TPOL the T is for Transitional not Tea and Crumpets
“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
Hello and welcome to my TPOL blog post. This is a blog post all about my school work this year, I will be going over some high and some lows that I thought I could improve on. If you are a random internet viewer and your wondering what that starting sentence is, it’s some thing I have to say when presenting, without further ado let’s get started.
I haven’t had Maker or science since the first semester so I will start with those. In maker last semester I had many different projects that required their own skills such as building a rollercoaster or making films and videos (there were a lot of videos) but something I’m super proud of was my stop motion film, the project was, as you can guess, to make a stop motion video but there was a twist. We had to recreate a viral video in stop motion. I’m very proud of this not only because of the final product, but also because of the strategy and planning that went into it. I’m happy that I learned to use a green screen to make it just a bit better, and I’m also proud of myself because I used creative strategies to hold the characters in place, however the main reason I’m proud of myself is because I tried to have fun with it and I did which was why the outcome ended up so great. Here is the video.
But since I talked about what I think I did well, I subsequently must discuss some things I could have improved on. If you read my MPOL post you would remember that I said I wasn’t proud of my goal setting skills and I still believe this but I will go more in depth about why. I don’t really like making goals because I will set them and forget about them immediately or just not do it due to not feeling it. I’m also not very good at reflecting on my own work to improve and critique it. I don’t believe I will ever enjoy setting goals but people change and maybe I will too.
Now we will move to science, I’m extremely proud of most of my science work as it was such a great subject for me because I enjoyed the classes and the work which made me do better in my work. I’m very proud of my infographic of energy sources, of which I chose wind energy. I’m so proud of myself for making this as I worked so hard and I came up with an original design for it. I also found out that what I had done might have been plagiarism without my knowledge so I am proud of my creative thinking and responsibility that I used to fix my mistake.
But once again I need to think back on how I could have improved my work, this is difficult for me as really there is only one thing I’m not proud of but I talked about that in my MPOL however I have something that I think I could have improved on even though I tried super hard. This was my operation board game, this started off well but then just started going downhill. I had the character finished but when it came to cutting the holes for the objects it went bad and then it went worse when the electronics got involved. There were a number of reasons this happened like lack of time or resources but I should have planned ahead. My awareness of time should have been better and I should have collaborated with my teachers or peers when I was struggling with the electronics. This is the game.
So now it’s time for humanities which is the only PLP class I have had this semester so the examples are more recent. This semester had some really cool and fun projects that were super enjoyable but my most proud was movie trailer. We designed characters that we made with stuffies. I enjoyed using creative thinking skills to morph the characters into reality and then thinking about what his backstory was and why the story went the way it did, then being able to make a trailer for a movie starring him was super fun. I’m proud of my filming skills I learned in maker the semester before to piece together the video. Here it is
But now I have to think about what I could have improved on. For this I have to go with my museum exhibit (which is a sneak peak to a blog post coming out soon). This project as a whole was super fun and one of my favourite in humanities this year. However since I was so focused on bringing in my own artifacts from WW1 I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have to my own project. I made a piece of writing and then recorded me doing a voice over for it. I feel like I could have been more creative with my idea or could have gotten critique from peers to it improve more. But no picture because we can’t have spoilers for the next post 🤫
In conclusion I feel like I have made major progress this year and I’m so happy about how things are going now compared to last year. I owe huge thanks to my ADHD medication because I couldn’t have done this without them. I’m able to focus much easier on work and make better products as a student. I’m in a much better place than I was at the start of the year and I want to say thank you to my teachers and my mum for supporting me and helping me learn and developed my skill sets.
Thank you for reading my post and I will see you when I see you. Goodbye!
Nation Sensation
Helloooooo Internet!
I’m back and I’m writing a post about a little project called building a nation. This project was all about learning what nationalism and what a nation is. So we had to have a driving question to go along with this project and that was, “ What did/does nationalism mean to the people around canada?” Now we know the big question let’s get on to the post.
The first thing we did was a simulation of confederation and the build up to it. We got assigned groups and picked a colony that we wanted to be, my group went with New Brunswick. We were given folders with information that told us about our opinions and information and what resources we had and needed. Based off this information we had to decide whether joining the confederation would be beneficial to us or if we would lose more that we would gain. New Brunswick was really weak and was mostly only good for lumber and some fish. We were also very open to attacks from America and had little to no military power. We also needed grain so we could have more food options and a balanced diet. So this was a no-brainer as we had much to gain and little to lose.
We ended up joining the confederation and settling on laws that were agreed upon by all.
So we had finished the simulation and it was now revealed that we were going to make a board game for the end product of this project, this was a very cool idea and it sounded really fun but of course this is school work so there was a small downside, we had to incorporate nationalism and make the game based around confederation. This wouldn’t be much of a challenge for most people, buuuuuut I’m from England and I know absolutely nothing when it comes to Canadian history. Luckily my partner knew a lot and I had this little thing called google that was going to help me out, but of course you know about google because you are probably using right now to view this post.
We now had to come up with an idea for what we would do, there were a lot of options but we decided on a trivia style game, similar to trivial pursuit. We modified the questions to be five new categories with two different styles, there were indigenous questions about the Wendat and Algonquian nations. The categories were economics politics and history, and there was also French and English questions, with the categories of political and transportation. This was fine and dandy but if our game was real there would be a lawsuit for copyright reasons, so we needed to make a change and that was adding raiding. In order to make the game more original and to enhance the nationalism aspect we decided that on every card one question was selected to have a raid symbol, if you answer it right you get to destroy a piece obtained by your opponent.
We had the idea but before we make it we needed rules for the game, this was done by my partner so go check out his blog at blog44.ca/callumr
We now needed to construct the game which was a huuuuge pain because originally we were going to make 60 cards each. This didn’t seem possible in 9 days so we cut it to 30 each and then cut it to 30 for him and 20 for me this still made 10 cards which was reasonable, after we made the cards I made the boards and then we brought in game prices and the dice and boom the game was finished.
Now we go back to the driving question” What does/did nationalism mean to the people of Canada?”
The answer is it’s what it means to be a Canadian but not just that, it means striving for the country that you love, it’s embracing who you are and where you come from.
Thanks for reading my post I know this was super wordy an I apologize for that but I hope you have a good day and bubye 👋👋👋👋
Rise my creatures
I’m back and the same as ever.
I would say I’m better than ever but that’s probably a lie.
Hello internet people I have returned from my blog-free era and now, I have to make a humanities blog. This specific blog was about our project called.
RISE OF THE FRANKENSTUFFIES.
The driving question of this project was “How can sci-fi/fantasy fiction help us imagine a different future?”
This is a big question to answer without any knowledge of sci-fi, so let’s take a look at the steps we took to answer it.
First of all we needed to know the end product of this project, so we found out that our goal was to create a movie trailer for a sci-fi film based around a character that we made. So obviously the first thing we had to do was make this character. To do this we bought our own stuffies and sewed them together in order to create the amalgamation we would base our story of off. I decided to get a standard doll and remove the torso to create a spider-like creature. I named my protagonist DERRICK.
So now we have the character we have to make up who he is. Derrick is a weird looking creature so I wanted him to be from outer space. I wanted it to be somewhere that hasnt been greatly explored so I thought maybe mars, but I decided against that because martians are too cliche. The other planets are all to far away and are too different from earth so I went with the moon, but that has been explored so I went with the dark side of the moon. Now I knew where we was from I had to pick between hero and villain, so I went with villain because, well, look at his face. If you want to understand more about hike here is a resume for him as a… person… thing… I don’t really know what he is.
Now we started to read a book called leviathan, and if you are wondering why it’s because we needed to figure out what makes a good sci-fi story. While reading leviathan we had to pay attention to the details and what made it a good sci fi book. To help us do this we had reading roles that we had to complete, and also in class activities to help us understand it further. Unfortunately there isn’t much else I can say about this but the book was very good.
Now we know who Derrick is, we needed to start thinking about what our story would be. I wanted this to be a dark and sadistic and what more dark that eating babies. Since I made Derrick out of a stuffie I wanted him to act like one to be able to hide in plain sight. Now we had the base of the story I needed a plot to focus it around. Now I usually don’t like when villains turn into good guys but I couldn’t come up with anything, so I asked for my teachers help and she suggested it. I had given Derrick a rough past and had the idea to include that in the story. My idea is incredibly cliche but it works out, I decided to have Derrick meet a child who doesn’t have loving parents and feel bad for him. So we learn more about him no Derrick decides not to kill him, but instead to befriend him. So that would be the base of my story.
Now I knew what my story would be about I had to write it but before that I made a sort of cheat sheet to help me write it. I had a table with opening, action and details on it, so I could write what I wanted to have in my story, and have the points I wanted to get across in that section written down. If you ant to read it you can but it’s quite long.
Transition Action Details
| Out in space | A shuttle is headed toward earth containing an alien life-form that recently discovered a planet called earth. The creature inside is named derick and is looking for a new home because he feels excluded on the dark side of the moon even though it is his home. | Derick is flying to earth in a shuttle
Derick was rejected and left the dark side of the moon |
| Once he had landed | His shuttle hit the ground and the door opened into a world of such beauty gorgeous green grass and vibrant coloured trees, derick sets out to explore. | Derick lands and sees the beauty of nature
Derick starts exploring |
| After his exploration | Derrick realises how humans live and decides to observe one specific family to expand his knowledge of the new creatures. | He doesn’t understand why and how humans do things
Derrick decides to watch one family |
| After a few years | Derick realised one of the humans got very big and then suddenly she shrunk and there was a new small creature that was very annoying and irritating yet the big humans cared for it and loved it. This makes Derrick mad, such a stupid ugly creature was getting the attention he never did from his parents, this rage drives Derrick to destroy this creature, and all creatures like it. | Derrick observes a family have a baby
Derrick hates the baby and doesn’t think it deserves the love that it’s getting that he never received |
| After some planning | Derrick plots and chooses the best way to eliminate the baby, he will act like one of the toys it has and then eat it. But first it has to integrate itself into the family. | Derrick plans out how to kill the baby
He will pretend to be a toy |
| When the time was right | Derrick weaved it’s way into their life and mind controlled the baby into making its parent buy him. He waited until they baby was alone and then struck, he had eaten the baby. | Derrick got into their life and swiftly killed the baby. |
| After some time | Derrick yearned for more so he went on a rampage, tricking and killing and deceiving and destroying, he had never felt a rush like this. | Derrick finds all the loved babies he can and murders every one he finds. |
| But one day | He found a child bigger than than his previous victims, he watched and learned about this child and noticed this family is different. This child has only one parent lives in a small empty home and has no friends, his parent doesn’t even love him. | Derrick finds an older child with a very difficult life and it reminds him of himself. |
| Suddenly | Derrick felt a new emotion he was unfamiliar with, it made him feel bad and almost want to stop what he was doing. This feeling was sorrow, remorse, anger, fear and horror all at once. He realised what he was doing was wrong. He decided to change. | Derrick feels bad for the child
He wanted to change his ways |
| After some thought | Derrick decided to befriend this child and help him to be happy. He decided to act like a toy that the boy could play with and as expected the boy loved him. They played they talked, they did everything together. But Derrick was left with the question, should he let the boy know he isn’t a toy. | The boy loves Derrick
Derrick wonders if he should let the boy know he’s alive |
| A year passes | After a while Derrick starts making plans to have fun with the boy but unfortunately during this time the human walked in on Derrick, learning that he is in fact alive! | The boy finds out Derrick is alive |
| Now his secret was revealed | The boy was stunned, Derrick thinks the boy won’t love him anymore but this was the opposite of reality. The boy was jumping with joy after finding out his best friend wasn’t a toy. But they had no was to communicate. | The boy is happy his friend is alive.
They can’t talk to each other. |
| After some thinking | Derrick made a translator device to allow them to talk. Derrick explained his story as he believed the boy had a right to know. Unbeknownst to Derrick the boys mother was listening behind the door. She informed the city of derricks existence. This causes an uprising among the parents of the dead children. | Derrick explains his past to the boy
The boys mother overhears and informs the city which causes an upset among the people |
| Now | Derrick is faced with a challenge, a moral dilemma, does he flee or does he face the consequences of his actions from the past. This isn’t avoidable so he must chose what to do. | Derrick has to chose from running away or facing angry parents. |
| Once he made up his mind | He explained to the boy what he had to do, he needed to confront his past. He could try to explain, or he could fight back what would he do. Had he really changed as a derickian or was he still the murderer he once was. This was indeed a struggle. | Derrick is faced with an inner conflict having to think about if ha has really changed for the better. |
| Now the time had come | Derrick was on his was to confront the mob, he surely knew this was his impending doom, as he roamed the streets of inevitable demise he thought about what he would do. Finally the end was in sight. | Derrick decided to talk to the people |
| Finnaly | Derrick was face to faces with the terror of his past. He tried to use the translator
“WAAAAIIIT!” Came a scream from the device. “STOOOOOP! I CAN EXPLAIN!” But alas they were blinded by rage, nothing can stop the passion of an angry grieving parent. Until a scream followed by a running child came from a distance. |
Derrick tries to reason with the mob.
A child is running towards them |
| It was the boy | The boy that derick was best friends with came charging in screaming at the top of his lungs, but no one was listening, nobody could hear him over the sound of revenge. 25 meters, 20 meters, 15, 10, 5, he was too late the angry mob had derick by the limbs? Tentacle? Nobody knows what those are but anyway, the boy was jumping and screaming and losing his voice but this was a futile attempt to stop them. Derrick was torn apart, ripped in two and lay cold on the floor. | The boy was running towards the people but no one could hear him
The boy could get to Derrick in time and they tore him apart |
| Dead on the floor | Derrick sat there, no longer alive. The boy came running over to him, eyes flooded with tears, he dropped to his knees and started sobbing. But somehow derricks to parts started drifting towards each other. | The boy is crying about Derrick being dead.
His parts are moving closer |
| Shocked | The group of parents noticed what they had done. They had murdered the only friends that boy ever had, realising this this must have meant he changed, they regretted their actions. However Derrick wasn’t finished quite yet. The two pieces of his body melded back together and Derrick was reborn. | The people realise derrick changed and feel bad.
Derrick came back |
| Using the translator | Derrick explained what his powers were, and helped them understand that he couldn’t move in sunlight. Derrick apologised for what he had done and tried to make amends with all he had hurt. | Derrick apologies to the people |
| Ever since that day | Derrick lived among society living with his new best friend and working any jobs he can find to make money for the boys food. He is known by all in the city and lives peacefully as if he isn’t an alien. Because he isn’t, earth is his new home, and that’s perfectly fine. At least he thinks so. |
Now I was ready to write the real thing. I had a lot of prep before hand so surely I was ready. So I started writing and figuring derricks tale. I don’t have much to say about the writing of the story so here you can read it.
Out in space, a shuttle is headed toward earth containing an alien life-form that recently discovered a planet called earth. This creature is called Derrick, he is looking for a new home as he was excluded from his own planet. Derrick is a Derrickian life-form native to the dark side of the moon. This specific one has chosen to leave because it was exiled for being stupid by the standards of the species. He landed on earth and opened his door to the beauty of nature, he decides to explore.
During his exploration Derrick finds out how humans live and decides to observe one specific family. This family consisted of two tall creatures, but suddenly one of the humans starting expanding, then over the course of 9 months they got bigger and bigger until one day they shrunk. A new small ugly creature had arrived. Derrick wonders why they pay attention to it. It is annoying, loud, stupid and tries to eat everything. WHY WERE THEY GIVING IT SO MUCH LOVE! Derrick thought to himself why do they love that thing, I deserve their love. Why don’t I get that love, I hate that thing, I want to kill that thing, I want to destroy all of those creatures. I WILL DESTROY THEM ALL! This set Derrick out on a quest. A journey with only one outcome, to kill all babies.
First to deal with this one, the first baby he ever saw and the first he would ever kill. He planned for days and weeks crafting the most detailed and thought out plan ever known. He would put up an act as a stuffy and integrate itself into the family, and then make the move. Derrick weaved himself into their lives, first by mind controlling the baby and making it grab him so the parents just had to buy it. Then waiting until they left the baby all alone, carefully he snuck up behind the baby and… CHOMP! He devoured the child with one big bite. All these thoughts and emotions rushing through Derrick’s head the taste, the thrill, the joy, the fear. All these things, Derrick was thirsty for more. He needed more, he had developed a taste for it. A need, an addiction. And so began Derrick’s murder spree, he went around town hunting new families, one after the other, baby after baby, victim after victim, no child was safe, missing children, disappearances everywhere.
People started to speculate that someone was behind this. A murderer with a sick mind, who could this mystery man be. Word had spread throughout the city. Children were being hidden away, this was a problem for Derrick he kept finding it more and move difficult to wiggle his way into their lives, but this just made him want more. Years passed and Derrick was still at it, nobody knew the cause they only knew the consequence. Everybody was learning and working from home. The whole city was in hiding. But one day Derrick found a new child.
He did the usual routine of finding the family, learning all about them and getting into their life. But this family was different. There was only one big person, and they barely ever spoke. The small person was always locked in their room, and never did anything. He didn’t eat he didn’t play he didn’t have anything, not even the big pillow they sleep on. Derrick started to think this wasn’t a child. He was bigger and didn’t have much love, but he knew that it was a child when he got into his life. He adored Derrick treated him like the only friend he had. This was baffling to Derrick, he was receiving love.
This caused Derrick to think back, Derrick remembered what his childhood was like. It was so similar, he never spoke to his family, he had no friends, if only he had someone to love. This caused Derrick to re-think his actions. What had he been doing. Why was he killing these innocent things just because of his lacking parents. Why had he caused all of this carnage. What had he done! He was so scared, he was regretting his actions. He didn’t want it to be real. He didn’t want to live this way anymore. He wanted to change. Derrick decided to be friends with this boy. He learned his name, Todrick, he hadn’t had a second parent his whole life. He never had friends, and never had toys. This made Derrick feel awful, he wanted to explain to todrick what he had done. He thought he deserved to know.
He built a translation device to be able to explain to todrick what he was, where he was from, and what he had done. He explained to him that he was entirely immortal, but died in sunlight. Derrick was worried todrick would hate him and run away or kill him, but the complete opposite happened. Todrick was astonished he thought Derrick was so cool they played together and talked and cooked. They did everything together. After a few weeks of knowing each other, Derrick explained how to him the murder he had caused but explained that he had changed, todrick had made him realise what he had done. Todrick understood and really believed he changed but little did they know, Todrick’s parent was listening through the door.
They informed the whole city about what he did who he was and where he was. Now Derrick was faced with a challenge that caused much panic. How would he address the matter, would he run away or face the actions of his past. Derrick chose impending doom, he would confront the angry parents and try to explain himself. To confront the mob he would have to prepare himself, he needs to get their attention, but how. He decided to go head to head with them and just try to talk it out. The time had come for Derrick to face his past, he needed to scream (well technically he couldn’t scream but the translator could) the loudest he could. Doom was approaching in the form of a riot. There they were, the families of all his victims morphed into a ball of rage. He was screaming STOOOP! WAAAIIT! I CAN EXPLAIN! Nothing. They were like a bull to a red flag. Charging, getting closer and closer. But suddenly, in the distance you could hear a voice. Noooooo! Stooooop!
It was a race, the murderous mob of parents, or a small todrick. He tried his very best but he wasn’t fast enough. They grabbed Derrick by the legs and thrusted him up into the air. Everyone got a stab or a whack at the small creature, until finally the last two parents, the first of Derrick’s victims. They stared into Derrick’s eyes, face to face with the root of his murder but then. They ripped him in two.
Derrick lay cold on the the floor lifeless. Todrick ran over to his lost friend and toppled over straight onto his knees and started bawling. The angry mob heard his sobbing, they all turned around to see the boy crying his eyes out. This meant he had to have changed, he couldn’t be the same ruthless killer that he once was. Full of remorse those two parents that started it all walked over to comfort Todrick. Their shadows looming over the spit body cast a big enough shadow for Derrick to regain his powers. His two halve started moving together like magnets, slowing drifting along the floor. They started melding back together, merging to create a reborn form of Derrick.
Todrick had no idea his eyes still flooded with tears. Todrick felt a pat on his leg, he opened his eyes and still couldn’t see well. He wiped the tears from his face and burst with joy, still careful no to move as to take him out the shadow. Derrick picked up the translator and explained his whole story to the public. He told them everything about himself and helped them understand who he was. To this day Derrick still lives among those people, as if he is a citizen. He has a job to pay for Todrick’s food, he has friends that he spends time with and he even goes to book club on Wednesdays. He lives a normal human life on earth, living in a city in Ohio. At least for now……
So now the story was complete I had to make it into a movie because who reads books nowadays. So before I made the movie I had to hype it up with trailer. (By the way there isn’t actually going to be a movie but there will be a trailer). But first we had to find out what makes a good movie trailer, so I examined trailers carefully, and by that I mean I watched a couple videos, and noticed that it had to be exciting, but not too revealing. It had to be suspenseful but not confusing. And it needed to make people want to watch it and find out what happens. With all this information stored in my noggin I popped out this trailer for Derrick vs the world.
Finally I will return to the driving question. How can sci-fi/fantasy fiction help us imagine a different future?
I think that we can learn from the mistakes that these fictional characters make and improve our lives to make sure that they never happen to us. We can use these made up stories as vessels to convey our thoughts and problems with the world. We can use our imaginations to create a world where we want to be. If we write about a future that we want to be in we can escape a sad or lonely life.
Thank you for reading my blog (but I don’t blame you if you skipped some parts) I appreciate it. I hope you’ll read some more and have a nice day : )
Bye bye
Electrical operations
Waddup people of the World Wide Web.
I’m back with another BLOOOOG POOOSSSST!!!
We just finished another school project which mean I’m legally obligated to write this blog. The subject in question I science. If you didn’t know the semester change-over is coming up very soon so this will be my last PLP Science post ever. Tis oh so sad but alas we must push on and continue this post. Ok let’s get too it.
This project was named ‘Exciting Electricity’ which was all about electrical engineering. We learned all about wires and how to make circuits and it was really interesting. The driving question for this project was how does society rely on electricity and how can we generate in more sustainably. So let’s get too it. Again.
So I started off with pretty much no meaningful knowledge on the topic, fortunately in the lessons to come we would be educated on everything we needed to know. We first learnt about what sustainable energy is, to do this we first needed to know the different forms of energy generation. There are different ways to generate energy with some being sustainable, meaning non harmful to the environment, and some not. A few of the main ones are wind energy, solar energy, hydrothermal energy and fossil fuels. Fossil fuels being the most used but unfortunately it is not a sustainable source. We had the opportunity to chose our favourite energy generator and create an infographic on how it works and pros and cons of the method. I went with wind energy. I’m very proud of it.
There weren’t really any other keystones or things to be graded on specifically as this was a short project but we built up our knowledge circuits (the system of wires that gives something power) and currents in order to do the final project. We learned about different terms and measurements of electricity. If you have a circuit it’s either a parallel or a series circuit which means the is a flow (the movement of the electricity) that is only going in one direction and powers the whole circuit, or its a parallel circuit that sends a current (the flow of the electricity) to different sections of circuit so each part has its own power. I’m not just going to waffle on about all the different forms and measurement of electricity and circuits. But if you want to learn more you can research things online. All the details aren’t really necessary for the final project hitch was. 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁 A DIY operation board game! Now if that sounds crazy to you your not alone I was so confused when that happened. How the heck am I gonna make an entire board game. Well it’s more simple than it might seem. We just need a box, some wire, a light, something to take out, tweezers, copper tape and a human to operate on. Ok it’s not a real human but I could be with the power of imagination. The guide to the (semi) perfect operation game is at this link, if you wanna give it a shot visit the website.
https://learn.adafruit.com/low-tech-operation-game
I tried really hard but the wire wasn’t cooperating and kept falling out. So I couldn’t get a great video but from the spit second you can see it works. I wish I had more time to work on it but you get what you get and you don’t get upset. That said here is my creation.
To answer the driving question which was ‘How does society rely on electricity and how can we generate in more sustainably.’ Society as a whole relys way too much on electricity and power, to the point where if we lost it our brains would shut down and we wouldn’t be able to function. At the rate we are going with fossil fuels as our primary energy source we won’t be able to have this luxury forever, and either the planet will die or our sources will run out. We need to switch to a more sustainable provider of energy like wind or solar before our time runs out. Thank you for reading my final blog post of semester one and my last ever science blog post, this is a random kid on the internet signing off for the last time in science.
Byeeeeee!
Finding fun videos
People of the internet!
Tis time for another mini blog post. This one isn’t as mini as the last but still smaller than usual.
This mini project was called finding fun with videos and as you can infer it’s about making fun videos. We learned a bunch of cool editing techniques and had a lot of fun making cool little movies, now onto the blog post. (By the way there was no driving question for this project).
Ok so the first thing we did was learn how to make a jump cut. A jump cut is when you cut off a video at a specific time and then overlay a new video on top. To make it seem like someone disappeared or teleported. Me and my friends attempted to make a ‘ha ha funny video’ where we were doing a YouTube intro but then got sent to the back rooms by our camera man. Here it is. (Don’t forget to like and subscribe 👍)
Next we made a video with an AR (augmented reality) snow globe that had something inside, and a lil extra. AR is something that allows you to overlay pictures and object from a screen into the real world. Like is you wanted to see how a room would look with a picture in it before you put it up you could. Unfortunately I can’t show the video as it has my classroom in it (and I don’t want any creepy online strangers hunting me down) so I’m unable to show it.
Then we learned how to use a green screen. Now unless you’ve been living under a rock, or your really old, a green screen is a, well green backdrop that you can stand in front of to edit your background so you can edit a video or photo to seem like your not where you really are or add things to your room that aren’t there. Our group decided to continue the story of being trapped in the back rooms. Unfortunately the back rooms storyline end here because, well you’ll see why.
After that scary video I took a turn turn and went for more of a comedy vibe with another AR video. This time we needed to use emojis to tell a story in a short video. There isn’t much to explain here so here’s the video.
And finally the climax of this project. We had to mimic a viral/ popular video and create it as a. Drumroll please! 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁. STOP MOTION VIDEO! We only needed to make a 30 second video but I went above and beyond with a FULL. ONE MINUTE. VIDEO. I know I know how does he do it but I simply had a lot of time on my hands so I decided too because why not. I decided to use my Pokémon Lego and copy a realistic Pokémon battle. After a bit of searching and found the video I wanted. This is it.
Now if you watched it you might be thinking two thing. One there’s no Pokémon in that video. And two that video is 3 minutes long. Well the answers are, I’m going to add the Pokémon fighting, and, I cut down the video so I could keep my sanity intact. After much effort and around 5 hours I had finished my video. Here is my masterpiece.
I know I know you love it. It’s your most favourite thing ever (wait is that even correct grammar). Well that’s all I have for today so I’ll see you next blog internet person. GOODBYE!
Let’s Roll…… acoaster
People of the internet.
I am back with a mini blog post about a mini project. When I say mini I mean mini, because this project only took a week, so I’ll keep this short.
We were summoned by the CEO’s of screamorama (*cough* *cough* our teachers) to build the new best rollercoaster for their park. We had to stay within a budget and account for speed through kinetic and potential energy.
We learned what those were with the help of a simulation which allowed questionable things.
But it teach us the concept quite well.
Then I teamed up with my new partners Charlie and Luca to start planning the coaster. There were questions we had to answer like how would we build it, are we building a real rollercoaster and can we add a jump. The answers are no no and we’ll build it with plastic cups.
Now our concept was to ride down a chair, into a loop into another on the ground but we abandoned that after we realised the budget was too small so we went with a fast short drop of death that we called the rock slide. After great panic and stress we made something that we weren’t intending in but still turned out semi-good. Here it is
There was no driving question for this project and not much else at all so that’s it.
Bye.
Mp😢l
It is once again the time of year that I must do my mpol.
“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
If you are new here that stands for mid year year presentation of learning, in short I have to do a presentation to one of my teachers and my parents where I look back at what work I have done so far this semester. There is no driving question to be answered this blog so let’s get started.
SCIENCE
First subject I’ll review is science as I feel it has been my best class.
I have really liked science this year and it’s because our teacher miss kadi try’s her hardest to make us enjoy lessons and gives us fun tasks to do, some examples of this that I’m proud of are my bio accumulation gif
And my sexual reproduction puppet show.
Those are some things I’m proud of now for something I’m not proud of.
I don’t think my acting was very good in the mock news report my group made (this isn’t at all my group members fault I just didn’t learn my lines and kept looking at my script. If I could go back I would try to learn my lines and make it look more real. Here it is
HUMANITIES
Next class I’ll discuss is humanities. I feel this has been my worst class and it’s probably because I don’t really like English as a subject or really writing in general, I don’t think I had and outstanding work this year but I’m proud of my revolution on trial video. I didn’t have much of an acting job in this but I think I edited it all together quite well and I directed it as a good leader. The video shows a court case to decide if the French Revolution was effective or ineffective our side was ineffective here’s the video.
Now for the thing I’m not proud of this is a no-brainer for me, my book creator on the geography of the west. I didn’t enjoy this project probably because I didn’t go on the big trip to Alberta at the start of the year, people say this is what made the trip worth it and I think I agree because I didn’t understand most of the project. I was sick for one week and came back understanding nothing. The people who stayed home didn’t really get the help we needed and we just got put in the back of a science classroom. I don’t think I did well because I handed it in about a month late and didn’t do well in answering all the question. If you want to see it here it is.
MAKER
Next subject is maker. I mostly had fun in this class because we made lots of videos and films and all my favourite teachers were in this class. This semester it was almost all related to films which I love making. I’m proud of my “what inspires me video”, it’s shows who I am and you can basically get an understanding of what I’m like as a person from this video. I spent a lot of time on it and I think it turned out great. Here’s the video
I’m not really proud the goals section of the first maker project. I’m not much of a goal setting guy so I don’t really see the point. I would make a goal then forget about it. There’s nothing I can show to help you understand this part because we didn’t really make much but I doubt it would be interesting anyway. I just didn’t really understand this part and therefore didn’t enjoy it much.
Now all of the subjects are complete I would like to discuss my core competencies. For those of you who don’t know what these are in plp we have certain categories that you need to master to be the ultimate competency master. Just kidding these are things you need to be to be a successful person. They are communicating, collaborating, creative thinking, critical and reflective thinking, personal awareness and responsibility, positive personal and cultural identity and finally social awareness and responsibility. We have numbers for all of these to rank you understanding of them. I’ll go through them on by one.
COMMUNICATING
Personally I’m quite a quiet person when on my own, if I don’t know the people around me I won’t really speak up and spread my points and ideas unless I’m asked or need to take charge. If I’m with people I’m comfortable around I can speak up well but in unfamiliar setting in the shy kid. I don’t want to seem like “that guy” so I keep to myself and just go with what I’m told to do. I could definitely improve on this.
COLLABORATING
This is kinda like communication. I’m good when I know the people but terrible with people I don’t know. This makes me a good listener though and I’ll try to help out as much as I can. I try to not be a nuisance and just keep quiet but I know I shouldn’t do that. In the future I will try to be a better group member and participate more.
CREATIVE THINKING
I’m a thinker. I have the wildest and craziest ideas and thought and questions but I don’t have the confidence to share them. I come up with things I don’t even know where I got from but it’s part of what makes me me. I do a lot in my head and think about so much and I think it’s because of my ADHD. I’m quite a good creative thinker and I value that property.
CRITICAL AND REFLECTIVE THINKING
I’m pretty good at reflecting and criticizing my work, I’m able to look at things and give helpful ways to improve it to others and myself. Reflecting on work is a bit harder for me as I don’t quite understand it, I can re-think about what I’ve done but I don’t think that changes much. It just feels like looking at my work again. It’s probably just to see what can make things better and if that’s so I think I’m pretty good at that.
PERSONAL AWARENESS AND RESPONSIBILITY
I’m not very aware of myself in the sense that I don’t really plan ahead or think about the consequences if something goes wrong, for example I rely on my mum to wake me up and get me to school, if this doesn’t happen I would wake up late and not be able to get to school as I don’t know my way there. That also shows I don’t take much responsibility for myself and rely on others to help me do things. I can definitely Improve on this as a person which would make me a lot more well-rounded and independent. I don’t think very far ahead and I hope I can get better at this in the future.
POSITIVE PERSONAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY
I quite like myself and although that can be a bad thing I don’t think that much of myself. I’m happy with who I am as a person and I’m proud of where I’m from. As one of the few English people I know in Canada I feel very unique and special. I’m aware of my background and where I come from but I’m still able to improve my knowledge around this subject.
SOCIAL AWARENESS AND RESPONSIBILITY
When it comes to other people relying on me it doesn’t happen often but I mostly manage to do what I’ve been asked. I’m socially aware and can understand what’s right and wrong or acceptable or unacceptable but not much further than that. I’m able to be around other people and interact with them respectfully without fail and I can assist others in most environments which I think makes me a socially acceptable and semi-responsible person.
Thanks you for reading my MPOL blog post (if you made it this far) and for doing so here is a cookie.
🍪
It’s only a cookie emoji but I hope it finds you well.
Bubye!👋
The Revolution Solution (I guess)
Hello internet
Today I am going to talk about Revolutionary discoveries such as sliced bread, electricity and pizza. Just kidding although I was on to something with Revolutionary, that’s right this project was about revolutions (in my case the French one) and what starts them and ends them.
The driving question for this project was,
“How did revolutions bring down empires and change societies around the world?”
This is a big question for a small class but luckily we had time and perseverance on our side, but did I have confidence, well no but I’m was required to do it anyway.
First of all we need to learn about what makes a Revolution a Revolution. Luckily crane brinton a French historian from America decided to research into how a revolution starts and what the different stages of it are. (If you would like to learn more here is an image of the process of a revolution)
Now we know what a revolution is we found out the main focus of this project, we were going to perform a live court case deciding whether our assigned revolution was effective or ineffective. I was terrified for this because I do not like improv and our group was outnumbered four to six, but I was semi-prepared to do it.
To have a chance in this court case we had to make 3 main points to guide our argument in the form of an affidavit. This is a written statement backed up with evidence to assist you in court, we made a meh affidavit and we very ill prepared then on top of that our teacher had a baby with his wife and went on paternity leave which left us with a substitute who didn’t really know what we were doing, then the next week we had a new sub and we were no longer doing an improvised performance. This was great for our group because at this point we were lost and didn’t know what to do. We found out that we were doing a scripted video instead. This was going to be a lot easier because we could collaborate with the other class…. Right, well they didn’t seem to think that’s what we were doing this together which became a whole new struggle. This has been a lot of writing so here is a photo of a cute puppy, take a 10 second break.
Ok we are back. Change of plans we are no longer going by a script and instead filming a one sided video of our court case which would later be spliced together with the other group by a teacher (this is still yet to happen to my knowledge) this was the best possible news because we now could take our time write a script an act everything out in our own time, I could also edit things how I wanted them too be. We wrote the script film the videos and made the film this is the product of our hard work.
Go check out Ronan, Luca and Owen’s blogs they did great.
Now back to the driving question.
“How did revolutions bring down empires and change societies around the world?”
Revolutions cause political change like dissolution of a monarchy or the introduction of dictatorships, they also can cause disruption of an economy and havoc among citizens.
This can shake up societies even outside the revolution’s original country as places may fear it will spread to them. They can also start wars that have unneeded deaths, however they can have good side effects like giving a voice to the people and overthrowing corrupt leaders.
Ok bye
Here we have a wild documentary
Internet!!!
I am back and better than ever.
Now I have a question for you “what does James Cameron’s fantasy world of avatar reveal about society today?”. It’s a big question but that’s what I set out to answer this project. So let’s look back on what we learned in the past few months.
So first of all I hadn’t watched avatar so I was very scared when I learned that’s what the project was about, but then we watched the movie over the next four classes. Once we had finished the film we analysed it and extracted different themes like racism and colonialism and oppression, but what I chose to work around was corporate greed. I thought it would be a relatively simple and easy topic to do until I realised I had no idea who to interview luckily my teacher suggested a good person (who later cancelled on me but hey we don’t talk about that) that I could interview. Oh yeah that bring me to my next topic.
We had to schedule an interview to put in our (drum roll please) documentaries! I know how is a random kid gonna make a whole (donkey) documentary, well it isn’t one of those hour long David Attenborough documentaries it’s only 3 to 5 minutes. So now you know my task, make a document on corporate greed in avatar right, wrong we also need to link corporate greed in avatar to the real world. But that’s about it. No more surprises I promise.
First up we made a sheet saying what we would do and where we would film but most importantly who we would interview. My first choice was somebody from the museum of anthropology however when that didn’t work I remembered that one of my friends mum is indigenous and unbeknownst to me is a professor of anthropology at Capilano university so that’s even better. This is good because many of my points linked avatar to being like the Europeans taking the land of the indigenous populations of Canada.
To help with our films we learned about b-roll and storyboards. B-roll is basically footage you show in a video or film to help explain the topic or just make things more interesting, and a storyboard is a series of boxes that you draw in that tells the story in a more rough sense. This is what mine looked like although I kind of abandoned it because of its simplicity.
B-roll is sort of background footage that relates to what’s happening in our film, it is often pastes over a video that has speech in it. An example of this could be an interview of somebody speaking about McDonald’s and then without them finishing their sentence you cut to a video of a McDonald’s restaurant while you can still hear their voice speaking about the topic. It is essentially a video with audio over the top.
Finally it was time to build our documentaries after (not so much) planning, a little bit too quiet documentary was produced. This is what came out of those stressful hours.
Isn’t it just beautifully scuffed.
Anyway we aren’t finished yet, we have to do an EXHIBITION!!! Now for the new people of my blog an exhibition is a stressful time where family and friends come I to the school to view the entirety of PLP’s work. Now this was the grade 8’s first exhibition ever so we had to walk them through the process, luckily most of my grade 8’s wanted to do well however my other grade 9 was not very helpful in the planning so there was a lot of weight on my shoulders. Luckily for our group I had an lac block when the other grade nine class was talking with the grade eights so I was able to take charge and try and have our group do well. But there was one more surprise (sorry I lied about the no more surprises). I didn’t know it yet but we would have to be cooperating with grade 10’s that none of us knew (and if I’m being honest I was a little bit scared of) so when exhibition day came around it all went to (poop).
On exhibition day most of our stuff mage it but then our execution was a bit of a flop. The grade ten’s took charge and I didn’t know any of them so I was too scared to take charge and keep everything according to plan. We managed to cover most of our class room but the person who was supposed to make the board game didn’t have it, he apparently lost it and someone took it but I wasn’t buying it so we had a key part of our rooms missing and he wasn’t there for the exhibition so he wasn’t much help. Although with help of the teachers we had a somewhat adequate room that I was happy with.
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Sorry this is sideways
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Now this blog is coming to an end and the driving question must be answered. So lets look back at what we set out to answer and that was “what does James Cameron’s fantasy world of avatar reveal about society today?”. Well I think that it read also how society is imperfect in many was that we must fix. We may not be able to make everything right in the little time we have but have to at least try, all these thing like global warming, deforestation even racism are things that we humans are causing while not all of us are doing these things we can still try to stop them. We can make a difference, we can fight off the bad guys of the real world and we can fix what’s wrong with our ways.
But I’m just a kid on the internet so what do I know.
BYEEEE!!!
We have an eco SYSTEM people
Hello and welcome to Jurassic park
I wish
Today I’ll be talking about my science project called handle with care. This project was about everything that goes into and ecosystem, like biotic and abiotic factors the earths different spheres food webs and so much more.
I hope you liked it.
It’s fabulous isn’t it. I drew all of those.
I know my acting isn’t the best but we got it done.
