Category: PLP Reflections

Cake Terms?! | A Scimatics Project

Hallo and welcome to another blog post. Today, I am proud to announce that I have come up with a pretty good introduction to do, every single blog post, I will be greeting you in a different language, this time, it’s German, and the other, well 50 ish times were in English. Now, in this blog post I am going to be discussing a new project that we had just completed in Scimatics called “Like Terms”. In this project, we learned about polynomials, collecting like terms, etc. 

For our final presentation, we got to choose anything that we wanted to do that involved us collecting like terms: a cookie (with the ingredients), music (with different notes and instruments), a bridge (with the materials), etc. Also, in this project, we got to choose our own driving question based on what we decided to do for our final presentation. My group’s driving question (Kaia, Julia and I) was “How can polynomials represent the quantity of each ingredient in a cake?”. Because, what we decided to do was make a cake that looked like an iPad (just to make it more PLP themed).

Understanding and Solving – Apply multiple strategies to solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations. 

In this case, it’s combining the like terms (in our cake/project) and demonstrating it. In our final presentation, we did show our original polynomials and it after collecting the like terms but, because we had so many different ingredients in our solution (which is how we used like terms, the amount of cups used with each ingredient), even after collecting the like terms, it was still pretty long.  

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

In this case, it was based on the quality of our presentation: practiced, clear, detailed, etc. And of us using the correct usage of vocabulary: term, coefficient, exponent, degree. We did prepare a pretty good quality presentation and did use the correct vocabulary, but I think that we could’ve used more of that vocabulary in our presentation, not to mention maybe trying to use coefficients or exponents to simplify our final like terms. 

Connecting and Reflecting: Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests. 

In terms of our project, this just means having personalized and original work done in our project. Other than having a little inspiration for the cake and using recipes to make the different parts of the cake, everything was original and personalized to us; the iPad apps/apple pencil were our little touches to make them more “PLP”. For our presentation, I think that we could’ve made the keynote a little more artistic and eye appealing, personalized to us, but that is all I’d really change based on it being original and personalized. 

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

For this project, this competency just really means that we have used all of our class time very efficiently for our project work and extra learning. Every single class, we made sure that we got all of the work we had to get done, fast and productively. On the other hand, because we couldn’t make the cake in class, we worked on our polynomials/like terms, keynote, practicing the keynote and finding good and as simple as possible recipes. 

Click here to see my presentation:

Scimatics Presentation | Like Terms

To conclude, I had lots of fun with this project because I got to work with some classmates/friends that had good skills that helped with this project (i.e. Julia has lots of experience with cooking/baking and Kaia is very artistically minded and creative). Not to mention, I also learned how to use/make fondant because I am very inexperienced in cooking and baking. I also loved the concept of the project: having more freedom and options of what to do yet still using maths techniques to simplify the making of it (because math is important for lots of aspects in life). 

See you in my next blog post! 

mPOLs 2020!


Yeehaw y’all and welcome back to another blog post. Today I am talking about my mid-year presentation of learning. What is that you may ask? Well, if you’ve ever heard of a parent-teacher meeting, it’s basically like that except that its led by the student (the student presents what they’ve learned, what they want to improve on, etc to their parents and teachers).

Before I start my presentation, I must make the POL declaration:

“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am an 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 weaknesses. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner”

In Humanities, the project that I thought the best examples of the opportunities I had to progress as a learner was The Story Strikes Back. Last year, one of my biggest subjects and goals that I talked about was my writing, and this project definitely helped me out with that a lot, you can see how well my writing has improved even since the beginning of the year. I got to learn a lot about not just writing in general but in an author’s context: learning about the hero’s journey and how the most popular stories told are formatted in this way, describing things like places, objects and people to make the reader feel as though they are actually in the story and to have the creativity and use the mindset of an author while writing your story and coming up with the plot. My goal to continue improving my writing would be starting to use fancier words because I think that it would make reading it much more enjoyable for myself and others.  And to help me with that, I want to read a lot more. Another goal that I’d like to try to achieve would be using words like “also” and “definitely” way less.

The competency that I want to start working on is:

Expressing and supporting opinions: Express an opinion and support it with credible evidence

I’d like to work on my writing skills in terms of giving more evidence. I mean, I am good at stating the obvious when writing something that needs me to give evidence, but I’d like to start being smarter about it and doing more extra research on the topic.

In Scimatics, the project called Chemistry Stories was a project that I found gave me a great opportunity to progress as a learner because one, I used an app of which I thought I did not like before (explain everything) and I learned about chemistry which I had always been super excited to learn about and that I had never learned about it before then. During this project, we had so much time on our hands to be doing our animations, that I would animate a slide of what I wanted to say but then would be unsatisfied with it a start all over. So, as two new goals that I’d like to take from this is that because I think animating is a cool and helpful skill to have, I’d like to get a lot better with it and more familiar with animating apps (just like explain everything). My other goal is to not always try and obsess over perfecting something because it will never be super-duper perfect and although I should try to make it best as I can but instead of just erasing and starting all over again, to work with what I have.

The competency that I’d like to work more on is:

Communicating and representing: Use mathematical vocabulary and language to contribute to mathematical discussions.

I always use mathematical vocabulary when it’s necessary, but I’d like to start using it much more often to help me explain or better understand mathematical problems or activities.

Now for maker, I’d like to talk about my live event. I thought that this project didn’t just give me a great learning experience, but it also really gave me an amazing opportunity to work on my movie making and editing skills and showed how much I’d gotten better over the course of this year. As a goal, I’d like to keep improving on my movie-making skills to hopefully become a master at it (or pretty close) one day because I think that it’s a pretty important/cool skill to have.

The competency that I’d like to work on is:

Creative Communicator – I communicated clearly and expressed myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to my goals.

I’d like to work on this competency because even though I want to become better at making movies, I’d still like to express myself creatively while doing that.

My final subject that I’m going to discuss is PGP, we haven’t really started on any major things this year yet, but, I decided to talk about Take Your Kid To Work Day. Now, in my opinion, my take your kid to work day, was madness. After getting such amazing shots of driving there, when I was there and interviews, I dropped my iPad and lost all of the things that I took from that day because my iPad wasn’t backed up. So, I had to go back there on a day that worked for me and re-film everything I took. The video still turned out okay, but definitely not as good as it could’ve been if I still had all of those videos. From this experience, I have learned to be extra careful with my iPad and to try to back it up every single day. Also, this project really showed that even though everything that could’ve gone wrong, went wrong, I still didn’t give up and gave the project my all using my movie editing skills.

The competency that I’d like to work on is:

Managing Impulsivity: Thinking before acting; remaining calm, thoughtful and deliberative.

At stressful times, such as DI, it is very hard for me to stay calm. So, this year, to help me with that, one, I have one friend that I have given the responsibility to remind me to stay calm in stressful times and to start meditating and doing other relaxing activities such as those. 

To conclude, even though I have had some challenges and problems, I think that this year has been pretty successful overall. This year, I have learned lots of new skills like movie editing, making and filming and, probably most importantly, to be extra careful with your iPad. The driving question for this year’s mPOLs is “What is your learning goal that you want to reach by the end of this school year, and how will you meet it?”. My answer to that is that with my writing (using fancier words and less words that I use super often) is by reading more and practicing my writing by making up essays or writing opinion posts on my blog. Also, continuing to get better at making movies: editing, animating, filming, etc. And to accomplish that, I will be making and editing videos of some trips that I go on and even maybe of some important events that I go to. 

Now, before I end my presentation, I have a question for you guys:

Other than reading and practicing my writing, what other techniques do you think could help me improve my writing?

 

Nationalism and TikToks?!

Hi y’all and welcome back to another blog post, and yes I am still coming up with a mega awesome intro saying other than “y’all” and when it comes, it will be mega awesome so, prepare yourself.

Today I will be reflecting on one of my favourite projects that we have done this year called “Straight Flowin’ / While I’m Scrollin’”, you know why? Because we made TikToks! Now you may be wondering why we would be making TikToks for a project in this special program that we are in. Well, we are not just making TikToks, we are learning about significance, cause, consequences, nationalism and memes. Our final TikToks have to be about what we learned about those subjects. So let’s get into it!

1. Need To Knows

We usually have a different system for the first part of our projects but we tried something new and this is how it turned out:

I think that this activity was great to break down the different parts that we studied in this project and to clarify and make them more understandable. 

2. Examine Significance

For our next milestone, we answered questions about a page from a textbook that we read about significance. Here they are:

I thought that this activity was a great opportunity for my writing and to learn more about significance.   

3. Meme Of The Moment

In this milestone, we created TikToks. One of them had to be a dance, one using special effects and the other one using a current meme.

Click here to see my reflection on this activity. 

4. Assess Consequence

Similar to our second milestone, we did the same thing but with consequence. 

This activity was fun and also another opportunity for me to improve my writing. 

5. Final TikToks

 To continue our amazing TikTok journey in the project “Straight Flowin’ / While I’m Scrollin’”, we have made more tiktoks, but this time, really have to do with our driving question: “How can we use current memes to comment on the significance and consequences of nationalism around the world?”. We have been learning lots about nationalism and learning some things about history such as the colonization of Africa and Queen Ana De Sousa Nizga. So, in my tik toks I used my knowledge of nationalism and the other different subjects that we learned about in my tik toks that I created. 

TikTok #1 – 

This TikTok is of when we learned about nationalism for women. Queen Nizga, an African queen who’s kingdom was being overrun by the Portuguese. Because knew that her army was not powerful enough to win, she converted to Christianity, got baptized and changed her name to Ana De Sousa to form an alliance with the Portuguese and earn their trust to form a sort of truce. 

I used the effects called Time Warp and Infinity Clones to make my TikTok. The sound was also called Crystal Dolphin. 

TikTok #2- 

This TikTok is about when the Europeans were taking over Africa and not advising or being fair to the Africans what so ever.

The sound was called Steppin’ in my TikTok.

TikTok #3- 

This TikTok is about when a man named Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck when him an many other representatives for the European countries were claiming different parts of Africa. In an image, the artist shows the event portrayed as Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck cutting a metaphorical cake (Africa).

 

To conclude, this project was really enjoyable to work with my friends/classmates and to make creative videos on an awesome app called TikTok. It was also interesting to learn about and study nationalism, significance cause and consequence.

PLP tries TikToks!

Hi y’all and welcome back to my blog. Today I will be talking about my most recent and one of my favourite assignments that we had to do, I’ll give you one word…TikTok. Now you are all probably pretty familiar with tiktok, or at least most of you, since tik tok was actually the most downloaded app in 2019.

We started this new project called “Straight flowin’ / While I’m scrollin’ ”. Our driving question in this project is “How can we use current memes to comment on the significance and consequences of nationalism around the world?”. We have started off this project by reviewing, learning and studying memes, significance, consequences and nationalism. By memes, I mean TikTok, of course. 

Now, if you don’t know what tiktok is, let me explain. TikTok is basically a video sharing social networking service that is used to create short lip sync, comedy, and talent videos. It’s a very awesomely addictive app, some people say that it could be the next vine, but personally, I don’t think it could get that good. Click here to see an example of a tik tok that I quite enjoyed, don’t worry, they are not all of cute animals. 

There is a theory by Richard Dawkins that a meme is an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. I think this theory really applies to TikTok, even if it was actually created quite long ago in 1976. Across tiktok, there are videos of people showing their talents, a cool trick, or something of them lip syncing, which would be the idea. Spreading from person to person on their phones all around the world in the TikTok community. 

Now what you’ve all been for, my final tiktoks. The people that were featured in the tiktoks were Julia, Ally and Kaia. 

 

I really enjoyed the assignment since I was already pretty familiar with TikTok, plus I got to work with my friends. For some of the TikToks, we tried to be a little more unique but still using trendy sounds. I think that my group and I all worked very well together and all had lots of fun!

See you in my next blog post!

Another Exhibition?! | Winter Exhibition 2019

Hi y’all and welcome back to my blog! Today I will be talking about our latest project that was presented at this year’s winter exhibition, called the story strikes back. In this years presentation, we were assigned to write short stories about a non-main-character and create something that has to do with our part of the story. In this post, I will be talking about the different milestones we went through in the story and each step in the launch journal. 

1. Opinion Post

Our first assignment for this project was to write our personal opinions on the Star Wars saga, me, being a huge Star Wars fan, had a lot to say. 

Expressing and supporting opinions: express an opinion and support it with credible evidence. 

Evidence: Assess the justification for competing historical accounts after investigating points of contention, reliability of sources, and adequacy of evidence.

Even though this wasn’t my best work, I was still pretty proud with my text. Although, I had a few grammar mistakes and as my feedback wasn’t really that I did something wrong but that I could go back and add more stuff as support later in the project. 

2. Literary Analysis Test

This milestone was completed after we read a whole lot of short stories and learned about the different terms such as theme, symbol, setting and different points of views.

Literary Identification and Analysis: Recognize how literary elements, techniques, and devices enhance and shape meaning.

The Writing Process: Transform ideas and information, using appropriate features, forms, and genres, through the writing process to plan, create, assess, and refine original, engaging, and meaningful literary and informational texts for a variety of purposes, audiences, and messages while using an increasing repertoire of conventions (Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation) and appropriate citations for clarity, effectiveness, and Impact. 

While I was studying for this test, my best technique to keep all of the facts and such in my mind, was to write it down on paper. I use technology for somethings, but when it comes to studying for a test, doing “the old fashioned way” works much better for me. I felt as though I worked and studied very hard on this test and deserved the note that I got. I wouldn’t of changed anything that I did on that test. 

3. Hero’s Journey Outline

In our groups, after learning about the different parts of a story, we, as in Malaika, Emily, Gabe, Anders, Anthony and Jude all decided what we would include in our stories and who was writing each one. 

#1

#2

Creating and Extending Shared Understanding: Exchange ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking.

Literary Identification and Analysis: Recognize how literary elements, techniques, and devices enhance and shape meaning

Our journey’s outline did not turn out that well and we did not get the best grade on it. And when I saw it, I went back and used. The feedback that we received and fixed it. Our teacher later told us that we didn’t have to do that but, at least we could still use it as a good resource. 

4. Movie Review Post

If you’d like to see this post, click here. This was basically an assignment where we reviewed any star wars movie.

Expressing and Supporting Opinions: Express an opinion and support it with credible evidence.

Evidence: Assess the justification for competing historical accounts after investigating points of contention, reliability of sources, and adequacy of evidence.

 I think that I had a very good and strong point with good evidence to support it. The document was also well formatted and looked pretty eye appealing. To make it better, I would add more visuals to also enhance the quality of the review like I see on most reviews written by professional writers.   

5. Story

Feedback:

Draft 1:

Draft 2:

Draft 3:

Creating and Extending Shared Understanding: Exchange ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking.

Literary Identification and Analysis: Recognize how literary elements, techniques, and devices enhance and shape meaning.

The Writing Process: Transform ideas and information, using appropriate features, forms, and genres, through the writing process to plan, create, assess, and refine original, engaging, and meaningful literary and informational texts for a variety of purposes, audiences, and messages while using an increasing repertoire of conventions (Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation) and appropriate citations for clarity, effectiveness, and impact.  

For each draft, except for the first one, I only really ever had a few things to change to make it better. But, overall, I was pretty proud about my story since writing has never really been my strong suit and the story turned out much better than I thought it would.  

6. Design

This milestone was the design for our planet on the day of the exhibition.

Creating and Extending Shared Understanding: Exchange ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking.

Evidence: Assess the justification for competing historical accounts after investigating points of contention, reliability of sources, and adequacy of evidence. 

This was our first plan, it was very messy and not at all organized, which made us the least organized out of all the other groups. 

Then, we completely changed our plan and changed it to this, which made us the most organized for a while. The whole group (grade 9’s, 8’s and 12’s) came together to exchange all of our ideas and finalize them. 

7. Launch journal & presentation

Now for the thing that we were supposed to create to support our part of the story, I made a hologram which actually one of four in the entire exhibition which was kind of a bummer but I still was really proud as to how it all turned out.  I made everything that I used from scratch: I made the pyramid and cut the plastic, I drew and animated the guy talking and I recorded the audio in the message. Plus, I even made a small droid to enhance my presentation. 

https://youtu.be/IUtOuTA87M0

Here are some pictures of the exhibition:   

 

 


To conclude, I really enjoyed going out of my comfort zone and being challenged during this project, it was stressful most times, but once it’s all over, you feel great and super proud of yourself, which is how I felt at the end. 

Helium Helium Helium | Chemistry Stories, A Scimatics Project

Howdy there, and welcome back to another blog post! Today I am discussing one of the most recent projects that I completed called, Chemistry Stories. This project, was in our scimatics class where we, of course, learned about chemistry and the periodic table and such. After gathering all of this information about chemistry and the periodic table, we basically got to compile it all into a video, but not just any video, an animation! This animation, specifically, was to focus more on ionic and covalent bonds. On this post, I will be reflecting on the core competencies that we were being assessed on in this project.

Driving question: “How do atoms and ions act like characters?” 

The Big Idea of this project was the electron arrangement of atoms impacts their chemical nature. Since we are using Bohr models and not Lewis ones for this project to see the electrons a little clearer in our animated video, this makes a lot of sense. The arrangement of electrons determines wether they will be apart of a covalent or ionic bond.

The first competency that we were being assessed on was Communicating: Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon. In this case, for our project, these were the voice overs that we had during our video to help explain and make our video more clear. Personally, I think I did a pretty good job in this competency, not just because I just had a voice over but because I explained everything to make it much clearer very well.

The second competency that we were being assessed on was processing and analyzing: construct, analyse and interpret models and/or diagrams. In this case, for our project, this was the animation of electron exchange or sharing in ionic or covalent bonding. This had to include our multivalent metal and polyatomic ion that we chose (mine were copper and chlorate). I think that my representation for this competency was okay. I had the animation for all of that in there, but, I felt that my animation was kind of basic: white background, not a lot of colours and all of that.

The final competency that we were being assessed on in this project was questioning and predicting: demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. In the case for our project, it was that all class time was used efficiently for learning without distractions. Almost every class, I would be working hard, having my earphones in, no distractions. My problem, was that I kept being unhappy with how the animation turned out for a certain slide, I deleted it and started over again. It wasn’t great because it happened every single time!

To conclude, I really enjoyed learning about chemistry, the periodic table and such because I never really went over it in elementary school other than some small experiments which is basically what I thought it all was till high school. But I didn’t just achieve a better understanding of chemistry, but also of animating. I don’t dislike explain everything nearly as much as I did.

Here is my final video:

Here is my project end mind map:

 

The Reviews Strike Back

Howdy, and welcome back to another post on my magnificent blog. Today I sat down and watched a two hour movie to write a review on the greatest, most wonderful and exciting film of the entire Star Wars saga…The Empire Strikes Back. And that, was true indeed, the empire did “strike back” in this film, but, you’ll have to see for yourself. Except, first, you need to read this review, thank you.

Coming back after the huge hit, “A New Hope”, George Lucas has certainly done it again and definitely not disappointed his audience with this new movie. For 1980 especially, this movie had some pretty great quality in terms of editing, locations, scenes, shots, writing and battles and many will agree that people think similarly about this film to this day. Many hardcore fans believe that “The Empire Strikes Back”, is probably the best movie, out of all the Star Wars saga. 

The very wise and famous Yoda was first introduced in this movie, he allowed us to learn more than we have ever before and not to mention, also took part of Luke’s character’s development during the courses of the film. Yoda, became a fan-favourite and over the years has even become one of the faces of the franchise. 

The protagonist, seemed to mostly actually be portrayed by Han himself, the character that fans adore and the absolute coolest space pirate ever, who actually played a big part in this movie. Even though this movie focused on Luke being trained by Yoda, it also focused on Han, Leia and Chewie tying to escape and not get captured from Vader which was also where most of the action was also, not to mention, Luke was saved several times by Han in this movie. Making Luke, more of a co-star in this film. 

Following this, later becoming one of the hallmarks of the entire film saga, the battle of Hoth. This was the new base for the rebels that they retreated to after blowing up the Death Star. Making a safe place to stay at for a little while, the empire later found them and got really close to catching them but thankfully, Leia, Han and the rest of the gang, minus Luke going somewhere else, got away. 

Last but not least,  the iconic and very famous line; “Luke, I am your father.” This line is known worldwide, the moment when Luke finds out about the truth, where his mind shifts. Fans, find this line emotionally touching and tremendously impacting, no matter how many times they may have watched that scene or not. 

To conclude, if these points still haven’t convinced you that “The Empire Strikes Back” is the best movie of the entire Star Wars saga, then who knows what will. This movie, being one of the classics as well, is still an amazing film and that kept the popularity of the Star Wars saga going after the first movie that became super popular. 

That is all for my review, thank you for reading it, I appreciate it and I hope that you have an amazing day.

I’ll see you in my next blog post! So long!

Alex

⚽️ Let’s Go Fury!! ⚽️

Hi and welcome back to my blog. Today I am talking about a recent project that we had just done in our maker class. In this assignment, we documented a live event and used our editing skills to create an amazing video.

The first step in this project was to plan out what type of shots I wanted, we call this, an action plan.

Next we actually filmed our video. As you can see, I chose to do one of my soccer games. My team is a Div 1 team, which is a select team. In ranking, first there is house (div 3) as the lowest level, then there is silver/gold 2 (div 2) and gold 1 (div 1) and then after that there is metro and HPL which is the highest level. My team was going to be playing one of our rivalries called Avalanche. They are in our division and play for the same organisation as us. The thing is, they were the original gold 1 team and we moved up (from gold 2) last year. This year, they have been participating in metro-level tournaments, making them, really, really good.

Here is how my video turned out! (By the way, I’m number 7)

I am pretty happy with how this video turned out, I had some great videos, angles and shots. This video pretty much turned out how I wanted it to be. Although, the audio and lighting in the interview wasn’t the best, but still great. My team and I all worked really hard this game and had a great game so, I’m glad I got this one on video. Hope you liked it! See you in my next blog post!

It’s Time To Reflect! Term 1

Hi y’all and welcome back to another blog post. Since term one is ending, today, I will be talking about and reflecting on all of the videos that I had done this term. So, let’s get right into it!

4 Shot Film

Empowered Learner:  I have leveraged technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in my learning goals 

For this video, being the first video that we had made this year, I think that we did a pretty good job. The video quality of when Ms Maxwell was walking up could have been better if it wasn’t blurred up and the music at the end. Although this video may not have been perfect, I think that I was really surprised as to how it turned out with the angles, shots, organization and roles and it has definitely started this year full of videos off strong. Which is why, I think that my group and I had leveraged technologies and have taken an active role in achieving and demonstrating our learning goals. 

Ghost Town Film

Knowledge Constructor: I can critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts, and make meaningful experiences for myself and others 

Similar to what I had said in my Alberta Reflection Post, this video did turn out pretty well, minus, the communication on who was bringing a cowboy hat and not using “landscape” during the whole course of filming. But we did all cooperate very well together. The editing was all done in iMovie but the writing at the beginning was done by Jude. If I had time (and wifi) at that time, I would’ve made my own music for the video. But I definitely learned some new things in the process of planning, filming and editing.

Drumheller Documentary

Creative Communicator: I communicated clearly and expressed myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to my goals. 

Just like what I said in my Alberta Reflection Post, since this was a surprise task, we had very little time to plan, film and edit our videos. But, during this video, I did not waste any time and persisted well. I definitely had some troubles with the audio at times but in reality, I think that that was the only real flaw other than maybe trying to communicate more information about the artifact. For this task, we could only use Clips, an apple application. I thought that this was great because I got to learn a little more about this app and plus, it took less time to edit. But, I wasn’t fully comfortable with it because I hadn’t used it very much in the past. 

Alberta People Video

Innovative Designer: I used a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions 

As you could probably see in my This Land Is Us Project Reflection Post, my original and final video were very different and you could see a huge improvement between the two. I always made sure to be having a good eye for things when filming my video. I had planned all the questions that I was asking people in the course of the video but they had changed a little bit during the trip because I had began to be more specific with what type of content I wanted in my video. I rotated between my phone and iPad everyday because one of them on its own could not last the whole day. 

“Run” Remake Video

Computational Thinker: I developed and employed strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions 

I think that the original and final video had a huge difference, not to mention, the video quality was so much better. For the original video, where Finn and Brenton made the horror music. I had made the horror music for the last one. The thing that sucked for me though, was that I had no idea how to make horror music from scratch. Luckily, I had searched up many, many tutorials that didn’t make much sense and most were not from this update, that eventually ended up with the music that you hear in the final video. It wasn’t too good but definitely pretty god considering I had no idea what I was doing.

https://youtu.be/oGYBfvngATE

French Revolution Heritage Minute Video

Knowledge Constructor: I can critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts, and make meaningful experiences for myself and others 

This video, being our first of many revolution videos, wasn’t all that bad. Just like I said in my Revolution Post, the video quality and editing was good but, we could have perhaps filled in some missing information for some things that happened in between the events that were described and talked about in the video. My group persisted and worked together very well in the making of this video which really started our revolution project off strong. We only really used iMovie and maybe GarageBand for some music. I definitely think that we could’ve gotten some better shots for the last event but still, it was really good. 

American Revolution Rap Video

Innovative Designer: I used a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions 

In this video, we definitely used quite a variety of apps to get this video together and this definitely took the longest time to film and edit. We used GarageBand, iMovie, Pages (a lot, for the lyrics), voice memos and many of our devices to film. This video was the hardest to manage out of all of them because it took the most time and planning but it was definitely worth it. We had some problems to overcome such as, using our time well and not practicing the lines enough. 

Russian Revolution John Green Video

Computational Thinker: I developed and employed strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions 

When it came to this video, we had amazing communication an planning with our props, backdrop and lines. The thing was, there was a problem about WHERE we would be filming. During the block that we had to film it, we had to move our set around because there were some communication issues with the people who originally allowed us to film there. Still, the video turned out great and I think that this may have been one of our best. 

Final French Revolution John Green and Animation Video

Empowered Learner:  I have leveraged technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in my learning goals 

This final video, certainly did put all of our best skills from the other revolution videos into one. It may have been a little too long, but I think it was fine. Since our last video didn’t have enough information, we wanted to get more in there but we ended up with a little too much. For the last video, we were certain to as to what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it and definitely achieved those goals. 

Take Your Kid To Work Day Video

Creative Communicator: I communicated clearly and expressed myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to my goals. 

Even though, I had some extreme technical issues with losing all of my interviews and other media that I had taken that day, it all worked out. I went back there and re-filmed all of my b-roll and shots but didn’t get to re-film the interview with my mom. I still liked the different angles that I took, how synced it was with the music and my creativity with the different transitions and editing details in iMovie. I had a plan of how I wanted my video to look like but I thought of an even better way to put it all together.

To conclude, I have really enjoyed creating all of these videos. Even though, it may take more time with the screenplays, the storyboards, the call sheets, the filming, editing and publishing, it was definitely worth it. Plus, I can look back at all of those videos when I’m older! I am super looking forward to continuing making these videos and maybe, by the end of this year, to be a master video maker! 

Take Your Kid To Work Day!

Hi y’all and welcome back to my blog and today I am going to be talking about the thing that every single grade 9 goes through on November 6th…yeah, you guessed it, Take Your Kid To Work Day. Every year, all of the grade 9s spend a day at their parents work and need to complete a few questions or something on a piece of paper but, this program is extra special so we all created super cool videos. 

Here was my action plan that I did before the take your kid to work day. I think to make sure for next time would be to be much more detailed and specific with what I want my video to look like and what shots I want for it. But I mean, this action plan is a little bit more for editing because, at the take your kid to work day, it’s really just getting as much b-roll as possible and doing interviews. 

My mom is a mortgage broker which means that she’s self employed so she has a pretty flexible schedule but, this also means that, if she doesn’t work, she doesn’t get payed (because she doesn’t have a monthly salary or anything). So, even though my mom is self employed, she still works at an office that she shares with other people; Mark Rasmussen (A Realtor) and Andrea Johnson (A Notary Public). Even though they don’t work together, they can still work together on some projects or work off of each other. 

Also, even though my mom does not work for a company, she represents an organization of mortgage professionals called Mortgage Alliance in fact, she is in an elite group within Mortgage Alliance named The Vine Group. 

We started off the day and got to the office at around 8ish and I left at 4:30 ish to go to an after school activity but typically, my mom would stay till 5-5:30 ish but it really depends on the day or week.

During my visit on take your kid to work day, I also noticed that my mom’s work has some common things that we use now in PLP. For example, for each client, my mom has a certain amount of milestones, that she keeps track on an app called Floify. Just like in PLP, where we use milestones for each one of our projects. So, for some people saying that high school or school in general doesn’t prepare you for anything in the future, then your pretty wrong. 

Now, I’m going to be reflecting on the core competencies that we are being assessed on in this assignment. 

The first competency is “Question self and others about how individual purposes and passions can support the needs of the local and global community when considering career choices”. Now, my mom, being a very caring and selfless person, really loves to help others. This career also fit just right for her because, it uses her education in business and finance, her skills with problem solving and of course, with her love of helping people. So, when it comes to my mom’s career, she helps; first homebuyers getting a mortgage to actually afford it, people getting a second mortgage, a new mortgage and refinancing (dept). 

The next competency is “Recognize the impact of personal public identity in the world of work”. My mom, like most adults uses LinkedIn to advertise and give/get shoutouts from people she’s worked with. She also has a professional facebook account that she posts things about mortgages and stuff for her clients to see. She also uses Floify to share with her clients and organize herself better. 

The final competency that we were being assessed on is “Recognize and explore diverse perspectives on how work contributes to our community and society”. Just like what I said in the first one, my mom helps people in all sorts of ways. Everyone’s job should contribute to our community and society in different ways. 

The thing is about my video, I had filmed everything and gotten such great shots of everything including an interview with my mom, but my iPad crashed and I had to go and refilm everything one day after school. The thing was, that my mom was leaving the day after Take Your Kid To Work Day and hadn’t come back till very late at night the day before this was due. So, I sadly, was not able to incorporate an interview with my mom.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed getting to live in what the life of an adult is a and how different it is from school, yet, kind of similar. The thing about work is that it’s typically focused more on either your passions/what you like and/or what you are good at. I learned a lot from this experience and glad that I got to see what it would be like for me one day. 

See you later! 

Alex