TPOL post
*exhales. “So what do I have to do, one last time.” “Just relax and answer the questions, tell us about yourself.” “Ok… yeah, ok.” *inhales.
“My name is James Streeter and I’m a 8th grade PLP student at Seycove secondary. This year, it’s been kinda crazy. In grade 7, the whole idea of high school was crazy. I knew I was in for a tough year when we had to do summer learning, before we even really knew our teachers; having to do a revision for a drawing to capitalize a word, on a drawing, made me realize what I had signed up for when I joined PLP.”
”So, why did I join PLP? Other than some clear benefits like the formats of the projects, and getting to work with iPads, the iPad I’m using to write this, I just wanted something different, something that just wasn’t main steam. Now that I’m going into 9th grade, I feel like made the right choice.”
“So then we went into our first projects. If you want to see more about those you can go to my mPOL blog post here:”
“Then after all that I went to semester two. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn! At this point, I had learned a lot already, and the quality of my projects was definitely improving. Then we got into new projects. Those were very hard. I feel like I preformed well, but it was hard. In the first semester most of my work looked good, and you could tell I put effort into it, but it was still a little sloppy. This semester, I feel like this has been fixed. I am happy with with the quality of my work.”
“As for said projects, we’ve done quite a few now including… drumroll please” pata-pata-pata-pata-patoom!
“Ok, first, a humanities project, the Renaissance. For that project, we had to create a triptych depicting inventions through the ages. Here was the final product:”
If you want to learn more, click here:
“From this I learned about the way things have adapted over the years, and how things today are different from older times. Those same new inventions from Europe and Asia change how we see the world, and how the world is today.”
“Then we had “blue-eyed brutes and other tall tales” – a project about the vikings, and early exploration. We learned about how the vikings lived, and explored, then we created a travelogue:”
and here was the project:
Then, a science project; small but mighty.
This project taught us about germs and many other microscopic things, it really made me realize how crazy the odds are that we exist. I also took away from this that we are also small but mighty. But we are also literally had a 1/8,000,000,000 that we would
be… y’know, us. I also learned how to break down work into controllable pieces.
Here was the final product; a public heath poster:”
“Then, it was colonization. This was a fun project, but definitely one of the harder ones. We learned how the first European explorers interacted with the First Nations and how the first settlements affected life today. We also learned about trade routes, past and present, and some parts about slavery. To show what we learned, we analyzed a drawing then re-interpreted it from the other sides perspective to make sure both sides were shown:”
“Then, we created a video about colonization:”
This project taught me that many things have more factors than it first seems, and a lot of stuff in history was messed up. I also learned how to look at something from multiple points of view.
And the project:
“Then, another science project, mind over matter, all about… well… matter. We learned how different types matter work and I learned to not overdo it after spending way too long on this game! (Making it)”
And here’s the blog post:
“And this is the last one! Advertising! This was a really fun project, but probably the hardest as it included the Oregon field study. This project gave me a whole new meaning to the word “revision” and I also learned a lot of other great skills on the field study, and in this project. We interviewed a business in Oregon after learning a bit about advertising. Then after all that we created our advertisements, and revised them a bunch, here was my final version:”
And, once again, the blog post:
“That was all the projects, but we were still not done because we also had exhibition.
Ah yes, exhibition. I learned so much in such a short time fame, it was kind crazy. Here’s the post:
“Here are the main things I learned from this exhibition. First, teamwork. The extent to which everyone on my team helped and did their work is very different from some simpler thing near the start of the school year. We all worked really well together. And almost nothing was forgotten for exhibition day. The booth also just looked really good as seen in the photo below, everything was clearly on another level than winter exhibition, and winter exhibition was decent.
I also learned how good my work can be after this whole year of learning, I’m excited to see what level it’s at after next year. I am also happy to see that I took on a leadership role for this exhibition; it wasn’t the big role, the D.R.I., but it was still important, I think jumping for opportunities like that is what will get me through the rest of high school, and ready for what comes after.”
“And now you are caught up. So why do I think I’m ready to go to grade 9? Well I’ve already presented you with most of the evidence in the form of these mini project reflections, showing you the vast group of skills I’ve learned. But I will present you with a few final points. Tomorrow. It’s 9:36PM now and I have school tomorrow.”
“I’m back with the final part of this post. The project I struggled with most this semester was probably advertising, mainly because of the week without the iPad and then catchup, but also because we were expected to create really high quality work. Also having to create a lot for the exhibition in two days ways hard.
I think I’ve had some decent habits throughout this school year, I don’t use the calendar too much, but I use Things for everything. Next year, I’d like to take more notes, it was really useful in one project when we learned to take them, and then no one ever asked us to take them again, and no student ever did.
My worst work this year was probably some early humanities stuff, the work was alright, as in my medieval keynote, but with the amount of time put in, it just wasn’t worth it.”
“So I think the way I can improve next year is being more organized, especially with my notes. This will help me be ready for everything that comes in the next year.”
”And that’s it.”
So, Advertising.
Ever feel like your school projects are too boring? ‘Course you do, everyone does, well over at Seycove inc. we’ve got the perfect solution for you! PLP, the program with amazing things that are superior to other schools. So sign up today at Seycove.ca to cement your amazing future!
That is an ad, sure it’s one that I made for a semi-fiction thing, unfortunately, there is no Seycove inc., and one made hastily for for this blog post, but it’s still an ad.
But what makes an ad, and why is it important? Is it. At all?
Yeah, it is; that’s why we did a project on it, and a rather cool one too. So I’m going to tell you about it.
So for most of these project blog posts I stick to a format y’know? But for this project it’s ‘gonna be a little different because we had our first field school!
Oregon was a little, no, a lot bonkers, if you want to see the whole thing go to this post:
But yeah, the different part is that I’ll be throwing around some Oregon references. So lets get started.
Keystone 1:
For this keystone, we learned about what advertising is, and the effect it has on us and our lives, to show what we learned, I had to answer a survey and so did my mum. I also had to write a paragraph.
Keystone 2:
For this keystone we learned about some different types of ads and some techniques advertisers use. To show that we understood, we created this analysis chart where we broke down six ads.
Persuasion in Advertising Chart
This was hard because my iPad had broken in Oregon, so I had to do this on pen and paper.
Keystone 3: After going to Oregon and interviewing our business, they told us what they wanted to see in an ad, as well as lots of other useful stuff, y’a know, I’m just going just show you:
As seen in the L.A.U.N.C.H. Portfolio, I made many versions of my ad, but in case you didn’t see, here is my final version:
Then we got to show it of at the exhibition with the rest of my group!
Spring Exhibition, 2023! – A weird thing.
Ug…
I’m tired, and why is that?
SPRING EXHIBITION 2023!
Welcome to another, amazing, flabbergasting, stupendous blog post from yours truly.
My first spring exhibition was an interesting experience. Overall, I enjoyed it, but there were certain parts that should probably be classified as torture. lets go with what I liked first.
I really enjoyed talking to people, especially those who asked my really good thought-provoking question, answering those questions and telling those who listened about our adventure in Oregon was so enjoyable, I could do that all day, and it was great practice for public speaking. Another thing I enjoyed was showcasing my work to the public; showing them the process my work went through, the thought behind it, and the learning that was required was actually quite entertaining; especially for my maze (the maze where you navigated it using a robot and a Xbox controller). I also had fun setting up the booth with my group, the way it all came together so well, and so fast, was really cool to experience. Also, setting up the mats that lined the floor was kinda surreal just ‘cause of the amount of surface area we covered.
Now for the stuff I didn’t like. I didn’t like the 12 hour school day! Like, how are we expected to function that long! If you agree join me in this song:
“Twelve hours of school to go,
Twelve hours of school!
Wait one out,
Then pass out,
Eleven hours of school to go!
Ect…”
Then the standing; Ms. Madsen will complain if she sees this, but standing for two hours is just not fun, obviously we did it, but just no. Annoying people were present to; and that wasn’t fun. There was this one kid who just came up to my game, beat it in record time, moved some of my code they I then had to repair it, then, they closed the app with my code and walked away. Just why! Then putting away the mats was a nightmare.
Overall, I can’t say it was the best thing ever, but I learned a lot, and took many good things out of it! Thanks for reading, as always.
Oregon, what to say about Oregon.
Ah yes, Oregon. The field school to last the ages! It was fun. Mostly.
I learned a lot of skills in this field school, broke my iPad, and had some very fun times.
It was a long drive there, we made a few stops, but it was still a ten-hour drive. That was not fun. My iPad also broke and then I had to do a week of school without one; that was hard. So without further ado, my Oregon journal:
Hope you enjoyed following my journey throughout this field school, I really enjoyed it, we had some hard times some incredibly fun times. I felt really bad for our teachers at some points, but we didn’t blow anything up (as far as I know), so we were basically model citizens.
I feel really lucky that I got to do this, and I enjoyed it immensely.
I learned a lot of skills too, such as independence, teamwork, navigation, foreign money, interviews, and many other things.
Basically it was fun, and a great learning opportunity.
Colonization is kinda weird.
Hi, hello, do I have to write this? I suppose. *sigh.
Hello everyone, welcome to my all new blog post ‘bout greedy people on ships, otherwise known as colonization.
Keystone 1:
For keystone 1 we created a chart analyzing listing a piece of C.W Jeffries art. This was the piece that I was assigned:
And this is what I found when I analyzed it:
It is a bit hard to explain how we broke this all down into info we could use, but we basically looked for the key elements that conveyed certain messages about early colonization in the “new world”.
Keystone 2:
In keystone 2, we used what we had discovered, along with some tracing skills to re-interpret the image we were assigned from the perspective of the First Nations/the other party. Here was mine:
I think it came out quite well. It shows what the arrival of the explorers from a vast ocean might have looked like to the First Nations at the time.
Keystone 3:
In keystone 3, we created a script for a video about early colonization in the Americas, here was mine:
Final product:
In the end of this project, we created the video using AR Makr to add both pieces of art in the background, then we edited it and put on YouTube. Here is my video!
sorry that the quality is so bad, I had to compress it to be able to put it on here.
Thanks for reading, hope you liked my video!
Science makes things go boom
Welcome to my blog post on a blog. In a post.
I quite enjoyed this project that we did in science, we leaned about atoms, types of matter, and the ways in which they can be affected by various conditions; so without further ado, welcome to my science story.
Keystone 1:
For keystone 1, we mostly did learning. We learnt about matter, chemical and physical properties, and qualities and quant active observations. For our final product we created a “who am I?” Statement where we listed the qualities of an object. Here was mine:
Mass = 168.58g
Volume = approximately 270cm3
Density = 0.62437037037037g/cm3
Physical properties:
– Primary colours are white, blue, and green. – qualitative.
– Roughly cylindrical in shape. – qualitative.
– It has a height of 19 1/2cm. – quantitive.
Chemical property:
– It is non-toxic. – qualitative.
Click underneath to see what my object was.
Keystone 2:
For keystone 2 we learned about the different states of matter and how different conditions effected certain events and reactions. To show our learning, we designed and tweaked an experiment. We had access to gummy bears and many other ingredients and we changed the environment the gummy bears were in and we saw how that effected the diffusion of the gummy bears. My full experiment is below:
Questions: – How does the presence of different substances affect the diffusion and the gummy bear? – Does the temperature of the water affect the diffusion and the gummy bear and/or the other materials? – Does the presence of an acidic substance affect the diffusion and the gummy bear?
Procedure: 1. Put the gummy bear in tap water. (Test 1) 2. Put the gummy bear in vinegar. (Test 2) 3. Cold tap water + gummy bear+ food colouring. (Test 3) 4. Cold tap water + gummy bear + vinegar + baking soda + food colouring. (Test 4)
Ingredients: – 4 gummy bears – Some vinegar – A pinch of baking soda – A few drops of food colouring.
Predictions: – The vinegar will make the gummy bear diffuse faster, as it is acidic. – The cold tap water will make the gummy bear diffuse slower than the room temperature water. – The vinegar and baking soda might counteract each other. – The fourth test will go very slow because of the lack of energy and the amount of substance in the water/vinegar – Matter gets more concentrated with the reduction of heat, so the gummy bear in cold water – might be slightly smaller than the one in room temperature water. – The acidic vinegar might partially or completely dissolve the gummy bear.
Hypothesis: – The rate of diffusion will be affected by different factors presented to the situation. – The characteristics of the gummy bear will change depending on the substances and temperatures.
Observations:
Day 1: – Test 4 is already covered in bubbles, all others are quite normal. – Test 2 gummy bear has only 2 bubbles on it. Test 1:
Test 2:
Test 3:
Test 4:
Day 2: All of the gummy bears have expanded, some more than others. – They were all very fragile.
Test 1:
It became incredibly fragile, and broke into pieces when extracting it from the beaker. – It is also very slippery. – The colour has stayed the same.
Test 2:
The gummy bear got much bigger. It was squishy and slippery like jello.
Test 3:
I lost the photo on this one.
This gummy bear was the largest of the bunch – It was dyed mostly green, but some of the original colour was still showing due to the food colouring – It was also quite fragile.
Test 4:
Test 4 basically doubled in size. – It became less slippery and fragile than others. – It was also dyed green. – Its throat has been slit.
Conclusion:
Q: How does the presence of different substances affect the diffusion and the gummy bear?
A: The presence of different substances in the experiment changed how much the gummy gear grew and changed in a variety of ways.
Q: Does the temperature of the water affect the diffusion and the gummy bear and/or the other materials?
A: The temperature of the tap water didn’t really affect the growth. However, it might have affected the speed at which the gummy bear diffused.
Q: Does the presence of an acidic substance affect the diffusion and the gummy bear?
A: The presence of an acidic substance seems to have made the gummy bears bigger if anything, and made one of the gummy bears slightly melty, and it made both very slippery, the others were slippery as well, but these ones were particularly so. Final statement: Changing things about the situation the gummy bears were in affected what happened to the gummy bear in various ways.
Keystone 3:
For keystone 3 we created a video game pitch, mine was an adventure game where the player is a certain state of matter and element, and has to try to survive, and eventually they change to a different state of matter and element. And then we made it! Here is… *drumroll here. Atom Quest!
And the link if you want:
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/841045685
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed!
To Science, or not to Science. That is the Question.
Dis is being a blog post… probably.
Recently we’ve had a change in our timetables, that being; we have science. Now I know what you might be thinking… actually I don’t. But you are probably thinking something along the lines of “science exists”. Well that is true! Welcome to my first blog post for PLP science.
Keystone 1:
For keystone 1 we did a lot of experimentation and experiments. We also learned about, and witnessed the cell theory. First we looked at some bacteria under microscopes, which was simultaneously really awesome, and really gross. Like really really gross. We then took swabs of certain parts of the school, and put them in a Petri dish, then but those in an incubator, and let them grow. So gross. Anyways, we had to record the whole process in this field journal:
sorry this is slightly wonky, I tried to fix it.
Keystone 2:
In keystone 2 we made immune system characters to represent the specific parts of the innate and adaptive immune system. I made mine in the style of Pokémon cards.
I hope you like them 🙂
here is a list of the descriptions, because they were really small on the cards.
“The white blood cell looks for harmful cells in your bloodstream. These harmful cells are called pathogens. When they find a pathogen, they will tag it, and then a macrophage while come destroy it. Overall the white blood cell is a very important part of the immune system. The macrophage looks for pathogens that have been tagged in our bloodstream. When it finds a marked pathogen it will destroy that pathogen. The macrophage cell helps keep our body safe, and is an instrumental part of the immune system. The B-cell is an important part of adaptive immune system. They are important because they create antibodies. The B-cells save the “recipes” to create specific types of antibodies to fight specific pathogens, so the pathogen gets easier to destroy if that type of pathogen comes back. Antibodies stick to the surface of a pathogen. The white blood cells tags the pathogens with antibodies, this allows the macrophage able to identify the pathogen and destroy it. All antibodies are specific to certain pathogens. T-cells help identify pathogens, they look for distinguishing features on the pathogens. When they find a pathogen, they reproduce. There are three types of t-cell, helper, memory, and killer. The t-cell is a vital part of the adaptive immune system.”
Keystone 3:
In keystone 3 we looked at some common fears and superstitions about vaccines, we also learned how said vaccines worked.
we then created a short infographic about a fear of vaccines of our choice, and wrote a short paragraph about bias, and its place in our lives.
And this is the paragraph.
“Bias is a big part of research, writing, and our life, even if we don’t always know it; it is incredibly hard to write or think about something without bias no matter how much you practice. What is bias? Bias is basically your opinion or an idea you have on something, that isn’t necessarily a fact; it is a personal opinion. For example, I really like playing video games, and I think that they are great! However, this may not be the scientific reality, and my feelings towards video games are biased, because I enjoy them. For you, think about something you like or know about, then think, “Is that really true?” Or is that not technically true. For the record, bias is not always a bad thing, It also helps shape our personality, who would you be without opinions? But bias can also be bad when trying to write about, or think about some things. A common example, especially after/in the Covid-19 pandemic; vaccines. Anti-vaxxers all have some biased opinions towards vaccines, they think they are harmful, unsafe, and many other things, while the evidence shows that the Covid-19 vaccine, and other Vaccines are very safe, properly tested, and controlled. Bias can be good or bad depending on how it comes into play, but if you want to find an unbiased opinion on something, it is always a good idea to check multiple sources, and then make sure those sources are reliable.”
Finish line:
For the final part of this project we had to create a public heath poster that might even go up in some elementary schools, which is insane. Overall, I quite like mine.
Thank you for reading my blog post, I hope you enjoyed and learned something. My sources for the infographic are also underneath.
Exploration. It does indeed exist.
Welcome to another blog post about stuff! Interesting-ish stuff! In particular, school. Today I’m going to show you the final results of my delve into exploration, and show you how I got there.
This project was a hard one, it started right after the semester switchover, and ended at the same time as the second term.
Keystone 1:
We started by learning about the vikings, how they lived, who they were, what they did, and what were some common myths about them. We also learned how to asses bias in information, and how to obtain a non-biased opinion on a subject. Our proof that we had learned this came in the form of a viking character card; a viking character we created along with some other facts on a template we had been given, and a character summary sheet:
My personal favourite part of that assignment was one of my made up quotes, “anything you can kill, I can kill more.”
Keystone 2:
After keystone 1, we started to learn about exploration in the Renaissance; who was exploring, how they explored, and what they discovered, the way we showed our learning this time was by creating a short story under 200 words; I found this very hard because I like adding detail to my stories, but I managed write the story in just under 350 words! Hmmm. That won’t lose me any marks, right? Right? *hyperventilating. Anyways, here is my story, it is from the perspective of a crew mate aboard Jacques Cartier’s ship on his voyage when he “discovered” Canada. My story shows how the crew members of those ships might of felt, and how navigation worked then:
“As we left the shore of France, I couldn’t help wonder why I had signed up to go across the sea is search of a new trade route to Asia.
As we were sailing, I was very curious about how navigation worked; how on earth were we getting home? I felt that to get these questions answered I would have to ask our captain; Jacques Cartier.
When I got to the captain’s bunk, I knocked on his door, and when he stepped out I asked, “how do you navigate so well? How are we going to get home?” He then invited me in and showed me some of the different navigation instruments. First the compass; which always pointed to the true north, used for finding your direction, then the astrolabe; used for triangulation and identifying stars of planets, then the cross-staff; used for measuring the height of a heavenly body, and lastly, the sextant; like the astrolabe, but could also find the latitude of a ship. He also showed me he navigated using the stars and how he used maps to find where we were. I went back to my bunk feeling satisfied that he knew what he was doing, and I would get home safely.
We traded with the people we found on the land we discovered, they liked trading for our goods, but eventually we had to fight them when they tried to steal our supplies. A lot of them died, which was bad for our relations with them, but they will all probably be dead soon because of the diseases we accidentally brought to them.
When I finally heard the cry of “land! I see land!” From the crow’s nest, I was relived, our journey had taken us a long time to complete, and now we were finally home.”
Keystone 3:
In this keystone we learned about cause and consequence, how something starts, and what that thing could change. We then updated our stories to include this; in my story it was the section about fighting the indigenous people, and how so many people had died, just because a few people went exploring.
We also created some images to go with our stories, here are mine,
Firstly, the compass;
And the astrolabe;
Then the sextant;
And then the cross-staff;
And lastly, a short video showing a mini timeline-ish thing of how the exploration might of happened.
Finish line:
For the last step of our project, we put our project into book creator. Here was the finished product:
Overall, this was quite a fun project, we also did peer reviews the whole way through, and I learned lots of new skills.
Thank you for reading my blog post about exploration, I hope you enjoyed it! If you want to read a longer, unfinished version of my story, click underneath:
Bye!
mPOL reflection post
Hello everyone, and welcome to a quick blog post about what happened at my mPOL.
When I showed up to present my mPOL (mid-term presentation of learning) it was very stressful. I had two teachers watching me and I just decided to start! And then I forgot to add one mandatory part. yay.
I went though some of the key points I wanted to share about my experiences in PLP so far, and didn’t miss much. I got lots of positive feedback from my teachers and parents, the one of our teachers asked me “you missed something, do you know what it is?” I said “yes”, then completed that thing.
And that was basically my first mPOL! One down, four to go!
Thanks for reading.
The Renaissance is interesting.
Hello and welcome to another blog post, this time about triptychs and the Renaissance!
This is my triptych that I made.
For this project we worked on researching and creating our own triptychs. The below writing shows my thesis and some supporting evidence.
My thesis:
Ideas from Europe and Asia changed the world by introducing new thoughts to the world that changed how many thought about various different topics, and also the world as a whole, as well as making people think more critically.
Supporting my ideas:
New ideas in the Renaissance changed the Renaissance world by introducing things like the printing press, discovering lenses, and introducing new ideas into the religious world. I say this because of some inventions and innovations shown in my left panel of my triptych. Such as glasses, back then they were two lenses supported by a metal frame, and they looked a little weird, but now they are optimized for different people, and they have so many different variations to help everybody. In the Renaissance though, it could have helped many people who were shortsighted and shunned for it. There is also the printing press, it represented a opportunity for freedom back in the Renaissance, by allowing many more people to share their opinion, and this relates to modern communication and news innovations such as phones, tablets, and news stations, all of which provide simpler effects to the Rennasiance printing press. And lastly, the mechanical clock, it really regulated the world back then, and opened paths for more modern inventions like digital clocks and many other great things.
Traditional ideas from before the Renaissance, showed how human society coped without later inventions by using things like transcribing, sending letters, religious faith, and water clocks. Some supporting evidence that I have comes in the form of examples such as transcribing. Before the printing press, people (monks usually) would copy books by hand. When the printing press was invented, was something lost? The feeling of having a truly unique book that had been hand written by another human, with their own handwriting? I leave you that question.
There was also things before the Renaissance like water clocks, which weren’t as accurate as mechanical and digital clocks, but were arguably much cooler. Little five year old me looking though my pull the flaps inventions book was always fascinated by the water clock. There was also a greater focus on the church back then, and after the reformation in the Renaissance, people had more freedom, and opportunities for thought. So all of the newer innovations were amazing, but what did we lose? Modern ideas that were pioneered in the Renaissance changed how we think about many things today, and how we approach some problems. An example I give is the microscope, that was invented in the Renaissance, but has been upgraded by more science and vice versa. It has been used to support many Modern experiments and discoveries. There’s also the amazing things that humanity has been doing with medicine that has saved so many lives. Such as the way we had a covid-19 vaccine in less than a year.
One of the hardest things about this project was actually creating the triptych, but also learning how to take good notes, that part was surprisingly difficult, some of the easier sections were… um… moving on.
this was a fun project to work on, and it all took place in less that a month, which is crazy to think about, because we got so much work done. Overall we learned a lot of good life skills, and a lot about the Renaissance.
Thank you for reading about my journey though the renaissance, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Do you agree with my thesis? Do you not? Leave a comment telling me, I’d love to know!
Bye!