Think back to when you were a child. Things just happened. You didn’t care think about the reason, you didn’t care why. Your parents took you on a walk in the park, or maybe you went to the store;  you moved through life without wondering why.

 As you grew older, you started to question more aspects of your daily life. “Why are we going on a walk, What is the purpose of doing this?”

But there is another level of understanding you didn’t have at the time, and that’s how those very things came to be; the history driving your daily life behind the scenes. The “how” that drove the “why” of your questions. 

“WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?”

I was the same as a kid, I moved through life without much thought or questioning. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to ask lots of questions about everything from “How do cars work?”, to “Why do things cost money?”, but only recently have I managed to reach that deeper level of understanding and begin questioning things such as how our society was shaped. 

I was confused for a long time as to why understanding history mattered. After all, why should history matter when the facts were the more practical option? I failed to see how the deeper meaning behind something could be important when the facts were so easily given a value and used.

I recently did a project in school that helped me begin to think at more sophisticated level and I want to share my experience with you here. In my class we focused on questioning how fear shaped the cold war Cold War and it’s influence today.

HOW TO EXPAND YOUR THINKING:

We knew we were being asked to brainstorm bigger questions, form clear opinions and ideas from examples with a lot of depth.

That is no small ask for a group of grade 11’s. We often seem to be allergic to thinking.Our teachers realized this this, and over the course of our project, we were introduced multiple methods of expanding and deepening our thought process. 

Our class began by reading a novel related to our topic—Fallout by Todd Strasser—and analyzing it. Throughout our reading of the book, we periodically stopped to reflect on a few ideas or questions we had from our reading, and then at the end of the book, we put our thoughts together to create an essay. It was like a little mini isolated Zettlekasten (A note-taking method we learned previously, check out my first project this year) 

I found this method of reflection to be useful and provide some good thoughts, but I believe it would have been better for me to also take more notes whenever I had an insight, not just during the check-ins. As an example of a first attempt in learning, here are my journal notes and essay:

Journal Notes and essay(-ish):

We also participated in socratic seminars, a concept dating back to the man himself, Socrates. I found it to be a very useful method of sharing ideas with others and compelling group knowledge to form new insights or view other perspectives. If you don’t know what a seminar looks like, its essentially a group of people sitting around in a circle, discussing a topic and expanding or challenging other’s ideas with evidence. If you decide to do something similar, don’t make the same mistake I did and forgot to make note of insightful things others say.

PRESENTING YOUR THINKING:

Now once you’ve done all you thinking, be this research, inquiry, or peer discussion, you should probably do something with it. It’s a good way to strengthen your memory on a topic and practice life skills, or at least that’s what I try and get out of it.

For our project, we ran short on time and therefore had to settle for just outlining how we would have done the project. I choose a few sources that linked fear to the space race, which was my overarching topic, and did some thinking on how this final project would upon my last final product in our project about the manhattan project and end of WWII. 

I had decided I would make a card game to visualize the race for dominant technology through the object of building a rocket first, and the idea of fear through chance cards that could have things such as “A spy has stolen your blueprints!” I would’ve liked to create this, but ultimately I’m glad we didn’t have to try and rush it.

A CONCLUSION:

Throughout this project I’ve learned about the cold war, a few methods to understand my thinking, and written an essay to name just a few things. I’m very appreciative of the new level of thinking it’s exposed me to, and I ‘m pleased I managed to meet my goal that I set for this project, which was completing work on time and starting to use deeper thinking (Featuring the Fallout).

I’ve also learned how fear drove the politics, culture and beliefs of the cold war through creating a system of weaponry and propaganda that affected the everyday person, causing a search for hope that could controlled and manipulated by those in power, creating long lasting effects on then and today’s geopolitics and everyday life.

I hope I’ve given you a slightly better understanding of went on in this project, and how you might be able to implement it in your own work. Remember that just because fact-based thinking is easy, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good (Unless your an engineer, then it’s probably pretty important).

Bye!

P.S. I was trying a bit of a new format, so sorry if things are a bit long and clunky. If I stick with it, posts will be more polished in the future

How would you feel if somebody took you from your home, and then told you that you weren’t allowed to be you anymore?

In our latest BC First Peoples (BCFP) project, we explored residential schools and the impacts that they have had and still have on Indigenous people today. We created a piece of response writing to overview what we learned about the content in this project as well as why we think this class is important, here is mine.

”There was a lot of important things that I learnt in this project, but I think my personal highlight would be the idea of ‘two-eyed seeing’. In it’s simplest form, it’s observing ideas or media through multiple perspectives with as little personal bias as possible in order to form a logical understanding of the topic; in this project we used the idea to look at information through both a western and first nations perspective. 

However I’d also say it was my biggest challenge of the project, as I tend to prefer to take everything I see that is presented to me as fact, not to a dangerous level, but to where I don’t look for conflicting sources for a more varied perspective on a topic; it’s a habit that if I can work past could be a great tool throughout the rest of my life and I’m exited to have another chance to practice this, while also trying to do it more of my own will.

It was also good to obtain a better understanding of the first peoples principals of learning; a list of first nations ideas that are implemented into all of our coursework by the school district, and one that I wish I’d known more about earlier. I also liked learning about the 94 calls to action sent to the Canadian government; both so that I can look for signs of those calls being answered in my everyday life, and so I am more educated citizen who understands the driving forces behind some of the changes I see in my local community and nationwide.”

We also made a map of our thinking throughout the project to practice making connections between our ideas:

Overall, I appreciate that this project challenged my way of thinking, even if it’s annoying in the moment, and I’m happy to have new knowledge about residential schools and their effects.

Thanks for reading!

How can bombs lead to spaceships you may be asking? Well I have just the thing for you! Have a look at this handy animated video below and it shall answer all of your questions!

Let’s back it up a bit though.

My latest humanities project was about the manhattan project and the effects of the atomic bomb. If you want to see what my goals were for this project, you can check out this earlier post. Anyways, everyone in my class each chose a different effect of the atomic bomb to focus on, and because of my interest in space I decided to focus on how nuclear science has affected space exploration over the years.

I really enjoyed doing the research for this project, as I found it very interesting and informative. I know that I work better when I’m interested in my topic but this was a good reminder. It’s like that quote, “If you love your work, you’ll never work a day in your life”. If your interested in what I researched it’s all in here: Research Homepage

However, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t challenges. Not in the slightest. I struggled with some of the time expectations, some of that was my fault, some was other personal reasons (sick etc..) but I don’t really need to get into that here. 

Other struggles included connecting my thinking; thinking is unfortunately a requirement for life, and doing it well can be hard. We are working on that a lot this year at school, but I’ve been finding it challenging to show my thinking to others in a coherent way. I think I just need some more practice and effort, and that will be a big goal of mine in the next few projects.

My video didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped, with it being a bit rushed, but even though the production quality wasn’t as high as I may have liked it to be, the content was still coherent and I think showed how the manhattan project has led to big changes in space exploration over the years, which was my main goal.

(I did like the animation style I went for though)

As I never fully engaged with this project, I don’t really have any further takeaways, but if I would of had a bit more time, I would of taken the time to make sure everything related to the main ideas and learning objectives of the project, and also taken time to write down some of the ideas I had while working on the project.

I accept that I did a subpar job in this project, but I find solace in the fact that I know what to improve on and have many more chances to show that I can do work I’m proud of and expand my thinking.

As a final note, learning about the history of the Manhattan project and the effects it had on the world, both in fun and interesting ways like my topic, and in more grim ways like its geopolitical effects and death toll was very interesting, and I feel was essential in helping me understand the modern geopolitical climate, and a bit about space, both of which I am thankful for.

“Thank you for coming to my presentation on 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.”

This year has been a hard one, but one that has transformed me as a student and a person. I’ve faced many challenges, beaten many of them and been beaten by some. I’ve learned a lot of history, skills, and things about myself that I’ll try and capture in this final post of the year.

I started this year strong, feeling confident and organized for a couple months, putting everything I had into my projects and creating results I was proud of. That’s not say say I did everything perfectly, or even well, but I felt good about what I was doing. I created some projects that I was proud of like my podcast on diversity in the Canadian military.

A project I would like to highlight from this time of the year was Atomic Habits, where we read and analyzed a book on how to form good habits and break bad ones. I think this project highlighted both my biggest weaknesses and my largest strengths and I’ll try my best to outline that here:

And then moving on in the school year I slowly fell back in work ethic and the quality of my work, not assisted by thing like the band and PLP trips, taking us away from our other classes. This was a major setback, and sent me reeling, so combined with some of the burnout I was feeling things weren’t going great, but over the course of the rest of the year I managed to get things back on track. I know this could probably be fleshed out a bit but I’d like to have time to touch on some other projects.

A huge step forward for me this year was in my sophistication of both my work and life, especially nearing the end of the year I’ve noticed the quality of my work climbing back up and with the creation of a resume, gaining of some certifications and real-world experience, I’ve gained a better understanding of the world and how I can fit into it.

In my mPOL and VMV Statement, I noted some of main goals for this year which I’d like to talk about. So I’ll now talk a bit about where I’ve made progress or met challenges in those areas:

Engagement:

I’ve managed to work on my engagement throughout the year, I’ve had some points where it was getting good like our spring exhibition where I was fully engaged with all the work I was putting into that.

Self-Regulation:

This is one that it still being worked on but I noticed improvements and I am learning what works for me, although that would be hard to explain now.

Communication & Collaboration:

Both D.I. this year and our spring exhibition serve as examples of how I can communicate and collaborate well going forwards.

Thanks so much more reading and caring about my learning journey! Have a good Summer, as there will not be another post until after the break

We’ve had some hard tasks in PLP before, but I’m not sure that I say we’ve ever been given a harder directive in any project than in this one. Well after that buildup, you’re probably curious as to what in the world I’m talking about. The task in question was to capture Canadian identity in a moving vignette of sorts and dance. I don’t think I could tell you which one was harder.

This blog post is kind of about two different but related topics: Our project “Never the 51st state” which dived into the creation of modern Canada, highlighting events throughout the latter half of the 1900’s and gave a speech, and our PLP Spring Exhibition where we acted out scenes of important events in the creation of modern Canada, most from the previous project. So because of all that, I shall be breaking this blog up into two main sections.

Never the 51st State:

This part of our project had three main goals:

1. Teach us about the relatively recent events that have shaped modern Canada
2. Introduce us to a new note taking format 
3. Work on our public speaking skills

We started by learning our new note taking method, zettlekasten, which is the idea of having a super connected note system, using backlinks, tags, and ideas to create a web of ideas and connection in our thinking. At first thought I really liked the idea, as I felt it presented a very interesting solution for ease of deep thinking, but I found in practice (partly due to a lock of practice), it was very had to do in a way they that felt right, and I was unable to find a method that matched to original idea of the inventor who had all of his notes hand written in a filing cabinet. If you want to learn more about that or the idea interests you can click [here] to learn more about it. 

We then moved on to learning the actual history part. I’m never the biggest history fan, but the significance of the events we were learning about in my life really struck home and I was interested to learn about them, even if not particularly excited (Partly because we had to do a lot of notes in a very short time, and I didn’t get everything out of it that I wanted too). Experimenting with the zettlekasten was interesting but I still feel if I want to have any success using it, I need to revamp my entire system, which I may do for the next school year.

Then we got into the public speaking aspect. I’ve found in the past that it’s pressure that usually get’s to me when giving a presentation rather than nerves. While they are related, I find that I don’t necessarily feel nervous, I sometimes just can’t think straight or speak like I did when practicing. After some public speaking practice with peers, we wrote our script, and while I got off on the wrong foot, kind of spiralling off onto the wrong focus (older history instead of what shaped modern Canadian identity), I feel that after the 6-or-so revision I did from various sources of feedback, I had a solid script. I felt my speech went well, other than a lack of eye contact and few small stutters, although I felt the same pressure, and I think I just needed to practice more to bring the stress down to useful levels.

Versions of my script:

We were also meant to have a sort of exhibition where us and guests could come in and talk to others with different lived life experiences surrounding Canada, but in the end we didn’t have enough people to run the event. I really should have asked my parents if they new anyone who could come thinking back on it, but I just assumed that there wouldn’t be anyone.

I learnt a lot about Canada and the later stages of our formation, how place shapes change, and a lot about myself and how I can approach problems with better decision making and realized I still need to develop my extended thinking whether that be though zettlekasten or another method. Overall, I discovered how sharing stories and gaining an outside perspective on the things that are normal to you can be eye-opening as well as helping shape your decisions and be more empathic and understanding towards others.

The PLP Spring Exhibition (The Story of Canada):

For our spring exhibition this year we were tasked with acting out scenes from the events we had just recently learned about in a unique way; instead of acting out a scene from start to finish, we were supposed to act as if we were actually the people from the time, and help our visitors live the experience. My group chose the creation of the new Canadian flag in 1965 which we were all excited to get as it was an interesting topic with what would be an engaging story if we told it right (no pressure).

If you’re curious about the story here was our summary: “In 1964, Canada’s Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson formed a committee to discuss and design an official Canadian flag. This move was considered controversial at the time, with many people not open to losing the Union Jack from the flag. Out of three main choices, the committee selected the flag we all know today created by George Stanley. Another popular flag design was made by John Ross Matheson, but Lester Pearson feared losing his minority government so ultimately turned down John’s design and then formed the committee.“, or if you want something more official, [here] is the page on the event from the Canadian Encyclopedia.

We then moved on to prop creation. A lot of stuff we could just bring from home, some stuff was made at school, and stuff had to be designed for purpose. My main contribution were bringing many of the props, making some tasty maple-leaf shaped sugar cookies (Unfortunately no photo 🙁 ), and designing a pulley system that could be mounted onto the basketball hoop at our location to act as a flagpole. This took six iterations of the course of just two days and was hard to 3-d print, but was very satisfying when it worked. I’ve put the 3-d model of the pulley connector below if you’re interested.

https://collaborate.shapr3d.com/v/dR32uB8OtqyCFWyB_ON9H

A drawing of our final plan. 

Then the day rolled around and I as Lester B. Pearson invited guests to draw their own submissions for the new Canadian flag, handed out cookies, and raised the flag on the flagpole. I also participated in the group flash mob that we were made to do, and look I’m all for dancing, but doing it in a makeshift suit made of my band clothes and a white shirt while having a crowd of people watch me do it just isn’t my cup of tea. Overall I think it went really well and I was proud of my group. We could have known the significance behind more aspects of the flag, but that was my only personal critique. 

Conclusion (you made it!):

I know that was a very lengthy post, but thanks for reading, whether you read the entire thing or just skimmed through. I think it probably one of my best put-together blog posts to date, and I’m happy with how it and the projects turned out! (and that I will probably never have to do another flash mob!)

Would you ever think that you’d be going to Disney World for a school project? Me neither, but as you’ll soon see I was dead wrong.

The name of this project was “Change makers”, and our focus was to figure out how so called “change makers” imagine possibilities others don’t see and craft stories that shape the world. This was a split project between our Maker (A.D.S.T.), and PGP (Careers) classes as we focus on both how the park was ideated and created and how our project could relate to our future career.

We started this project by doing a lot of research on Walt Disney himself, his legacy, and how he managed to inspire people all over the world. We then looked at what made him successful like his passion, storytelling skill, and values. I’ve linked my notes here if you want to take a look.

We knew from the get-go that the big idea driving our project was: “Creative and collaborative careers turn ideas into reality and shape how we connect, experience, and imagine the world.”, and so we broke up into four smaller groups based on our interests to research smaller parts of our main idea. I ended up in the ‘Making the Magic’ group, where our focus was technology and how it can drive there creation of immersive and engaging experiences. I was really really excited to be in the technology group as it was where I had asked to be and it is what I’m interested in specializing in later in life.

Now this project had a bit of a twist that I talked about in my last blog post, but if you don’t read all of my posts and have perfect memory, shame upon you. I’ll let you in on what that twist is. This was another project that used project based learning which means things done in a slightly different format which led to more pressure being placed on our individual focus and our final product

After we finished researching Walt Disney, we moved on to doing more research on our group’s specific topic and starting to chose a personal focus for this project. My first thought was to focus on ride mechanics, as the inner workings of things always interest me, but after some thought I realized that it would be very hard to get any facts, videos, or interesting interviews about the topic as they try and stop guests from seeing those things, but that brought me another idea, What do they try and hide from you, and what’s the reason they do? This idea evolved into my final focus which was about how Disney (or anyone) keeps you safe but still immersed in an experience.

This seems like both a complex and simple idea in different ways. It was in fact easy to learn about some of the ways they protect guests, but once we were at Walt Disney world to do more research and capture footage for our video ( which was awesome and really fun. Overall a good, albeit tiring time ), it was hard to find things that felt significant but not obvious. In the end I found a few good examples of my topic:

• Bumpers
• Rails & Tracks
• Themed Safety Videos
• In-Character Staff
• Visual Distractions

And that’s just to name few and not getting into some of the craziest automation on any rides anywhere! And so after capturing a lot of footage (it took around 4 hours to send all of the right clips to my iPad, I had to do a lot of editing, which was very difficult and has never been something I’ve enjoyed although I’m getting better. After all that work, and a lot of in-class revisions, I had a finished video to show:

Now I am happy with my end result, but I made a lot of big mistakes in this project that set me back, but I’ll first go over all the great stuff that I learned.

• I learned how people can turn dreams into reality though ideation and innovation in many areas.
• Gained some insight on how certain careers play a part in different sections of the creative process and how modern techniques and technologies can change how we engage with the world through engagement, distraction, pushing the limits of what is possible.
• Disney World has really good buffets

But as I said before I made many mistakes (sorry for such a long-winded post, I tried to shorten multiple times and failed).

1. First of all I did the wrong sort of research and planning in a way, setting myself up to learn as I went at Disney rather than just supporting my evidence which led to confusion and a less polished result
2. I did not create a good schedule or filming plan which led to a lack of useful on-location footage which made things hard to edit.
3. I left my interview until too late, and therefore forgot to check video quality until it was too late and I was stuck with what I had.
4. And lastly the editing and storytelling could have been much more cohesive if I had layed out the plan earlier and had edited it slightly differently, and I don’t think I consulted my Pre-vis video even once.

Overall, more initial planning needed to be done so that more thought could be put into the final compiling and presentation

So in conclusion, I had a lot of fun, learnt loads, made mistakes, and gained a understanding of how to imagine possibilities other don’t see. I also drank some blue milk (It tastes like pineapple)