Since grade 8 now every year around this time of year we have a competition called a Destination Imagination. Destination Imagination or DI is a competition that is all about creativity and working as a team. As DI calls it, it is
“The Destination Imagination Challenge Program is a fun, hands-on system of learning that fosters students’ creativity, curiosity and courage through academic Challenges. Our Challenges blend STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education with the arts and social entrepreneurship. Students who participate learn invaluable 21st century skills as well as patience, flexibility, persistence, ethics, respect for others and their ideas, and the collaborative problem solving process.”
Since grade eight I have been in a different challenge every year. The first year I was in the engineering group where we had to create a structure that could hold weight and was under a certain weight. Here is a blog if you want to read it:
These past two years I had difficult times where I struggled. This year though I was determined to make the best out of the experience. I was placed into the engineering challenge, the challenge was that there was a maze and we had to have something removed from the maze as well as an eventhappen plus get out of the maze. That is why it was called the maze craze. Here is a video that explains it thoroughly:
I was in a group with six others they were Spencer, Sam, Calum, Kate and Izzy. We had trouble at first thinking of what direction to take the challenge. At first we thought of doing space but then we thought other teams would be doing the same so we decided to do a story about an officer and removing a bomb form the “building” or rather maze. Here are our sheets that we used to help narrow down our ideas.
We thought we had everything planned and ready to go but as the time came closer and closer to get everything done, we realized we were struggling. We had our script done and were happy with that, and we were also happy with how our story came out, here is the script:
Characters:
Grandfather – Spencer
Police 1 grandfather flashback- Sam
Police 2- calum
communicator/head of department: Isobel
Villain 1/undercover cop: Kate
Villain 2: Izzy
Materials
Police costumes
Villain costumes
Handcuffs
Fake weapons
Something that looks like a bomb
Backgrounds: spencer narration, bomb room, police station
Script
Opening scene
-Spencer enters-
Hey everyone, thanks for coming to the smith family reunion. Most of you know me as Rob. Everyone is having a lot of fun I see, and that’s good. But I just wanted to share a story that I have prepared . It was about 50 years ago today actually, when I went on my first mission on the NYPD Bomb Squad. So I’ll take you back to this day so I can tell you this story. My story starts outside the police station but I’ll tell you about the villains first.
FLASHBACK
-Kate and Izzy planting bombs scene-
– there are in a rush because the police is closing in on them. They are scrambling to plant bombs and hide-
Kate: Dépêche-toi, la police se rapproche. Qu’avons-nous à nous défendre?
Ok hurry up, the police are getting closer. What do we have to defend ourselves?
Izzy: lemme Check, but i don’t think I have anything. Ummmmmm…. oh! Look at this, I’ve been looking for these! (Pulls out bombs) I’ve got some bombs, I must’ve left them in my bag from last week!
Kate: Bien, alors. Mettons-les autour et puis se câcher
Alright then. Let’s put them around this apartment room and then hide
Izzy: Ok sounds good. Here take these ( hands Kate bombs)
-leave scene-
CHANGE SCENE TO POLICE STATION
-Sam and Isobel enter the scene-
-Sam’s first day of work-
-Isobel welcomes Sam to the job-
Isobel: hey guys, you must be rob and Thomas. Welcome to the squad. Here, I’ve got your gear, go ahead and put them in the back.
Isobel gives them their jackets, equipment and badges –
Sam: Awesome thanks
Calum: Ugh it’s heavy
Isobel: Yeah that’s because it has our bomb seeking rover. You said you specialized in electronics?
Calum: yeah…
Isobel: Then it should be easy to use. I’ve got to go, see you later
(ALARM GOES OFF)
Calum: What’s that?
Isobel: That’s a code red! We don’t have anyone else on duty, and you guys scored really well in the academy, so, guess what, it’s your first mission. Get in that squad car and they will brief you on the way. Go, go, go!
Sam: Thomas, let’s go!
-Scene change to building-
Spencer walks in, Izzy and Kate are hiding in maze –
Spencer: we pulled up to a run down looking apartment building, two storeys high. Thomas and I were pretty nervous. The cop who drove us out told us that there were two fugitives hiding somewhere on the top floor, and that they were pretty sure there were some hidden bombs as well somewhere in the maze of the room. Thomas would be driving a programmed rover through the room, and it’s meant for finding bombs. I was there to support and protect him. Our police captain was on the radio giving us instructions
(Spencer leaves the scene)
Sam and Calum enter the maze –
Izzy and Kate are in the maze hiding and setting up bombs –
Isobel: Ok guys It’s safe to enter, good luck
Calum: here we go. Stay close
Spencer: We entered the building and it was all dark. It was completely silent as we crept through. Thomas was carefully watching the video display from the rovers camera.
Sam: hey is that something in that corner over there?
Calum: umm let me check. (ROVER DRIVES TO EVENT SQUARE 1) Yes that’s a bomb. Good thing we found it. I’ll take it and drop it outside once it’s defused.
Sam: Ok nice work. We’re doing good. Keep driving through and keep your eyes peeled for anything else.
Isobel: Good work team. Keep on going. Follow the rover and work your way through slowly.
-rover keeps moving through and Sam and Calum follow-
Calum: Do you think the criminals are still in here?
Sam: Definitely, all the other ways out are covered.
Calum: Okay the next area looks clear, I’ll move the rover through.
rover reaches next event square, the transformation one –
Calum: wait a minute, the rover isn’t moving. Wait, what does this button do?
-Pushes button, lights turn on-
Calum: oh, that’s good. It’s still not working though. I’ll go grab it. Hang on
Sam: no, thomas wait!
Sam and Calum freeze, Izzy and Kate unfreeze –
Izzy: Did you hear that? I think it was the police…
Kate: oh no isn’t that just great
Izzy: I know perfect timing
(Kate looks over at rover)
Kate: hey What’s that thing moving over there?
Izzy: It looks like an… RC Car
Kate: it’s right near the bomb, maybe we should set it off
Izzy: good idea, going off in 3,2,1…
-Calum walks forward-
BOOOM
-Bomb goes off, explosion sound through speakers-
-Bomb kills Calum. Calum lies on floor-
Spencer – The bomb explosion turned out the lights and I couldn’t see Thomas anymore. I knew he’d been hit, and my ears were ringing so loudly I could barely stand. I barely heard the captain speaking in my earpiece.
Isobel: What happened rob? Rob? Get the rover out now, we need to get you and Thomas out of there.
Sam: I can’t see Thomas, but I’ll get the rover out. Everything is falling apart!
Kate: We gotta find an escape route RIGHT now!
Izzy: there! That window! Go, go go,
-Izzy and Kate run-
-izzy and Kate get caught by the police-
-Spencer enters, but no one freezes-
-Sam is still moving through maze, depending on how fast the rover is at this point. And Izzy and Kate are being held by police-
Spencer : At this point, I was almost out of the building. I could see the criminals getting arrested through a hole in the wall, and I ran for it. Then I was safe. Safe again.
-Flip background back to family reunion one-
Spencer: And that was the end of my first mission in the field. I’d lost my best friend that I’d known since I was 6, and that was … crushing. I will always remember him as my best friend and a great police officer.
At this point we still didn’t have have a working maze traveler. Calum one of our group members said that he could get it done but we were struggling. It wasn’t until the night before that we had a rc car and even then it wasn’t correctly working. In the mean time while Calum was working on that it the rest of our team was working on the props and background.
Then came to the day of the competition! This year it was at Seycove so I felt like we had an advantage. This was our schedule along with the other Seycove teams;
We were up against the grade nines from seycove as well, also they were the only other team in our grade. So we knew we were getting either first or second. Here are some pictures of my team presenting:
During the performance some things did go wrong for example the car didn’t work so we pushed it with our feet. Also we didn’t show of our team choice elements very well and that showed in our scores.
Because of these reasons we did end up getting second out of two. For provincials we know what we are going to fix and improve upon, one of them being having an actual working rc car. I feel for provincials we will do better by being more prepared, maybe even win?
Recently in science we have been learning about chemistry. Chemistry is defined as “the branch of science that deals with the identification of the substances of which matter is composed; the investigation of their properties and the ways in which they interact, combine, and change; and the use of these processes to form new substances.”
This is a mind map of what I knew at the beginning.
Compared to what I learned by the end of the unit. As you can see I learned a lot and that was thanks to the project we did. We were to design an experiment explaining chemical reactions and also test our experiment. We did this in partners and my partner was Claire. At first we wanted to take into the aspect of finding out if there was lead in lipstick. We saw that there was flaws in this though so we changed it to finding out if there is copper in cheap jewelry. Here was our write up:
Inquiry question:
Is the fake ring made out of copper?
Predications/Hypotheses:
We predict that the ring is made out of copper and we will see that in the experiment because it will react to turn the liquid blue and possibly form a salt.
Chemical equation:
4HNO3(I)+Cus(s)—Cu(NO3)2(s and aq)+2 NO2(g)+2H2O(I)
Copper plus nitric acid makes copper nitrate salt and nitrogen dioxide
Reaction:
The copper nitrate salt that forms is a deep blue color or will just turn the liquid blue. The nitrogen dioxide is a maroon vapor but is only seen if the experiment is done with a very high concentration of nitric acid.
Materials needed:
Copper
Low end ring
Two beakers
Nitric acid
Experimental design:
We first will fill both beakers with nitric acid
We will put the copper in one beaker and observe the reactions
We will record our observations
We will then place the ring in the other beaker
We will observe and record our observations
Compare the copper to the ring
Answer our question
Observation:
Nothing happened at first because the concentration of the nitric acid was low. The copper wire mostly dissolved and the liquid around it turned blue. This is exactly what we predicted would happen to the copper. The copper ring was coated in a thin layer of silver to make it look like real jewelry. The silver reacted with the nitric acid to create silver nitrate, the chemical equation is 3Ag(s)+4HNO3(aq)→3AgNO3(aq)+NO(g)+2H2O(l). The copper in the ring did not react with the nitric acid.
Conclusion:
The copper wire was definitely made out of copper and reacted the way we excepted it to. It can not be confirmed if the ring was made out of copper but we can confirm that the coating is silver.
Recently in math class we have been looking at algebra tiles. More specifically algebraic expressions. We have been doing this for a few months and learning all of the steps needed to solve these difficult equations.
For the project we had to create a math game that shows we learned about factor expressions, expanding expressions as well as making perfect squares. These are all important aspects to algebra and through the project we had to make I learned a lot about these aspects of math. We were to do this in partners and mine was Hannah, we worked well together and had fun working on the game. At the beginning we didn’t know where to take the project.
This was the first draft for the game:
We saw that there were flaws in this draft so we improved the rules here are our rules:
Goal:
The goal of the game is to get to the finish line on the board first and collect the most points.
Rules:
You start out by each player rolling the number di and who ever has the highest numbers gets to start.
Then you roll the number di again to move forward
The game board is full with red and blue squares if you land on a blue square you get a positive point, and a red square negative point
If you land on a red square you have to pick up an equation card. If you solve the equation before the time runs out you get 1 point if you don’t you get a negative point.
If you land on a blue you create an equation for your opposing player by using the number di and the equation di twice. If the opposing player gets it right they get a point.
Anytime you solve an equation and it’s a perfect square you get two points
Points are tracked on the individual note pad where you write out your negative and positive points in the columns and candle them out.
Materials:
Game board
1 di
Blue and red algebra tiles
Equation cards.
Figures
Note pad
Disruption is found every where around us from people to technology it is all a disruption to the way we live. That is what we have been looking at for the past few months, how technology disrupts our world. We learned about this through California and more specifically Silicon Valley, that’s why we went to California which you can read about here.
We went to places such as Twitter , Google and Apple. It was truly amazing to visit these huge tech companies that influential our lives massively.
Twitter HQ
Googleplex
Apple Park
While we were in California we also had to do a project loooking more in depth at these disruptions. We did this project in partners, my partner being Sam. Over the coarse of the project I feel we worked well together though we could have improved our communication skills since at times it felt like we had different ideas of how we wanted our videos to end up. We had the choice to decide what way we showed this, we could choose from puppet shows, photo journal, podcast and video. Sam and I decided to go with creating a video as we feel it would best showcase our place. The place we chose out of California that we visited and showed disruption was High Tech High.
High Tech High
If you want to read more about my experience at High Tech High read this post.
At the beginning of this project we weren’t sure what way we should take it. Eventually we came up with the idea though of looking at how HTH is disrupting the education system around it. Our thesis ended up being: With the new ideas that High tech high is showing in their school, they have changed the education system in the community around them and eventually worldwide. After getting the thesis we continued to research HTH and plan out what we needed to do once we got to California.
It was then time to travel to California!
We went to high tech high a few days into the trip. We got lots of different angles of the school as well as interviews so we could learn more about it. It was an amazing experience to be able to see how other students experience school.
One of the projects they did
When we got back we then worked on our script for our video. We spent a few days on this and then we got to working on our iMovie. Here is our first draft:
We knew we had improvements we needed to make such as adding different clips and making the transitions smoother. That’s what the next and final draft was for:
This was a really interesting aspect to our unit on disruption, but we weren’t done there. We then had an essay that we knew would be the final step to this unit. Our essay was all about how technology is a disruption. This was a synthesis essay which is basically using sources to support your argument. I decided to focus on privacy on social media and how that has changed through history. We had a week to prepare and get the information we needed to complete the essay. We made essay outlines and this is mine:
This really helped me get my ideas ready and the info ready for the essay. One thing we were supposed to include no matter what was the book we read called Little Brother. This was a book about San Fran and the government taking over after a terrorist attack. So with that we had two classes to complete our essays, I was ready to write!
Technology as a Disruption
Isobel DeVille
February 28, 2018
The first social media platform was called six degrees and connected people to there friends and family by sending messages and posting them to a bulletin board. From the very beginning social media has changed us and effected the way we live. As technology continues to take over this is becoming an increasing problem within all of social media and technology in general. Worldwide technology is evolving in negative ways such as Russian bots who are taking over social media, taking away your privacy and changing the world that we live in currently.
Social media is changing the way we live, from communication to education it is all effecting us in positive and negative ways. For example Google created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google is such a huge influential company that has changed the way we go about our lives. One hundred years ago you wouldn’t be able to simply “google it” meaning open up a web page type in a question a find millions of responses but rather you would have to go to the library and research it. In this aspect technology has made our lives better and easier to live. Another example of how social media is changing our lives is Twitter. Twitter was created as a platform where you could share anything you wanted with no censorship. That’s an issue currently though as they are considering creating a censorship against topics such as terrorism. David an employee from twitter explained that there is great divide within the company as there are so many differing opinions as to whether it’s taking away freedom of speech. This shouldn’t be an issue since technology is such a powerful tool and yet we are all taking advantage of it.
Russian bots are yet another increasing problem as they are taking away your privacy and changing the way you interact on social media platforms. A bot is defined as a robot and are used to “wrap assigned ideas around the most personal stories” by spreading information and many times are set up by trolls who are real people but have a reason to spread rumours or change minds so they use bots. As Ben Nimmo says “ it’s like a plane flying on auto pilot.” This is changing the way you use social platforms because they are influencing what you see, read and talk about. For example on twitter Russian bots are said to have helped with the 2016 USA presidential election. “Accounts and bots on Twitter and Facebook engaged in a systematic routine of promoting misinformation and propaganda-style messages — ostensibly to praise Trump and denigrate is then-opponent, Hillary Clinton.” Business insider Bryan Logan. This election changed the world we live in and possibly how we continue to live and it all could be because of Russian bots. This is such a huge problem that should not be happening and needs to be fixed.
“In the 1970’s, congress passed a law to make a particular form of subliminal advertising illegal because it was believed to be morally wrong. That advertising technique is child’s play compared to the kind of personalized manipulation that companies do today”- Harvard news from the article Privacy in the internet be very afraid analyst says. Privacy through history has become increasingly complicated. Many people think they are protected and on the internet are safe but in reality they aren’t. For example cookies on sites, cookies can follow you around and track exactly what you are doing. They can see who your friends are as that is one thing many people don’t think about when you say privacy. Through all of that information they can tell exactly who you are and things like where you live or even what you like and dislike. Another example of privacy in a wider aspect is devices watching you through cameras. In a podcast about this issue they say that though it may not be likely that people are actually watching you through the camera they will look at what you look up, what apps you use, what your friends are doing and even what you have recently bought. Though this may not be as bad as watching you through your device it is still scary to know that you are always being watched. A great example of this is in a book called Little Brother written by Corey Doctorow. Within the book the government is watching exactly what people are doing so they have to find new ways around this issue. Truly privacy is something that needs to be protected and yet simply isn’t.
Social media is defined as “websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking”. We have changed as people and society as social media becomes larger. It is changing the way we interact with other people, the way we look at them as well as taking away our privacy. Overall we have to be careful and use this powerful, influential tool for the better.
This essay I found very interesting to learn about and I am proud of the essay that I produce by the end of the two classes we had. Overall I learned a lot from this unit and had a great time on the feild study that helped us learn all of this.
