Our Amazing West

jacksonc Humanities 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome back to my blog! I’ve recently finished our first humanities project, and this was an interesting one. This project was all based around the the idea of how the geography of the West has shaped us. To start off the project and to see this all first hand, we went on a road trip through BC and into Alberta. On top of the amazing places that we got to see first hand and the things we learned about geography on the trip, we also did a lot of work in class to continue bettering our understandings of more historical features. The driving question for this project was done a little differently then normal. For this project, we were able to pick an aspect of how the West has shaped us, those aspects being people, economy, and history, and use that to create our own variation of a driving question to work with. In the end I decided to focus on the more economic side of it and created my driving question, “How has the  geography of the West shaped us economically?” 

As I already mentioned, we started this all off with a learning advance road trip. This learning advance was separated into two groups, with me being in the first. I go into a lot more detail about most of the place that we went to in the book, I’ll link that in later on, so I’ll just talk about some of the highlights that weren’t mentioned. One place that was very memorable that I wasn’t able to really touch on in the book was the painted warriors ranch that we went to. This is where we learned about First Nation culture through archery. It was a very fun and interesting experience, especially when we were sent off to shoot at foam animal targets. It really reminded me of when I as little and I would go to my grandparents house, who had a bow and arrow, and set up targets. Another very memorable place that we went to was lake Louise. This was amazing blue lake that had a walk around it and the massive Chateau Lake Louise on the water. On top of it’s beauty, it was amazing because of it’s details that not everyone knows, for example the fact that the Chateau Lake Louise was a big tourist attraction when the CPR was fairly new, or that Lake Louise is one of the most photographed lakes in the world. 

The book that we made was the big thing that we were working towards from the start. When we launched the project, we were given the book template so we’d be able to know what the major parts that we’d have to take notes on while away on the learning advance. From there we were given a bit more free reign, within certain limits, to add what we thought was necessary to the book. The biggest thing we were required to do within the book is give examples of our answer to the driving question at every chance we got. I think that I gave some good answers to the question, you can see my main answer on pages 6-7. The one thing that I wish I had done better with in my book was the layout. I found myself focusing more on the information that I was putting into it, which lead me to having something that wasn’t as visually appealing as it could’ve been. To showcase our books, we had a mini exhibition where we were split into rooms depending on what aspect of the driving question we chose to answer, people, economy, and history, meaning I was with the other economy people. We then had family come in to see my, and other student’s, work. I think that I did a good job with presenting my work in a way that answered any questions and gave a lot of information, without being too long and boring. 

Something that I was really abbe to take away from this project is questioning. I’m always a fairly curious person that will try and answer my own questions and I think that really showed while I was away on the learning advance. If there was something that I wanted to know, I would break down the question into more specific, easier to answer question that I would use personal connections and what was in front of me to answer. I would then use those partial answers that I had and answer my main one. I was definitely able to do that a lot over the course of the learning advance, and I think that it really enhanced my work. 

So to answer the driving question, how has the geography of the West shaped us economically? While, like I was saying throughout the book, the geography of the West has shaped us by allowing us to have a thriving economy with multiple industries that have helped us to settle and develop. Because of our economic vastness, we will always have things to fall back on if one of these industries were to fail, while many other places don’t have that luxury. A good example of the West being able to fall back on its many economic factors is what happened when Covid hit. A lot of these industries were shut down and many places took massive hits to their economies due to this while the west still had a economy that was working. We were definitely still impacted, but we were able to keep going fairly strong.

Ecosystems of Earth

jacksonc Scimatics 0 Comment

Welcome back! It’s been a while since my last blog post and I’m happy to be back. Over the last little bit, we’ve been working on a science project all about different cycles of nature and how humans impact them. The driving question for this project was “In what ways have humans impacted the delicate cycles within our local ecosystems and how can we lesson our impact?” We did a number of different things to answer this question including, learning about the earth’s different spheres, making food webs, making a bioaccumulation gif, and even a news report about wildlife management. Then to finish off the project, we made social media posts to raise awareness of all this. 

Food Web

The first main thing that we did to answer the driving question was working with food webs. For this we had to make a interactive diagram in scratch that showed a food web. The food web that I made was mainly taking place in the ocean, with a few exceptions like a bear and bird. You can try out my interactive diagram here. 

 

Bioaccumulation Gif

The second big thing that we did to answer our driving question was a gif on bioaccumulation. For this, we used the app of our choice, mine being sketches pro, to make a short animation that we used to show the process of bioaccumulation. This proved to be the most challenging/time consuming part of this unit.

 

News Report

Another one of the main things that we did to answer the driving question was make a news report on wildlife management. Every group was given a different example of a wildlife management technique to base their news report off of. My group was assigned the overpopulation of the sea urchins and how they are affecting the kelp forests. 

 

Social Media Posts

For the final part of this unit, we made social media posts on what we had learned. These weren’t real posts, we made them on a website that created fake instagram posts, but the information that we were saying was very real. I had a posts on the earth’s spheres, the carbon cycle and human’s effect on it, wildlife management, bioaccumulation, and food webs. 

So, In what ways have humans impacted the delicate cycles within our local ecosystems and how can we lessen our impact? As I’ve talked about and shown throughout this post, there are many ways that people have affected these cycles and our ecosystems. Wether it’s with pollution impacting something like the carbon cycle, or us killing a bunch of sea urchins to try and manage populations, we need to be careful. Things that we do on a daily basis can contribute to all of these things in positive and not so positive ways. To lessen our impact on these ecosystems and cycles, we have to start being more wary of our futures. We need to start making eco friendly decisions and using eco friendly products. When it comes to things like wildlife management, there’s not a lot that we can do differently because it’s more of a morals thing. Overall, we need to start being careful with how we impact the world with it’s cycles and ecosystems so we can have a better place to live.

Outside the class

jacksonc Other 0 Comment

This is an exciting blog because it is my final one of grade 8. To end off the year, all of PLP had our spring exhibition. In the exhibition, we were working with the grade 9s to show the different aspects of what makes a PLP learner. Every aspect had a different room with a group of people in it to show the aspect the best way possible. The aspect that our room was focusing on was outside the classroom work. For outside the classroom, we were focusing on the loon lake field study that we went on, as well as the advertisements the grade 8s did and the grade 9s showed some interviews that they did. 

Our room was decorated to look like a forest, representing loon lake. We had the room setup so that when people walked over to it, they would get an introduction at the door. They would then walk through in a bit of a circle, while getting to check out all of the different things that we had setup. Once they walked out the door, they would get to the station that I was at, the rope ferry race. 

This is it while we were still setting up

We decided to make a rope ferry race because at loon lake, there was a rope ferry that we would race against the time while setting new records. It was an amazing team building exercise that we had a lot of fun with, so we did our best to recreate it. We used skateboards tied to rope that me and some of the grade 9s were holding. The people would then pull themselves along and race to the finish line. 

The other thing that I was doing was showing people QR codes to some of our DI videos. This was a more minor job that I was doing but I do thing that some people enjoyed being able to watch some of the videos of our hard work. I think that the QR codes would have attracted more attention if we had gotten all the grade 8 and 9 DI videos because we only really had a few. 

In the end, I think that this spring exhibition was a fun way to wrap up the year. Our group did a good job with showing the PLP work that we do outside the classroom, with it still being fun. Since all the exhibitions are things that happen every year, I am looking forward to the next one.

Ebola

jacksonc Other 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome to my final scimatics blog post of the year. This was a pretty fun project where the final result was a comic. The driving question for this project was “How do cells and diseases interact?” There were a few steps that we had to do to get to the point where we could write the comic. We had to do our normal mind map, we had a wanted poster on our disease of choice, we had a storyboard, and of course, we had the final comic. 

As we normally do in scimatics, we had a mindmap to start of the project. In it we more or less just start writing about the subject, in this case it was how do cells and diseases interact. We write questions we have, thoughts/things we already know, and some examples. 

The disease wanted poster was a chance to pick our disease. In the poster we had to research and draw our own interpretation of the disease that we would later go on to put into our comics. We then put that all onto a poster and did our best to make it feel like an authentic wanted poster, while still displaying the information. I decided to go with ebola because I knew that it’s a well known disease that I could get a lot of information on. 

The storyboard was where we really had to start thinking about the comic. We started to plan it out but not in too much detail, while keeping in mind that we were going to add more on. We had to keep this in mind because we were supposed to keep the comic around 20ish panels long. We also had to include about 10 scientific words. I think that mine was not terrible but I did end up redoing a chunk of it. 

storyboard template (2) (2)

To finish off this project, we had the comic. This had to be about 20 panels long, with the scientific words from before and it had to be in full colour. I do wish that I had spent a bit more time on the drawings because they ended up being not the best. My story was also a little bit boring but I couldn’t think of ways to make it less. Overall I do think that my comic did a good job showing how cells interact with disease. 

battle of ebola

So, How do cells and diseases interact? Well, there are a few different ways that they interact, but for the most part it is a bit of a battle. The disease needs to find host cells to reproduce, while the cells have to defend themselves and the body. I think that I did a pretty good job on this project. I could have used my class time better but I do think that I was able to use the vocabulary that we learned to make the comic pretty realistic as to what would happen.

Grade 8 tPOL

jacksonc Humanities, Scimatics 0 Comment

Hi, and welcome to my tPOL. Before I begin, I must make the tPOL 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. 

Halfway through the year, I did my mPOL. The mPOL was a reflection on my work throughout the first half of the year, while the tPOL is me explaining why I am ready to move onto grade 9. Throughout my tPOL, I’m going to be going through my different PLP classes this semester, scimatics and humanities, and pulling some examples from them to show why I should move onto grade 9. 

Humanities 

Humanities is a subject that isn’t really my strong suit. I tend to especially struggle with history, which wasn’t the best since we had all of our projects that were almost entirely based around history. The projects that we had for humanities this semester were The Renaissance, Argh Matey, and New Beginnings. All of these projects had different thing that went good or bad with them, or even just had things that I FAILed in. 

Out of these projects, I think that my FAILs are the most important things that happened. If you didn’t already know, in PLP FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning. The reason that my FAILs are important is because mistakes can help you learn. If you do something wrong or poorly, you can take criticism and learn how to improve it. I feel that taking, and using, criticism is something that I do very well. The best example of me FAILing in these projects is the seycove advertisement that we did at the start of the New Beginnings. It was something that we were doing to see what we remembered from past projects about photography, editing, and layout. In my first attempt at it, I forgot about all of the things that I had learned in the past, making it look terrible. I took some feedback from some of my classmates and my teachers then started making changes. The feedback that I was given, allowed me to make my second version much better. 

The other humanities project that I’m going to talk about is the argh matey project. This project had good examples of things that I did good in and things that I could have done better. The main thing that I think I really did good with in this project was getting things done efficiently. I feel that all my class time was used very well and, when we were filming at cates park, I was able to finish the project. The thing that I definitely could have improved on was my story for it. I had a bit of trouble with making the story enjoyable and have all the necessary information. I do think that I could have made my story a bit better if I had put a little more time into the actual writing of it and not all my time into the research. 

Scimatics 

For this semester, with scimatics being a lot more focused on the science aspect of it all, I had to push myself a bit more then normal. The reason that I say this is because I tend to understand math a bit more then I do science, but I do think that I was able to still do a pretty good job understanding the science this time around. The projects that I had for scimatics this semester were Chemistry Coding, Ultimate Design Challenge, and Comic Cells.

Out of these three projects, the Ultimate Design Challenge was the only one that was mainly math, it was also the one that I think I did the best in. A big part of the final result of this project, the presentation that we gave to the class about our design, was the calculations. For most of the shapes, we were given the formulas for surface area and volume, or we could just look them up, but I changed myself by doing shapes that didn’t really have a set formula, meaning that I had to figure them out. It was a fairly hard and tedious process, with a few FAIL moments, but I was able to do it in the end. I think that the whole process of that showed that I am a very persistent, and stubborn, person that will always do my best to follow through with things that I’ve committed to, in school and personally. 

The Chemistry Coding project is the last scimatics project that I’m going to talk about because I feel that it really showed who I am as a learner. The first reason that I say this is because, like I was saying with the Ultimate Design Challenge project, I was really trying to challenge myself and see it through. We had to code a game in this project, and I was trying to do something a bit more complex, so I was using tutorials and videos and even other students to help me with making it work. It also definitely showed my ability to take and use feedback. I was continuously making changes and getting feedback/ideas from others.

In the end, I have really learned a lot about myself as a learner this past year. I think that, in this semester especially, I’ve really started shaping into the learner that I want to be. I do still think that there are things that I need to change if I really want to become that learner. The biggest change I’d need to make being my ability to use time more efficiently because, I know I’ve said this a lot in the past, but I always struggle with procrastinating and staying on topic, making my work not always as good as I want it to be. With that said, I do think that I did better with that every once in a while and that, with time, I can become a lot better with it. 

The New World

jacksonc Humanities 0 Comment

Welcome to another blog! This project was an important one because it is my last humanities project of the year. In this project we focused on New France and photography. There were a few main things that we had to do in this project, like photography practice/editing practice, an advertisement for seycove, research, a trade simulation, and of course the final project. This was all to answer the driving question, “What did the establishment of New France mean for all the people involved”. 

The first thing that we had to do in this project was make an ad for seycove. This was to see what we remembered about photography, editing, and layout. I worked with Luca and Francis to make a first draft that didn’t turnout at all how we hoped. We then all went away and came back with our own versions of the ad. I think that our individual ads turned out a lot better, mainly because we had more time then what we had with the group ad. 

The next step for this project was to practice our photography skills. For this we went on a nature walk and we would stop every once in a while to take some pictures. This definitely helped with reminding me on past things that we learned about photography, such as perspective, rule of thirds, and leading lines.

New France research

This was one project that required a bit more research then some of the other ones. For the main part of the research, I was focusing on the thing that I was going to be doing the final project on, the Coureurs des Bois. I had three different sources, each with a few different notes from that source. In addition to that, I also took some other notes on why first peoples traded with newcomers. 

The next thing in this project was the most fun, it was a trade simulation. In this, the class was divided into different groups that were present in the time of the fur trade. I was part of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Every group was given different things that they would have traded, we were given things like guns, gunpowder, shoes, and string, and we were told to trade. For every round of trading, we would trade with a different group and there would be a different scenario that we would have to be aware of. 

To finish this project off, we had our final project. Originally, the final project was going to be some kind of ad for New France, but it was later changed to be two New France visuals on a certain part of New France. The thing that I decided to focus on for this was the Coureurs des Bois. As you can see in my New France visuals at the start, there is a lot off different thing happening, but there is a reason for everything. In the first image, the words are new trade. The reason that I put this in is because the promise of new trade and riches was the reason for a lot of the Coureurs des Bois. Another thing that I put in this image was a beaver. The beaver was the thing that the Coureurs des Bois would mainly trade because of the value of the beaver fur back then. Beaver fur was in very high demand back then. The hut in the background is a trading post/indigenous home. The Coureurs des Bois would travel to different trading posts to trade with the indigenous people. I also put in a person running with a log on his back. This is to represent the Coureurs des Bois because Coureurs des Bois translates to wood runner. In the second image it says outlawed. This because it became a crime to be a Coureurs des Bois. It got outlawed because the people in charge didn’t want too many people leaving the settlements, especially if they weren’t licensed traders. The images of the person in handcuffs and the jail that replaced the trading post also show the Coureurs des Bois becoming outlawed. People would get arrested if they were caught. It also kind of represents how how some of the Coureurs des Bois had to do this to pay off debt, mainly to merchants. The other thing in this image is the crossed out beaver. This is because the Coureurs des Bois helped with the beaver shortages. All European traders/Coureurs des Bois contributed to this because they were just trying to meet the high demand back home.

So, what did the establishment of New France mean for all the people involved? Well, the establishment of New France had various effects. One of the bigger effects it had was the disease that the Europeans brought with them. If they hadn’t given the disease to the indigenous peoples, killing off almost all of them, I feel that indigenous culture would be a bigger part of our lives. Another thing that happened with the establishment of New France is the new trade that was established. The trade allowed things that were not from certain places to get there, with some places going on to have that food as a staple in their everyday lives. The thing that was traded the most, and had the most impact was the beaver. Beaver fur became must have in Europe for things like fashion. Because of the rise in demand, the beaver was hunted almost to extinction in “The New World”. In the end, there were many things that the establishment of New France meant for the people involved, both good and bad.

3D Barn

jacksonc Scimatics , , 0 Comment

Welcome to another Blog! For the past few weeks I’ve been working on another scimatics project. For this project we did work with 3D models and how to calculate surface area/volume.  There were 4 main parts to this project, first to learn how to use tinkercad (the 3D model app), then we had to build our models, after that we had to do all the calculations, and to finish it off we presented this all. The goal of this project was to be able to maximize either surface area or volume, depending on what you choose. 

To start off this project we had to learn what we were going to be working with. To do this, we started working with tinkercad and just kind of messing around and seeing what we could build. This would really turn out to be helpful because tinkercad would prove to be difficult to use and I needed the practice.

Once we had a general idea on how to use tinkercad, we started actually building the shapes that we had planned out. We spent quite a bit of time on this because tinkercad can be very tedious. The thing that I decided to build was a barn. The main reason that I decided to do this was because I thought that I could make a barn look good and meet the requirements pretty easily. 

The next thing that we had to do were the calculations. The calculations were the hardest part because we had to do surface area and volume for every shape. Some of the shapes that I did had very complex formulas that took awhile to do. Once we had all the calculations done we had to add them up and figure out what the ratio was. Doing this showed us if we managed to complete our goal.

The final thing that we did for this project was put everything into a presentation. We had to show our object, the shapes in it, the calculations, and if we completed our goal. I think that I was able to reach my goal of maximizing volume for my barn. If you want, you can check out my presentation here.

Presentation 22

In the end, I was able to reach my goal of maximizing volume with my object. I think that I did a good job using my class time effectively to make my object in tinkercad. Tinkercad did take awhile to get used to, but once I got the hang of it I was able to build everything easily. I do think that I could have done a better job at maximizing the volume, but other then that I think that I did this project well.

The End Is Here

jacksonc Humanities 0 Comment

After a long few months. The biggest project of the year, Destination Imagination, is over. If you don’t know what DI is, you can check out my last post explaining it here. Since the last time I talked about DI, a lot has happened. We have built a lot more props/costumes, finished up our script, and even presented it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On DI day, our group was pretty chaotic. We had a lot of stuff that was breaking and we were worried if things would work. Luckily, we were able to fix everything and give a pretty good presentation. After our presentation we were ably to do one of the best instant challenges that we’ve done, at least the best acting one. Finally, we took our car parade photo and we were done with DI.

I think that in DI I did an accomplished level of work because I was able to get everything done and I think that I did it good. I did a good job with memorizing my lines and, later on, Naomi’s lines. I also did a good job with the music and the big costume. I do think that our group could have done a better job with meeting up more and distributing the work a bit more evenly. 

Here is our presentation 

You can check out my teammate’s work here

Owen

Susan 

Caden

Kadin

Callum

Naomi

Atom Run

jacksonc Scimatics 0 Comment

Another scimatics project has finished. This one was pretty interesting because of the fact that the final project was for us to code a video game. This was harder because we had to learn how to code as while as the normal work. The major parts of this project were the mind map, atomic models, and the game itself. 

The mind map was more or less the same as every other one. At the start of the project we would put down questions, thoughts, and examples of what we think this project is about. As the project goes on, we add onto the mind map until the end. 

The atomic models were where we chose 3 or 4 different types of atoms, all with different models, and put down all the info on them. We then drew them and later used those drawings in the game. 

The final main thing that we had to do was actually code the game. Our game had to be interactive and had to show the KMT and the atomic theory. This was a challenge because I’ve never really done any coding before and this was a big project. Luckily, the scratch coding is a lot more simple and there were people that were really good at it that’s I could get help from. 

In the end. I think that I did a good job with this project. I think that I used my class time efficiently and that I was able to show the KMT/atomic theory in the game and make it fun. In the future, I would want to work more on making the game have more levels and be a bit less glitchy. You can check out my game here.

The Time of The Renaissance

jacksonc Humanities , 0 Comment

Welcome back to another blog post! We just finished up another project, and this was one that I really found myself enjoying. We did a project on the renaissance and I focused on the most significant part of it, Leonardo da Vinci and his work. The first thing that we had to learn is how to tell if something is historically significant or else we wouldn’t be able to tell what is the most significant. Once we knew why our thing from the renaissance was important we had to explain why it was in a paragraph. We then had to put down our ideas in a triptych digital gallery. This was all to answer the question “What significant developments emerged from the past and how do they impact us today?” 

The first thing that we had to learn was how to tell if something was historically significant. The main way to tell if something’s historically significant is by using NAME. NAME stands for Novelty, what was new about this, Applicability, how is it similar to modern events, Memory, how was it remembered by different parties of people, and Effect, how did it have an effect on people. For something to be historically significant it had to be as many of those thing as possible. 

Once we knew if our thing was actually historically significant, we had to give reasons on why if was in our paragraph. We learned about the proper way to write a paragraph and all the different things that must be included in one. 

My Paragraph 

The final thing that we did was put all of the research down in a triptych. Our triptychs had to have a panel for an art piece and an innovator, a panel for an invention and a societal change, and the final panel was for our own modern versions of all this. I heavily based my triptych on Leonardo da Vinci because I think that there is just so much that he accomplished and that we can learn from him. 

So, what significant developments emerged from the past and how do they impact us today? Well, is something is historically significant then we learn from it and we’re more likely to remember the lesson it teaches us. Like you can see in my paragraph, just one renaissance man impacts the past and present in so many incredible, and new, ways. You can also see in my triptych’s middle panel, some of the things that have come out of past things, like inventions evolving, new movements, and even new innovators. So in conclusion, the renaissance was a very important time, because of all the things that we got out of it. 

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