Maker

Applied design and technology skills, work with the iPad

What’s Your Story?

jacksonc Maker 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome back to another blog! This is my first one for maker this year and it was on a really fun unit, film and goal setting! In this project we were given a book to help us with our goal setting called “What do you really want?” We also made a series of videos to help teach us the different aspects of film. In this post I will include the three different videos that I made, as well as various activities from my goal tracker, like my goal ladder. This was all so we could answer our driving question, “How can I use my video skills to tell a story?” 

Goal tracker

Our goal trackers were more or less a journal of sorts that we would do our activities in. I think that the two most important things that we did in our goal trackers were our goal ladders and talking about SMART goals. A SMART goal stands for specific, measurable, actionable, relatable, and timed. This is important because a SMART goal is more or less the essence of what every goal should be to help you to achieve it. The other thing that was major was the goal ladder. This is something that I will talk more about later. 

Videos

For each video, there was a specific aspect of film that we were really trying to incorporate. The first video was about us learning out main tool, Clips, and it was also about what inspires me. This was probably the easiest of the videos, only because we could just use videos we already had. I think I did a good job at getting all the necessary information across but my story aspect of it could have been a lot better. 

Check out the video on Cam’s YouTube channel here

The second video that we did was our silent film. The main focus for us was the shots and angles that we used. To make this video, me and my group, Cam and Makenzie, took a story about someone achieving their goals from the book, and put it into an Old-Timey style with all the angles we had learned. We decided on doing a story about a kid and karate, that I think turned out very well. The one thing that I think we could’ve done better would have been to make certain parts, like the train montage, a bit longer and showcase more of the angles that we needed. 

The final maker video that we made was about how to set goals. It was also about us using all of our skills that we’ve worked on throughout the project to showcase a story about, you guessed it, goal setting. In this video me and my group, Tom and Evangeline, took a story about one of us achieving a goal and keyed it out onto a storyboard. We then spent the next day or so filming and editing until we had a product that was ready to be presented. To end this all off, our class had a mini viewing party where we watched all the group’s videos. The main thing that I think we could have done better with the video would have been to have our goal ladder clearer and more of a main part. 

Goal ladder

My goal ladder something that I did within my goal tracker. In my goal ladder, I chose a SMART goal from my goal tracker and really broke it down. I had to lay it out in 10 different steps with dates on when I wanted to get each step done. The goal that I decided to do was to build a home gym in my garage. This goal is fairly short term, since I could get it done in about a month or two. The only problem that I’ve ran into with my goal so far, is that I haven’t had enough time to start it properly. I’ve done the first 3 steps, but not thorough enough. 

In the end, I think that I did a good job of using my videos to tell a story. I learned about how different angles can really help get different things across, like using an angle to make a scene more dramatic. I also learned about, and was able to make, storyboards. A storyboard is an amazing way of planning out your story to make it easier to know what you’re doing, instead of just going in blind. My best example was the final we did. In it, I was able to use all of our strategies to make a video with a clear story. 

How I’ve Done So Far

jacksonc Humanities, Maker, Scimatics 0 Comment

Hi and welcome to my mPOL. Before I even get started, I’d like to make the mPOL declaration. “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.” Now that I’m done with that, lets get into the mPOL. In this first semester, I have changed and grown a lot as a learner. Because of my PLP classes, Scimatics, Humanities, and Maker, I have learned new ways to learn. 

The driving questions for this mPOL are “How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year?” And “How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year?” I’m going to be using past projects and my learning plan to show how I’m doing now and what I want to work on in the second part of the year. 

Learning Plan

Some of the things that I put in my learning plan are different to what I am doing now. One of the things that is different is a bunch of the Scimatics stuff. I actually feel that I have followed my learning plan, at least with the growth section. I found that with the more recent work and project we’ve been doing, I’ve really been working on the science portion as well as the math. This was a big thing for me because I found that when I put more work into the part that I have a bit more trouble with, I have some results that were a lot better then before. I actually would have added this in my strength section now. For the other subjects, I feel that, for the most part, it is pretty accurate for me right now. 

One thing that I want to work on with my learning plan to reach some of these targets is to really work hard on building the habits that I talked about. The ones that I think are the most important are the ones where I talk about having set time for work and working on things that aren’t due for a while. I’ve for sure gotten a lot better with these things, but I still find myself getting distracted. I really need to start taking these work times a lot more seriously so I don’t end up doing all the work at the last minute. If I do these things, then I think that the outcome will be work that is done a lot better and that I’m a lot happier with. 

Maker

The first thing that demonstrated my learning growth was actually the first project that we did this year. This project was the Me as a PLP Learner project. The reason that this demonstrated my growth as a learner is because, going into this, I knew almost nothing about PLP and the way that I would be learning. In this project I learned how to properly use apps like basecamp and showbie. I also learned things like why it really is important to apply what you are learning to the real world and why it’s important to reflect on your work. The reason that it’s important to reflect on your work is because, if you don’t reflect, the work wont stick with you and you wont really learn because, as we learn in PLP, you don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on experience. Another big reason that this showed my growth as a learner is because of my Big Life Journal. My BLJ made my think about who I am and where I want to be. This really got me Thai king about the work that I have to put in to get there and it motivated me to work harder then what I was before.

The other Maker project that I’m going to talk about is the Constructing Creative Communication project. In this project I learned about a lot more amazing tools and apps that I have access to. I also learned that there are many different ways that I can express myself and my learning. The reason that this demonstrated my growth as a learner is because, going into this project, I would sometimes have trouble expressing my work and this project really helped show me some ways to do that. The reason that this is important is because, if the work I do is more fun and memorable then it will stick with me a lot better. 

Humanities 

The humanities project that I’m going to talk about is the medium is the message project. This was the project where we worked with local businesses to create advertisements for them.  This demonstrated my learning growth in a number of ways. The first way is that I started learning why it is important to revise your work. I learned that the client, your team, the teachers, and even you wont always be happy with the work you did so you have to learn to take constructive criticism to improve it.  

Scimatics

The scimatics project that I had the most learning growth with was the laser laws project. This was the most recent project we did in scimatics. In this project we learned about the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection and how we can use them. For the end product we made a big laser display to prove the Pythagorean theorem and the law of reflection. This showed my growth as a learner because I found that, with this project, I actually learned a lot that I didn’t know about science and math. Normally, when I go into a new project or subject, I have at least some idea of what I’m doing from past things, but I had absolutely zero idea what anything was. By the end of the project, I knew how to do these things easily. I think this really showed my learning growth and it had some really cool outcomes. 

In the end, I think that I have grown a lot with my learning. I think that the examples that I’ve given, with my different subjects, has shown that I have really changed since the start of the year, and that I’m still changing and growing with my learning. I think that since the start of the year I’ve really improved even with things like my teamwork, my responsibility with my work, and the way that I revise/look back on my work. I think that to sharpen my learning plan I would have to do a lot more work having specific times to get work done and what work I’m doing in that time. 

Etiquette on the Trails

jacksonc Maker 0 Comment

Welcome to another one of my geek out blog posts! Today I’m going to be doing 4 things you should know about mountain biking trail etiquette. I would recommend reading this if you are new to mountain biking because if you don’t know this, it could make some people really mad.

Thing #1

The first bit of etiquette that you should learn is to get off the middle of the trail. Say you are waiting for someone to catch up, or you are stopping to look at a feature, you should always make sure that you, and your bike, are off the trail as much as possible. This is because if someone was coming down the trail, you don’t t want them to crash into you. Even if you crashed, unless you can’t, you still want to try to get off the trail as quick as possible so you don’t cause more people to crash. 

Thing #2

The next bit of etiquette you have to learn is on two-way trails. These can be tricky, especially when they are skinny, so to make it a bit easier the person that is going downhill should always go slower then normal and let the people going uphill have the right of way. The people going uphill can do their best to help get out of the way, and they shouldn’t take up the whole trail, but it is really up to the person going downhill.

Thing #3

The third thing you should know about bike etiquette is not to snake. This applies a lot more to jump trails and dirt jumps, but it is good to know no matter what. Snaking is when you cut in front of the person in front of you. This will really make people mad. The best way to avoid this is to ask the people in front if they are going. This is a really easy way to avoid making anyone mad. 

Thing #4

This isn’t really biking but it’s definitely something that you need to know. If you are hiking on a trail that’s made for mountain biking, you have to get out of the way. People on bikes are going to be coming down there fast, and you don’t want to get in their way. If you are hiking on a biking trail, stay off the trail as much as possible. The best way to avoid this is to just not hike on trails that are meant for biking.

Well, there you go. Hopefully, with this knowledge, you wont make people mad on the trails. If you want to see some more things on bike etiquette you can check out this website. 

Photo Time!

jacksonc Maker 4 Comments

Welcome to my geek out post #3. Today is a bit different because I’m not going to be talking as much about biking. Today we had to take a photo or drawing of our thing that we did and talk about it. 

The photo I’m using is a drawing that I did of mountain biking. It’s based of a photo of my on some local trails. One small thing to note with this is that the bike I drew is actually my old bike. My current bike is a newer version of a Santa Cruz nomad, while the bike in the photo is a Rocky Mountain. The trail is one of the many, many local trails that are not on the map. It’s a trail that has many rock rolls and steeper sections. If you want to see some of the other local trails, then click here! 

The Original Photo

I’m pretty sure that for my next post I’ll be able to get back to talking about mountain biking. I’m most likely going to do a post about some sort of comparison or maybe even a Q and A.  

The Different Ways to Ride

jacksonc Maker 2 Comments

Welcome to part two of my geek out blog post! Today I’m going to be doing a bit of a comparison. As you may or may not know, there are quite a few different types of biking. Every different type of biking has a different kind of bike, style, and terrain that goes with it. In this post I’m going to cover the main ones that you should know about.

The first kind of biking, the kind that I do, is enduro. Enduro riding is where you ride your bike up the mountain then ride down technical trails, sometimes with more climbs thrown in there. In a racing scenario the starting uphill is not timed but the second you start the actual trail it it timed, every if there are uphill parts on the trail. In every enduro race there are multiple stages with different climbs and trails. You do not get timed in between the stages. Enduro is a pretty common type of riding, especially in places like the North Shore where there are little to no shuttle services. This forces riders to climb and ride in a more enduro way. The kinds of bikes that you use for enduro riding is pretty cool. Enduro bikes are very light and easy to use on uphill but they are also made to go fast and take big impacts on trails. 

The next kind of biking is downhill. Downhill biking is actually pretty similar to enduro except for a few main differences. The biggest difference is that with downhill, you don’t climb. You get shuttles up or you can take chair lifts, if the mountain you are riding on has one. With races, there is no climb at the start, or on the trail, and you only get timed on the downhill. The downhill bikes are the strongest and heaviest of all the bikes. Downhill bikes are built for pure speed downhill. 

The final kind of biking that I’m going to talk about is slope style. Slope style is very different from enduro and downhill. Slope style is a kind of biking where you only do tricks. The trails will normally just be a series of big jumps and drops where riders can get a lot of air time and do some very insane tricks. Instead of races there competitions where they are not timed, but they are given a score and rated by judges. The bikes are very small and are built so you can do bigger tricks, like backflips and tail whips, a whole lot easier. 

There are still many kinds of biking that I didn’t cover, like cross country and free ride, and I’ll try and cover them as soon as I can. I love the fact that there are so many different kinds of riding so there really is something for everyone. 

How I became a Mountain Bike Geek

jacksonc Maker 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome back to my blog! After an extended winter break, were right back at it with new projects and, of course, new blog posts. The current project that I’m working on, this one, is going to be quite a bit different. Instead of doing a project then a post, this project is to write blog posts about something that we “Geek out” about. Over the next few weeks, you will be hearing a lot about a thing that I really love. The thing that I geek out about is mountain biking.

 

For those of you who don’t know what mountain biking is, it is more or less the most fun adrenaline rush that you can get. Mountain biking is when you ride a special kind of bike, that is built to withstand rocks, roots, and big impacts, on different kinds of trails/terrain. The trails can be steep and technical, smooth with jumps, and everything in between. The kinds of trails that you ride can also depend on the kind of riding you do. 

You may be wondering how I got so into mountain biking that I’m now writing blog posts about it. Well, about 4 years ago I moved from Toronto to Vancouver. Before I moved, I had never even seen a mountain and I could still barely ride a bike. My dad has a friend out here that he hadn’t seen since college that is an extreme mountain biker. So, when we moved here my dad and his friend reconnected and my dad’s friend took him on a bike ride. When my dad got home he started telling me about the crazy trails and how fun it all was, then proceeded to buy a mountain bike. With how much that my dad was talking about it, I knew that I had try it. So I started saving money and soon enough I got my first bike. From the second that I took it to my first trail, I knew that I was hooked. Ever since I’ve been biking every chance and I just recently sighed up for my first bike races. 

That’s the story of how I was introduced to mountain biking. Over the next few weeks more posts like this will be coming out with more information on mountain biking. If you want to see what some of my classmates are geeking out over, then press here and select a student in grade 8. 

Constructing Creative Communication Part 2

jacksonc Maker 1 Comment

Welcome to part 2 of this project (you can check out part 1 here)! This is the part of the project where I attempted to lean how to take amazing photos that communicate different emotions. This was a very fun, interesting, and different way to answer our driving question of “Why is it important to use technology to further improve our ability to communicate and to think creatively?”

 

The first thing that we did in this project was a lot of work with getting used to some of the tools that we’ll be using. We also revisited some of the things from past projects, like the rule of thirds from our advertising project (you can check out the work that my group did here). We started taking photos and building on more skills like background/foreground and photo editing.

 

Another thing that we did, that was probably one of my favourite things, was manufacturing mood. This really got us working with more angles and got us using filters and editing to really start enhancing our photos. The mood that I had to capture in this image was joy. To do this I really tried to show the most joyful time of year using an extreme angle and making bright, happy colours pop.

 

The last, and best, thing that we did was making a gif. We learned how to use some simple apps that we have been using all year in a new way. We learned the transitions, animations, and editing needed to turn a bunch of pictures into a gif.

In part 2 of Constructing Creative Communication, Herzog, I really started to learn how to express myself in different ways. I started learning that the angle and the editing that you do with a photo can really make you feel different things when you see it. I think that I have started to learn how to do all this. So it’s time to answer the driving question of “Why is it important to use technology to further improve our ability to communicate and to think creatively?” To answer this you need to know that it is very possible to communicate without all of this fancy technology, but to really improve it you can use filters and other tools that you can only get to use with all this.

Constructing Creative Communication Part 1

jacksonc Maker 0 Comment

Hi and welcome back to my blog! In my Maker class, we’ve been working on a new and super fun project. This whole project has been about art, drawing and photography. The Carr section, the first part that I will be talking about, has been about drawing and graphic design. The other half, that will be in my next post, is about photography. For this project our driving question has been “Why is it important to use technology to further improve our ability to communicate and to think creatively?” this has been an interesting Driving question because it is the same one for both segments of this project, meaning that we will get two different perspectives on it. 

                 

The first thing that we did with this project was really to just get used to the tools that we had to use. The only drawing app that we were allowed to use was Sketches Pro. We started with some simple use of colour, lines, and shapes. We then tried to do some simple letter art and would later go on to try doing our names. This was very helpful because we started to get used to the tools, some I didn’t know about until I did this. 

Another important thing that we worked on was perspective. This was important because if the perspective of something is off, then the whole drawing looks strange. Because of how precise this had to be, it made it a lot harder. This was especially the case if you don’t have a clear horizon line to work off of. 

The final part of the project was probably the most fun. To start it off we had Chloe Devine zoom in and answer some questions for us. Chloe is a professional graphic designer that is currently doing work with logos. This was perfect because that was our last project, to create a logo. The logo was for an imaginary company that we created. The company needed to have a colour scheme, a slogan, and a certain product or service it provided. I choose to do a sport shop called Coast to Peak Sport Shop. It’s slogan was “From coast to peak we’ve got you covered” and the colour scheme was mostly blues and pinky colours. 

So, why is it important to use technology to further improve our ability to communicate and to think creatively? It’s important because it is an Important skill to be able to communicate with more than just words. Sometimes, it is easier to say something with an image, and these tools and apps that we have access to can make it so much easier, if you know what you’re doing. If you can’t get the perspective right or there is no colour or shading, then you can communicate the wrong message. It’s like if you’re building a house, instead of writing everything out you can just draw a blueprint. If you get something wrong, then the whole house could be wrong. In the end, part 1 of this project has been a really fun experience that has started to show me why it is important to use technology to further improve our ability to communicate and to think creatively.

Me as a PLP learner

jacksonc Maker 0 Comment

In this project we have done a series of things to answer the deriving question of How Do I Build And Strengthen The PLP Learning Team? This driving question is more or less asking what makes you unique in a learning environment and how can you apply that to the PLP team. This project was sort of our right of passage into the PLP team. It gave us an understanding of what future projects will look like. This project was also used to show us three things that we will need to know for the rest of our time in PLP. These three things are how to use our iPads to grow knowledge, how to become independent thinkers with PBL (project based learning), and why/how we are connecting our learning to real world experiences. To help us learn this we had 4 main things, the Big Life Journal, the User Manual, the Team Member Contract, and the keynote guided tour.

Big life journal is a journal that is asking us questions about who you are as a person. You need to know this because if you don’t know who you are and what your life goals are, then you have no chance of discovering who you are as a learner. Is you know what you love and want to do you can transfer that over to your learning. Later on in this project we had to pick our three favourite parts of the BLJ to improve and put into our keynote presentation (more about that later).

Our user manual was a way of telling other people about you, as a learner and a person. For the user manual we had to take our mentor text (the user manual that our teachers did) and make ours look as close to it as possible. The user manual had to include a lot of facts about ourselves like our age, some of our settings (different ways we act), warnings about us, and ways to maintain optimal performance, aka how to keep me happy.

Another thing that we did was the team member contract. The team member contract is a page that we made on our learning portfolios that is a promise to all our future team members. In it we talk about how we work as a team and what we will and wont do while in the team. Mine was mostly talking about how I organize people and take charge, a nicer way of saying that I am bossy, and the promise I made was that I would do my best to listen to everyone and not only use my ideas.                            Link to my contract

The final, and biggest thing that we did was the Keynote Guided Tour. Our task for this was to take everything that I just talked about, plus a few more things, and put it all into a presentation that we showed to all of the PLP 8 parents. Aside from the things I already talked about, I also included my physical representation and my I Am things. With my physical representation I had to pick one of three boxes that was filled with random things and I could only use that to make something that showed who I am as a learner. For this I made a little person holding a list and with a lightbulb. For my I Am WordPack I had to put down things that people should know about me, while with my I Am statement I put down something that people know about me just by looking at me. Once we had put together this whole presentation we showed it to that PLP 8 parents by setting up a themed area with our table groups. Me and my group (Cameron, Ronan, Kate, Julia, and Luca) had a sport themed area. The way that it represented our learning was that we work as a team, like a sport team. After presenting our tours we received feedback from our parents and then we were officially PLP learners.

With this project I have had a lot of different strengths and stretches. My strengths throughout this project have been being able to use my iPad in a way where I can really start to make things look really cool. I think this shows with my keynote tour because I was able to navigate many different apps in order to make it look the way it does and be original. Some of my stretches in this project have been the team challenges and even ushering my learning portfolio. With the team challenges, a bunch of random challenges we did with our table group to get us used to working as a team, my team would do good on a few, but I feel that with most of them we would end up with a mess on the floor. Most of the time when we didn’t do so well it was because we got cocky towards the end and messed something up. The reason that my learning portfolio (my blog) is a stretch is because I’ve really not gotten the hang of it yet and I sometimes find myself struggling with it.

To answer the driving question, how do I build and strengthen the PLP learning team, I’ve had to learn a lot about myself. Ive learned that the way that I strengthen the PLP learning team is by being the person that will organize elements of a project and enhance the team’s performance, making everything run smoothly. In the end, this has been a really fun introduction for the PLP and an amazing way to discover who I am.