I addressed it, put it in an envelope, and sent it off.

Thanks for reading my post! I learned a ton in this project, and will in the next one too, so stay tuned. See you in the next post, bye.

Epidemic Exponents!

Hello, and welcome. I am back to school, and starting this year in scimatics with exponents! In the first scimatics project this year, Game of Exponent Laws, I learned how to evaluate exponents, exponent laws, and more. So without further ado, here is the post.

To kick of the project, we did a quick activity were we made up games that used one and two dice. We got into groups of four, and started working. And here are the rules we came up with:

Rollie poll-E

Assemble all the players in a circle. Decide who will roll first, and have them roll the die. If their roll is a 4, 5, or 6, add the roll to their point tally. If their roll is a 1, or 3, subtract their roll from their point tally. Point tallies cannot drop below zero, and if they reach twenty, that person wins. If they roll a 2, they get to roll again and multiply that roll by two and add it to their point tally.

Rollie poll-E 2.0

To win, gain 5 points. You gain a point when you correctly answer a question faster than your opponent(s). Choose someone to roll each round, and have them roll the two dice. Once the dice have settled, every player starts solving the math problem. If the dice are both even, devide the greater roll by the smaller one. If the dice are both odd, multiply them. If the dice are odd and even, add them together. Once you figure out the answer, say it aloud, and if you are the first to solve the problem, you get a point. Decimal points are allowed for answers. If the roll has a 1 then subtract 1 from the other roll

(Special thanks to Jocelyn for thinking of the names)

So, as common with scimatics projects, we all were supposed to make a mind map that’s outlines what we already know and what questions we have.

Project Start Mindmap

Now, in this project, the milestones were not a linear process, but in a slightly erratic way, with the milestones not coming in numerical order. So, for the sake of this post, I will tell you about the events of this project in chronological order.

After these first assignments, me and my partner started brainstorming Ideas for our game. Our first milestone was milestone four (confusing). For this project, everybody was given a partner, and together you and your partner would make a game that uses exponents as a central mechanic. So, eventually, me and Aliciah decided to make a game about viruses. Our idea was quite similar to pandemic: contagion, which is a game were each player is a virus trying to exterminate humanity. Our first draft of our rules are here.

Throughout the next week, we updated our game rules and did some exponent practice, and eventually landed on this set of rules:

After making these final game rules, it was time to make our game board and pieces.

Final Game Board!

And, of course, there were curricular competencies for this project, which are listed below.

Applying and innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through personal or collaborative approaches.

All class time is used efficiently for learning without distractions. All group members contribute equally.

I used my class time well, and I think that is reflected in the quality of my work. My partner and I shared equal part in the workload for this project.

Reasoning and Analyzing: Use logic and patterns to solve puzzles and play games

A clear and simple points system and win conditions for the game are carefully designed.

Points system is clearly represented by physical game pieces, and finding out who wins a game is easy and concise.

Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms

A set of clear, complete, interesting and personalized instructions are created for how each player takes their turn. Examples are included. The game design uses at least 4 different exponent laws and using these laws is integrated into each player’s turn.

Our game features game rules completely written from scratch, with our own ideas and examples of gameplay and game pieces. There are over four exponent laws included in our rules.

And that concludes my blog post for today! Thanks for reading this far, and if you want to check out my partner Alicah’s blog, click here.

See you in the next post, bye.

Don’t Eat Rat Feces!

Today, I am writing a summative post about my latest, and last project of the year. This project is called Comic Cells. I learned a ton from this project, from what subsequent endocytosis is to why you shouldn’t eat rat poo. So, without further ado, here is the post.

As with all scimatics projects, we started off the project with a mind map of existing knowledge, question, sources, and anything else about the topic. Here is mine:

Project Start Mind Map

For the second milestone of the project, I created a wanted poster for a disease containing the date of discovery, how it affects cells, it’s mortality rate, and more.

Typhoid Wanted Poster

Then I started working on a storyboard to guide the making of my comic. The storyboard was a very rough guide to the comic, and some parts were not even in the final comic.

Rough Storyboard

Then I started to research a TON of facts about the virus I chose. (Hantavirus) To read more about hantavirus, veiw the sources down below. I learned a ton about cellular processes, and then started drawing pictures for my comic. I am not the best at drawing, so this was a hard task for me. However, I a very proud of the final comic, which is the namesake for this post.

And, as with all projects, there were core competencies I worked towards throughout the project. They are:

1. Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

All class time is used for learning and creating a comic book story about cellular processes and/or diseases. I think I used almost all of my class time efficiently, but even so I still think I could’ve worked slightly faster in class and had less homework after school. But it worked out in the end, which is good.

2. Scientific communication: communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies

Correct vocabulary and accurate diagrams are used. At least 10 interesting science vocabulary words are included in the story. I used more than ten science words in my Story, and I think my diagrams are concise and accurate at what they represent.

Evaluating: Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence

Cell/bacteria/virus characters interact in a scientific way. Symptoms and logical outcomes of the chosen disease/cellular/ body process are integrated into the story. In my story, the reaction to the virus is realistic to real-life cases, and the outcomes are on the probable side.

Sources:

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

Source 7

Thanks for making it this far. If you liked this post, make sure to check my other ones here. See you in the next post! Bye.

Atoms

As you can probably tell from the title, this project was one about atoms (and molecules, Kenetic energy, etc…). We spent about three weeks learning, coding and thinking to answer the driving question for this project: how can the behaviour of matter be explained by the Kinetic Molecular theory and the Atomic theory? So, without further ado, here is the post.

We started this project with a mind map and an experiment/magic trick. We wrote the mind map about what we already knew about matter, and then all of our questions about it.

Project start mind map

For the demonstration of atomic and molecular theory, the teacher performed a trick using a sealed bottle filled with water and an eyedropper.

The trick works by utilizing pressure. When the bottle is not squeezed, it looks like this:

Eyedropper at the top

But when the bottle is squeezed, the pressure increases, forcing the eyedropper down, and if you are subtle, it looks as if you magically made the eyedropper go down.

Squeezed bottle with the eyedropper down

One really cool activity was called the gemstone identification challenge. The whole class partnered up to measure the volume, weight, and then calculate the density of a few stones. The class average density was 3.74 grams per millemeter, and the closest density to that was that of colourless topaz, so we confirmed that the stones were colourless topaz.

Gemstone ID sheet

For milestone 2, we created accurate models for our coded project. In order to make our simulations or games follow this competency: Several different atoms/molecules, different states of matter, and particle motion are represented in the finished product. A historical model of the atom is chosen and implemented, we created some sort of model and text.

In order to create realistic and functioning models of atoms, molecules, and in my case quarks, I worked on three slides of information and graphics. It took three other versions to create to the one shown below.

The next week was mostly spent learning more about matter and coding or refining our scratch projects. Then we did milestone four, which was a coding plan for the rest of the project. This was my milestone four coding plan:

Features:
Press space to show Bohr models
Press M to mute music
Press N to unmute music
Press Q to create more clones
Press 1-3 to change molecule type
Gravity that can be turned on and off
Click the reset button to reset the simulation
Use the temperature slider to change how fast the particles move.
Setting the temperature to zero will stop the particles from moving, other than gravity acting on them.
You can create different states of matter by adjusting the temperature and gravity.
you can adjust how much gravity there is.
You can move between subatomic particle models, Bohr models, and no models by pressing space bar twice This kinetic molecular theory is included in the simulation when the particles move. They follow the Kinetic molecular theory.

After creating a plan, I continued coding my scratch project until it was completely done and polished. If you want to check out my simulator, click here. After all was said and done, I created a summative mind map of the project, which helped round of the end of the project.

As with all projects, there were curricular competencies which you can see below:

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

All class time is used efficiently for learning without distractions. I used all my class time efficiently, and I am very proud of my final product.

Scientific Communication: communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies.

Several different atoms/ molecules, different states of matter, and particle motion are represented in the finished product. A historical model of the atom is chosen and implemented. I have three different molecule designs: H2O (water), carbon dioxide (CO2), and ozone (O3). I also have three Bohr models of the elements: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, And finally two subatomic models of protons and neutrons.

Reasoning and Analyzing: Use logic and patterns (including coding) to solve puzzles and play games.

An interactive Scratch coded matter simulator or game is created with logical conditions and functional user controls. I created a simulator with four variables that the player/user can change, and extra aesthetic changes as well. The user can change limits all the variables, and the layout is logical and easy to use.

Thanks for reading my post! I had a great time doing this project, and i am sure to do more, so stay tuned .Even though I have featured it already, just in case, here is the link to my scratch matter simulator. Thanks to my friend Noah for all the coding help and feedback. If you want to check out his blog, click here. See you in the next post!

Argh, Matey!

For our second project this quarter, we did a project about the Age Of Exploration, and this is a summative post About my learning throughout this project.

To kick off this project, we watched a pirate movie based off of a real hijacking. We talked about pirates a bit, and then learned what cause and consequence are. Cause and consequence is how all events happen; they have a cause, and then more events because of it. We made webs of cause and consequence to practice this skill:

Chess web of cause and consequence

The whole project was about teaching us about the causes and consequences of European exploration. The driving question was: “What Was The Impact Of Global Exploration?”. To answer this question we first, you guessed it, learn what global exploration is.

Every day, we got a lecture on exploration, from the invention of new inventions like the caraval or astrolabe, to people who completely changed history like Christopher Columbus, or prince Henry the navigator. We did different reflection activities to help absorb the knowledge, like these below:

Sketch and Tell

Then, we did milestone 2, which was a large web of cause and consequence about the European exploration.

Large Web

We finally used our device skills to create a augmented reality presentation. This presentation was of a story written by me about the age of exploration.

And the answer to the driving question: the impact of global exploration is in the language we speak, the food we eat, and the things we do. The merging of cultures from global exploration caused many, many new things, and predicting the world without global exploration is nearly impossible, considering how much it changed the world.

Now, this project was a great journey, and I learned tons about our history. I also had tons of fun writing this post as well. You might want to check out some of my classmates views on this project too!

Sepaus

Colton

Thanks for reading my post! See you in my next one.

Student blogging challenge: the ACTUAL last day

Today, I am writing about the blogging challenge I have been doing for this whole quarter. So without further ado, here is the post!

When we started this project I will admit it: I really did not like the sound of making one blog post every day until the end of the quarter. But, as time went on, writing the blog posts quickly grew on me, and by the end, I really enjoyed writing the posts.

The first post in the challenge was an: “embedding content” post, and I wrote it about snowboard bindings. This post was pretty cool, but it was not my favourite post I have done. Honestly, my favourite post of all time is my blogging challenge day ten post, i am just really proud of all my photoshops, and had a ton of fun writing it.

I learned tons about embedding content, writing, and creating digital content in general. If you look at my first post in the challenge to the lat post, my growth is obvious. I will keep updating my blog and some previous posts, so stay tuned!

This has been an amazing challenge, and I appreciate you for reading along with me. See you in the next post!

Worldview Summative Post

Hello, and welcome to the summative post for the how it started/ how it is going project. The driving question for this project was: what can we learn from the past, and why does it matter to us today? To answer this question, we journeyed back through some of the most influential times history, travelled (virtually) to great museums, and finally, made a virtual museum all about worldview and historical events.

The project started with a mind map about museums and their specific features

Then we did milestone 1, which was a small museum exhibit representing your growth since the start of the year. I learned how to use many cool photo editing techniques like perspective shifting, light wraps, and more to do this. Our job in this milestone was to transform the idea of how it started/how it is going into a museum exhibit and provide evidence on my opinion. I believe I did this quite well, but if I did it again I would probably add a before/after comparison of my work as evidence. Click here for the PDF.

The second milestone was a collage of the important events in your life that shaped your worldview. To do this, we created a timeline of the important events in our lives, found or made pictures to represent those events, and created a collage of the images. This collage would later be revised and changed, and eventually become our “about me” at the start of the museum.

Then, we started milestone three: the history test. This was just one extremely hard question that made me (and some others) realize how little we knew (yet). This milestone made me realize the historical significance of the events I talked about, and decide which ones were the most significant.

We also did many, many other things to prepare for the museum launch, like an artist statement, script for the guided tour, the whole virtual museum, the final meme, a recorded artist statement, and a script for the zoom presentation. After all of that, we finally were ready to present the virtual museum to the world. In this virtual museum, we created modern artworks to represent our modern views of the themes in the older artwork, to show how much we have changed since then.

And with that, the driving question is answered: we can learn a lot front the past, and it matters today so we can learn and improve humanity by looking to the past.

Thank you for reading all the way down here! Of you want to see some of my group members veiw on the project (see what I did there?), click on one of the links below

Carter Aaron Noah

Emoji Story!

Hello, and welcome. Today is the 7th day of the Student Blogging Challenge 2021, and the last day isn’t even based on words. No, it is based on a random emoji generator! So here is the story:

🚉 Everyday, the train would do what it has done for 46 years; go between two stations.

😵 but one day, a passenger boards the train illegally to escape the police.

🚦 because of that, the train locked all of its doors and stopped moving.

🐨 because of that, the koala onboard was actually helping the crook!

🏁 because of that, the train goes as fast as he can to the next station

🍔 until finally, the police arrest the koala and criminal.

The End

I hope you enjoyed my story, and until then, see you next time!