Month: January 2019

Lomps, or Mpols…

Grade 10 is moving to fast. I can not believe we are already at the half way mark. That we’ve made it through the winter and now the summer is waiting just around the corner. (Not really) When I think about Mpols I think about last years and how unprepared I was and how I really did not know what I was doing. I think after 1 solid year in the program I might have a better grasp of what an Mpol draws from you and what it story it is telling. And I believe I have configured what story I would like to tell.

Now grade in 10, we have been exposed to many projects and many different assignments ranging from a no notes speech in front of parents and peers, to editing one of Justin Timberlake’s songs. I would like to show you the deeper meaning of each project and see what each project meant to me and what I learned from it. 

I would like to touch base with the EduBlogs challenge. I was fascinated with the challenge and how much freedom it gave us as students. I found it really cool to be able to tie everything back into something that I love and or admire. Don’t get me wrong I was not a huge fan of it at the beginning, and I probably would not have done this project if it had been an extra curricular, but I learned a lot from it. I learned about helping others around the world who are having difficulty with certain topics while blogging, and I also learned how to build my blog so it is more friendly and easier to use.

Through the blogging challenge I realized that people across the globe could see my world and I struck up a conversation with someone in my comments! Alex (the person in my comments) helped me with my CBC writing prompt, and complimented my writing skills, which was very reassuring! We struck up a nice online friendship and I think that was my highlight of this challenge! I feel that I expressed my highest quality of learning in my posts and I was very proud of my work! 

So heading back to my metaphor from before of editing Justin Timberlake’s song, I would like to talk about live loops. We visited Live Loops earlier in the year, and I don’t think it was as important as say the Pecha Kucha, but I learned so much about songs and the format in which you can play and tweak pre made songs and add any instrument or beat into it. This was all new information to me, because I had not done much work in garage band before this project. I worked really hard on my revised version of the song “Cant stop the feeling.” I deleted and copied almost every loop and tried so hard to make it sound like something totally different and yet still carry the original message. I felt very proud of my work, because I had put so much effort in to understand the loops and to create a unique piece of work. I think that his show my dedication to creating something that is my best piece of work all the time. I think it also shows how I am able to sign my name onto things, because if I enjoy the task I put my heart into it!

https://soundcloud.com/user-335030245/ecc-music-ch-2-act-2-cstf-p

This is my remix version of “Can’t Stop The Feeling.”

I would like to bring a point from the last example into this next one. If I enjoy the task I can put my heart and soul into it. This is quite a contradicting trait. I could really enjoy something and do a really good job, but I can also not really like a task and not be able to put all my effort into it. Most the time this side of me does not come out but if the task is something that I do not enjoy, or if I am doing the task with people who do not help, or listen, it becomes less than fun. The most recent example of this is the Seattle Video.

I had a really hard time in that project. I loved the idea behind it, the study of the “crazy” people and the thinking of a driving question, but when it came to the actual project I felt very lost. I did my fair share of work, but I felt that most of the work went to Luca O. I also felt very unorganized throughout this project. It was hard to complete that project and by the time I was done it was hard to sign my name on to it. It was hard to say that I was proud of the final project, and I feel bad because I feel that I should have picked up more slack, instead of choosing to do a fair share, and not pick up after others. I feel I may have learned the most from this project because I felt I did fail, and that I have learned how to deal with team members, and different personalities. I feel better on the other side of this project and will keep this project in mind when moving forward into other projects like it.

On a note that could be finagled to become attached to the last point, I would like to talk about PGP, and what it has done for my organization skills and what I have seen change throughout the corse of the journaling and the forms. I love to journal, I try to journal every night. I like journaling because I can share how I’m feeling, and what I’m feeling at any point. It also feels good to release stress sometimes when you can’t talk to a parent or friend about it. So for journaling to become part of my homework, I was sort of happy! Reflecting on the week has become a big part of my week, and it feels nice to have a reason and an excuse to write about the whole week. the journaling has had a positive impact on my weeks, but I think I owe most of the positive impact to the time blocking. I find it very soothing and organizing to be able to plan out my week so I can relax and be able to play around and have fun. I have learned a lot about the organizing of my life. I don’t want to time block everything to the minute, so that I still have freedom and don’t have to be so tied to a schedule.

 

 

 

This is my dream board. Each Piece may look like it is meaningless but everything has so much meaning, and I feel that this board has helped me to see what I want to become and how I want to spend my future!

Early in the year I also completed the More Happy Than Not trailer. I found the book very unsettling and I did not enjoy it much, but the creating of the trailer was a very incredible experience. I felt I totally upped my work level with it. My group did such good work filming and I was able to piece together the work into a very high quality piece of work. People in my class cried during the trailer, and I even got compliment from Lucas, saying that the editing quality was so good that you count even tell that it was filmed on a iPad and a phone.

I also recently presented my Pecha Kucha, I don’t think I have been so proud of a project ever before. I gave my heart and soul to that project, I knew it inside and out and was able to see any slide and know what I was saying word for word. I was so happy with how the project went down and how well people reacted to it. It was such a anxious and stressful preparation, but it was so rewarding to finally present it to others. I felt like I had learned so much about “crazy” people, and how to push the world forward. I would bring up a water next time though to make sure that my throat doesn’t dry up like it did. It was quite embarrassing!

To wrap this up, I would like to say that this term has been really successful for me, and I have been very proud of my work. In the coming term I would love to work harder on my goals in PGP. I will also hold my self to more exercise per week. In school I will push myself to become a presence that people can relay on, be more helpful, and kind. I am super excited to see what this next term brings, but I’m pretty sure I’m ready for anything, so bring it on!

My Question to end this presentation is : How can I achieve my goal of becoming more of a helpful/kind presence in the class?

Thank you!

Adlih

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Seattle 2018!

Recently PLP 10 took a trip to Seattle, this is my blog post about the trip.

This is my groups ( Luca O, Melika, and Marshall) crazy person video!

PLP 10 traveled to Seattle in search of “crazy people.” Crazy as in what is takes to change the world. People like Bill and Melinda Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc. We had been studying the driving question “why it takes a crazy person to change the world.” We were non stop thinking about this question through our essays, our Pecha Kucha’s, and the readings we had to do about all the people. To quote Luca J, I think we “overstood” the question at the end.

Waking up at 5 am to get crammed into a hot, sweaty bus, to cross a border, and drive for 4 hours, is not exactly how you spend every morning, and if you do, props to you because I could barely do it once. The drive was fun after we all settled in to the bus, we saw the sun rise in a new country on our way to our first stop, Microsoft.

Once at Microsoft we got to tour they’re building and learn about the past, the present, and the future of Microsoft. On the Microsoft campus is an area called the Maker space. We got an exclusive back stage pass into the Maker space, because we wherefrom Canada and one of the people who worked there was Canadian! We learned all about the art of doing/making instead of just talking about doing/making. We also witnessed an area to share and communicate, in a very non average office area. It was cool to see the genuine dedication and love of what the people who were working in the Maker space were doing.

Now writing about every stop we made would take forever, and you would defiantly get quite bored so Ive decided to pick only the most impactful stops throughout the trip.

Later in the trip we stopped at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Centre. I believe that this stop was one of the most innovational for me. Hearing what the foundation stood for and how it helped was really inspirational for me.

The Foundation sponsors and funds so many little projects to help specific topics. They are totally into doing anything that helps, and they are doing an incredibly good job. According to Melinda Gates the disease and illness rates among 3rd world countries has lessened by a drastic amount since they stared their work. It was very refreshing to see the creation of caring about others, instead of ones self all the time.

Mopop was another stop that I found super interesting. It was set up so modernly with insanely expensive equipment, that anybody could use. Mopop was created by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, because he collected so many items of other peoples stuff, and movie props and costumes, that he had no where else to store them and so he decided to open a museum to honour the pieces and share his collection with others.

I loved every exhibit but I really liked the Nirvana section. They had so many of Nirvana’s items, such as backstage passes and name cards form tours. It was really cool to see everything and be able to brought into the moment where these items would have been used. It also spiked my interest in Nirvana!

The last stop I would like to talk about is the Boeing head quarters. Of all the stops this was my favourite. (We had also stopped at the field the Seattle Seahawks play at, and we went up the Seattle Space Needle! So for the Boeing to be my favourite it had to be insane, and it was.) The Boeing we visited is in Everett, (just below Seattle). Boeing has the biggest building in the world, which makes sense because it has to hold dozens of airplanes at a time. At the time we went it was shift change and at shift change the first shift of 20,000 people are heading home. The shift change causes traffic as far as can see because you cant get through everyone else, and the highways can only hold so many people. I think I found Boeing so interesting because you could really see innovation and dedication to creating a new step into aviation. While we were there, we were the third tour group to see the folded wing on a new airplane. The planes wings were longer than the normal size so they had to create a way to make it so it would fit into an average airplane hanger. The folded wing is only one example of the insane, and “crazy” ways Boeing is pushing the world forward.

Traveling to somewhere you’ve never been while only with friends and teachers can be hard. Not having someone to rely deeply on to get you going, and to help organize all your things when you move hotel to hotel can get challenging. I get a bit stressed out when I am without my family, so I was pretty scared when it came to not having someone to lean on, but I realized that all of my friends were there for me, and that if needed the teachers could help as well. 

I also felt I learned a lot through the creation of the Seattle video. I felt at the time, that I was doing my fair share of work, (doing a lot of the prep, writing the script, and filming the whole time I was in Seattle) but what I realized is that you can’t really do your fair share when your creating a group project. Group projects are filled by people that contribute to each others work and build off each other, and I guess I just bypassed that whole part of group projects. So for the future I will try to keep this project in my mind, and always keep my mind open to contributing! And if I was able to re-do this project I would try to keep teamwork in my mind, and try to get my group together more to work by sharing!

Now aside from helping me grow up, Seattle also taught me all about changing the world. It taught me that if you can push yourself hard enough, into something that you love, that is also unknown you will create a better world for others.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a nice rest of your day!

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Pêcha kucha

Before the break the whole of PLP 10, was tasked with the creation of a pêcha kucha per person. The pêcha kucha’s had to answer the driving question, “Why does it take a crazy person to change the world?” Now we had answered this question in our trip to Seattle, our Seattle videos, in our mini pêcha kucha’s, and our essays. But I believe I only truly understood the answer I was giving and the question itself, when I presented my pêcha kucha. Before I go into more detail, I will try to explain what a pêcha cucha is. 

A pêcha kucha is a oral presentation consisting of 20 slides, each on a self timer so they will change after 20 seconds. No script, your photos are your script. The slides are just photos, and they shouldn’t have any text. So it truly is quite simple, until it gets into the script. The script has to flow through the whole presentation (the whole 6 minutes and 40 seconds) It should transition with the images, and at the end of the presentation the audience should know the answer to the driving question. My pêcha kucha is above, and I’ll link some of the others  so you can watch those as well. Here’s Jamie’s, who I though did insanely well, Emily’s, and Jessie’s!

My pecha kucha focused deeply on how if you push your self past the point of becoming successful, and to a further goal only tou can see you will push the world forward.

This is proven through Elon Musks endeavours and his ambition to create a better planet, and to push our civilization onto another, becuase he knows that what the planet has undergone, will catch up with us at some point.

I also talked about our trip (briefly) to Seattle that defiantly shaped the answer I chose for my Pecha Kucha. 4 days and 3 nights in Seattle with my class, spending every day trying to figure out the answer to our driving question. We visited the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Center, we went on the Amazon tour, as well as the Microsoft tour, we also went to the Microsoft garage, and the Seattle Seahawks Satdium, Centry Link Field.

This trip, and the project itself, taught us so much about what it takes to change the world, and why those that are called crazy are the ones who are really pushing our world forward. Through the Pecha Kucha I learned so much about what it takes, and why people change the world. I also feel that I have a deeper understanding of the meaning of the word crazy, while also having a new found urge to become somebody called “crazy” and to push the world forward!

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Alge-go!

 

Recently in scimatics we have been working on a math game that can fully achieve the concept of algebra, as well as being fun for all ages, and easy to play. Luca and I decided that we would make a game the brings out competition as the drive. That harnesses the need to better the other player, what I’m talking about is Alge-go.

Alge-go is a game that takes an interesting stand point on the competition aspect of games. It derives from the betting but with out anything to lose when playing the game, it does not bring with it all the negative aspects of betting. The game is simple to play. It starts with both of the players figuring out which one is the youngest. Once they’ve figured out which person is the youngest, that person gets to go first. The first step is telling their opponent how many algebra cards they can answer in one minute. After the youngest person has told the competitor how many cards they can answer the competitor gets a shot to say more cards then what the younger person said. If they dont think they can answer as many cards as the first person said, then they can back off, but if they think they can say a higher number.

 

It can go back and forth like this till someone has said the highest number. Once somebody has said the highest number, and the other player has backed down, it is up to the player with the said highest number to fulfil the number of algebra equations that they said. If they fail the point goes to the opponent, if they succeed they receive the point. And then the turn starts all over agin, and the first player to zero wins. (You start with -5 points!)

The Curricular competencies I worked on for this project are thinking creativity about the solutions to problems and how to create a game that shows all we’ve learned in a fun way, and as well as thinking creativity I also had to developers new thinking strategies, to help myself and others understand the concepts!

Thanks for reading

Adlih

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