Week 9 of the Student Blogging Challenge

This week’s Student Blogging Challenge was all about coding. Now, I didn’t know much about code other than the stuff we did on Swift Playgrounds in Grade 8. This was super fun, so I did all the challenges!

The First Challenge was about posting a comment for Alex. Alex is a coder who works for Incsub. He is visually impaired, and works with having sites readable for visually impaired individuals. I think it’s really cool how he hasn’t let anything get in his way of achieving his goal. This was my comment.

Fingers crossed for a response! I’ll update this if I get one.

The next thingamajig I did was the Hour of Code activity. In this, we pretty much went on this website and did a coding activity. I decided to do the flappy birds one, because I thought it looked cool.

This one was pretty easy to understand, easy enough that I got it right away. You had to have commands and stuff. It was pretty cool.

In the end, I got to code my own Flappy Birds game! Try it out!

I also got a certificate, which was pretty awsome.

The final task was to do some HTML coding. So, I decided to manually make links for this post!

Usually, I would just select the text, press link, and put in the URL. What I did this time was more time consuming, but was a lot more fun. I used the cheat sheet from the SBC challenge to help me out.

Yup, it was very time consuming. But now, if something ever happens to thiw website, I’ll know what to do. Until then, I think I’m gonna stick with the link button!

Santa Goes Skydiving!

It’s beginning to look a lot like the holidays! It is soon the time for Christmas, Hanukkah and many others. My mom’s favourite holiday is solstice, on December 21st, but we still celebrate Christmas. For this week’s challenge, I decided to find a holiday game and write a review for it. The first game was Santa Map Dive on Google Santa Tracker!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a really fun game. The objective was clear, and it was very holiday based. It was cool having control of Santa, who resides over this holiday. What was really annoying was that the controls weren’t great, so moving Santa was extremely difficult. My friend tried it and Santa ended up spinning in a circle. Great game though. Good for older kids. Try it an tell me in the comments what you thought of it!

Gerald and Norbert!

So for this week’s task, it was kinda interesting. We had either a week to catch, up or a free choice. I decided to do free choice because I’ve finished all the other ones. And I also decided to make an animation!

This is a story about Gerald and Norbert. Gerald and Norbert are in love, and, well, anyways, just watch the video. 

I made this using a super simple tool called FlipaClip. It’s very user friendly, and you get to make awesome little animations. For the music I used Splice, and voila. Now you can make your own animations!

Twins Aren’t Identical???

This project was all about genetics. DNA, RNA, all the fun stuff that makes up who you are. And this month, we’re talking about a really fun topic: Twins! More specifically, can cousins be twins? 

The scenario that we were posed with for this project was a bit complicated. Pretty much, two sets of identical twins married each other. Sounds incestuous, I know. Anyways. Due to both sets of parents having the same DNA, we had to see if their kids could be identical. And that would require several little bits of information, which I will now explain. 

Pedigree Charts

Pedigree charts are kinda like a family tree. They show generations, but they’re more focused on traits. Specifically, which traits are passed down to whom and how. 

Punnet Squares

Punnet squares help calculate the likely hood of a child of a couple having certain traits. You take the genotypes from each parent and mash ‘em up till you have 4 outcomes. 

The video explains this better than I do here. 

For this project, I worked with the wonderful Luca J. I would say that we worked well together, and will our different skills, we did a pretty good job. I did the scientific animations, using Keynote and Magic Move. It’s pretty simple but easy to understand. 

This project was really cool. I love learning about how things work, and pretty much everything in science, so it was great! Next time, I would spend a bit more time on my animations, because the magic move wasn’t working in some place. Also, I would add more information about how due to meiosis, it would be very unlikely for cousins to be twins. But overall, I’m pretty proud.

Live Loops!

This past week, we’ve been working with a medium we haven’t really in the past: Music. 

Garage Band is a really cool app where you can make awesome music. It’s really simple. You just go to garage band, create a new project, and go to live loops!

Once you’re in live loops, you can play around with it. You honestly can’t make a mistake. Anyone can make music using live loops. I really like the Rock loops.

One really awesome way to customize your songs is to add different loops to it. You can add different instruments, sounds, and even vocals to your tracks.

To make my song, I used the Rock loops. Adding different sounds, I customized it to make my own great tune!

I had a lot of fun with this project. Now that I know how to make easy music, I can enhance my videos even more.

Week 6; Science

This week was science! I love science. One of the sciences I am most interested in is entomology, so I decided to complete task one and learn some more about it!

Hoverfly in Alyssum Todd Petit via Compfight

Entomology is the study of insects, but that term is to specific. Entomology also studies things such as arachnids, slugs, and earthworms. It is a branch of zoology, which is in the category of Life Sciences. 

William Kirby is considered the ‘father of entomology’. In 1815, he and William Spence wrote the first popular book on the subject, An Introduction To Entomology. In 1833, Kirby and Spence founded the Entomological Society of London, where he housed over 35 insect specimens.

Sweat Bee and Bee Todd Petit via Compfight

A majority of professional entomologists in Canada are employed by the government. They work with Agriculture Canada and Forestry Canada.

Entomology is an amazing type of science, one that has helped society improve science, crops, and medicine. 

The 3rd task looked fun, so I did it too.

This video is from TedEd and was created by Science Insider. I thought it was really informative, and it talked about whales. I love whales. 🐳

After watching the video, here are a few questions you can answer in the comments. Good luck!

  1. Which trees are the best growers?
  2. How tall are giraffes?
  3. What type of dinosaur was the tallest?
  4. Why can sea creatures grow bigger?
  5. How long is a lions mane jellyfish?

I also did the fifth task. Have a go at it, and good luck!

He’s Crazy

We have recently started a new unit. It’s definitely interesting. It is called…

Cray Cray Yay! Yay!

What a name, right? Anyways. The driving question for the unit, well, this project in particular, is ‘Why was this person thought of as crazy and how did they change the world?’ This mini project was a fun one, and I learned a lot.

First, we watched Apple’s Think Different Video. The people in this video, and others who were featured in the campaign, changed the world because they were different. And different can be crazy. 

https://youtu.be/cFEarBzelBs

From the people in the campaign, we each chose someone to do a keynote presentation. But this wasn’t a regular keynote, oh no. This was a pecha kucha. A pecha kucha presentation is a presentation where the slides change only every 20 seconds, and usually last for about 7 minutes. For us, we had 9 slides, 20 seconds each, the whole thing lasting only 3 minutes. Now, that was really hard. To fit a person’s entire life into a 3 minute presentation is hard. But, we did it.

The person I chose for this was Jim Henson. Jim Henson was an amazing man, who completely altered the film industry. This is his story. 

Creative Commons License IGypsyWoman via Compfight

Jim Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi on September 24, 1936. From a young age, he had an interest in puppets. He was heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, Burr Tillstrom with his puppets Kukla and Ollie, and other puppeteers. While attending high school, he made puppets for a television program called the Junior Morning Show. 

He followed his passion into university, where he created Sam and Friends with his future wife. These characters were the forerunners for the muppets, and even included a prototype of Kermit the frog. Did you know that the word Muppet is a combination of marionette and puppet? 

As his work with puppets progressed, he started to experiment with puppetry on television. He worked with having the performer off camera, using rods to control the puppets, and precise mouth movements. He even changed what puppets were made of. Instead of wood, he started  working with foam rubber and different fabrics. 

As he developed his Muppets, he started to get more recognition. He began making commercials with his muppets. In 1958, he and his wife created Muppets Inc. in New York City. There, he hired Jerry Juhl and Frank Oz, who became critical to the latter years of the muppets. 

InspiredImages / Pixabay

In 1969, the Children’s Television Workshop had an idea for a show with puppets. They acquired Henson and his muppets, and through that, Sesame Street was born. Characters like Grover, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, Oscar and Big Bird were first featured. Even Kermit was on Sesame Street. 

Once Sesame Street took off, Henson started to see where his muppets could go. He tried to start a television program in America, but the producers thought it was crazy. So he pitched it to Lew Grade, who loved it. They moved to England and started the Muppet Show.

Ribastank / Pixabay

 

3 years into the muppet show, Henson and his team created The Muppet Movie. This was a huge success. Once they realized the success that the movies could have, they stopped making the TV show and focused on films. Muppet movies, like Muppets Take Manhattan, or the animated show Muppet Babies, were plentiful. He worked on other things as well, including Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth, and The Storyteller. He even worked on The Empire Strikes Back, with the creation of Yoda.

In the 1980s, he entered into discussions with Disney about acquiring the Muppets. Nothing came of these first talks, because of Henson’s unexpected death in 1990. His children took over the company, and ran it for some time until the Disney discussion began again. In 2004, it was official. The Muppets were Disney.

Jim Henson’s legacy is still seen today. As well as the many muppet movies produced recently, the Jim Henson Creature Shop has continued making muppets for other films. Farscape, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and MirrorMask are a few.

Jim Henson changed the world of puppets, and had a huge part in the introduction of them into the media, so for that he was crazy.

All of the people who changed the world were different. They had an idea, one that wasn’t normal. An idea that didn’t fit into the societal norms. Something that had never been thought of before. To ignore all that, and change the world, well, that’s crazy. 

Week 5: Music!

For this week’s challenge, we are getting to know each other. I decided to do the 4th task, the music task! The task was to explain what your favourite type of music was!

My favourite type of music is Folk Rock. I got into this type of music at Kaslo Jazz Fest, after hearing Shakey Graves. From there, I discovered The Avett Brothers, and many others. Here’s a cool Spotify playlist that features them!

One of my favourite songs right now is Morning Song by The Avett Brothers. I really like the vibe of the song, and the melody.

What are your favourite types of music? I want to know about my readers!

Essay Writting

As I mentioned in my Movie Trailer Project Thing, for this project we had to read books and create a video. What I didn’t mention was that the video was part of a larger purpose. The true purpose for this project was to WRITE AN ESSAY!!! Not just any essay, either. An in class, synthesis essay.

A synthesis essay is an essay that uses many different sources to support your thesis. For this particular synthesis essay, we had a few specific things to draw upon. Firstly, we had our choice books, which I mentioned in a previous post. For me, that was Don’t Get Caught.

 

 

 

We also read another book, called Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. It was an autobiography about her childhood in Iran during the Iranian revolution. It was a very interesting story about different perspectives, and I thought it was really cool.

 

 

For this essay, we also had to have a third source. I chose the book Go Show the World by Wab Kinew. This story tells us about different First Nations people in history. We actually got to go meet Wab Kinew and I got his book signed. Anyways, I wanted to chose this book because I thought it was really cool how he told the stories of people that are largely looked over in history.

I think the most important step for preparing for an in class essay is the planning stage. While making the outline I felt like I really got to understand my thesis, and the point I was trying to make through writing this essay. Another important part was the details. For the essay, we were able to bring in a piece of paper that had facts, quotes, and the like. While putting this together, I found more direction in for my essay.

The most difficult step was probably worrying about forgetting your outline. We were not able to bring our outline into the essay, and a lot of us, me included, were worried that all of our preparations would be for not. It turned out that by working so tirelessly in the outline, and in making all the revisions, I had my outline pretty solid in my mind.

It is important to practice essay writing in school because in the future, there will be many instances in which we will have to write essays that have a great determining factors. For example, when applying for jobs and universities, it may be required to write an essay to determine wether or not you will be fit for the opening. Also, practicing the writing process is great for would-be authors. The outline that we made for this essay could also be used when writing a novel. Not exactly in the same form, but similar. As we continue to practice these skills, we will progress as learners, and as people.

Click on the image to view my full essay!

Writing an essay was hard. We had the preparation, the actual essay write, and then the revision process. I was pretty happy with how my essay came out in the end, but i still had a bit to revise. There were lots of little things, like tenses and words I could’ve ommitted. This was a long process, and I know that this won’t be the last. In the future, I plan to have more ideas formulated before hand, for the body paragraphs, so that I don’t fall short. I noticed in this essay that I finished with lots of time. Next essay, I hope to still finish with time to look my essay over, but also have more supporting points.

Week 4: Emoji Challenge

This week’s task was about emojis. I decided to do two challenges for this week.

The first challenge I chose was the emoji math challenge. For this, I wanted to make an emoji sudoku game. See if you can figure it out!

The other challenge I wanted to do was the emoji story challenge. Using byrdseed.com, I got an emoji writing prompt. The emojis I got were as follows.

This is my story.

Once upon a time there was a man named Ned. Ned lived in a van, and traveled all around the world in this van. But after a few years, Ned got tired of traveling. He wanted to make some friends. So he signed up for the Ice-Cream tour, a 21 day train excursion around Alabama. On his first day, he met Paul, the talking horse. Paul loved to sing, but he was awful. Ned had to look away when Paul sang. Ned knew Paul thought himself to be a great singer, and Ned didn’t want to let him down. But on day 20, Ned couldn’t take it anymore. He told Paul that when he sang, he sounded like a camel dying. Paul just laughed. He knew he was a horrible singer the entire time, he just wanted to know if Ned would be honest with him. After the train excursion ended, Paul went with Ned and they traveled the world. Ned was lonely no longer. The end.