Greeting my friends, we’re back at school; we just finished our first project, and you know what that means. It’s time for a blog post!

In this post, I’ll guide you though how diversity in the Canadian military improves the effectiveness of the army that keeps us here in Canada safe, and how we managed to express what we learnt in this project. So if your interested, keep reading!

This was a very big project, even spanning over two subjects! yes, you heard that right, this was the first joint project between Humanities and Maker and think it actually worked really well, but more on that later. The driving question we were trying to answer first this project was ‘Why does the world need more “Canada”?’

We started by learning about:

• Globalization: The process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.
• How canada works towards peace & protects itself: We learned a bit about Canada’s military and peacekeeping operations, as well as all of the the alliances it’s in.
• Diversity in canada: …and how it benefits all Canadians
• Canadian Literature: how to analyze it and how it showcases Canadian identity

We were also tasked with watching the national every day, a Canadian news network to keep ourselves informed and then we were tasked with choosing one important thing that just happened or is happening in the world and lead a discussion about it. Here was what I found:

Thinking Thursday.pdf

I think that my discussion went rather well, and It felt good to have a meaningful talk about some of the awful things going on in the world right now.

At the same time, in maker we were learning how to create a good podcast, and how to structure a story. We worked on how to edit audio clips, record clear audio, create music for a podcast and how to create a good podcast cover art.

My intro music:

My cover art (I made two versions):

Then, in humanities we chose a topic to write our final essay on. After a bit of brainstorming I decided to write my essay on diversity in the Canadian military and how it increases effectiveness within the Canadian armed forces.

First I had to create a thesis, and this went though many different iterations, and was probably one of the hardest parts of this entire project. Here were some of my drafts:

Thesis brainstorm.pdf

Then it was time for research. A lot of research. we even did an in class lesson on how to find reliable sources which I did actually find very useful. After I had my sources, It was time to begin writing my essay. I went though many different versions and iterations of my essay, changing grammar, spacing, spelling, formatting, and even entire sections or paragraphs. It was lot of work, and if we did it again I would definitely change how I wrote some of my initial drafts. I think it was a very good experience though, as I learned how to find sources hat supported my thesis which I think will be very important for me going in to higher grades. Currently I don’t have access to some of my earlier versions, but I will update my blog when I do. In the meantime here was one of my first drafts:

The Importance of Diversity in the Canadian Military.pdf

my next draft, now with proper formatting:

The Importance of Diversity in the Canadian Military .pdf

And with some polishing touches and final edits:

The Importance of Diversity in the Canadian Military v5.pdf

And then it was done! It was a lot of work but I was happy with my end product. It did really help me understand what it meant to be Canadian and what Canadian identity is. Then we began adapting our script to fit our podcast, first we put it into the three act structure:

And then we recorded our podcast! there was a lot of challenges to overcome, from microphone issues or speaking clearly to making it engaging, but I felt in control throughout the whole process and was pleased with my final result:

Or if you don’t have Spotify:

I was very with how it turned out, even if did take me an hour to figure out how to move the audio clips from my computer to my iPad.

I do actually feel that I learned a lot of valuable things throughout the course of this project such as how how to find evidence to support my claims, how to write a thesis, and how to edit a podcast as I talked about previously. Though our literature studies I also learned what Canadian identity is, and how a collective identity is created.

So now after all that work, why do I think the world needs more Canada? Well, I think that Canada sets a good example for the world in many things, and that if the rest of the world did things more like Canada, the world would be a better place.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you also learned something or found this interesting, and I hope to see you again! Bye! 👋

Why did I do 12 hours of 3-d modelling for a careers class? It’s a mystery.

…unless you read this spectuaroulous blog post!

        [spec-tac-ur-arol-us] = spectacular + marvellous

Hello! it’s once again me! this time, we going to be taking a look at the first PGP project of this year: Atomic habits! Our driving question for this project was “How can small changes in my habits shape my success this year, and beyond?”

Centred around the self-improvement book ‘Atomic habits’ written by the author James Clear, we explored his strategies for creating good habits and breaking bad ones. We used many methods from his book to do this, but everything was centered around four main rules.

1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying

These were the rules we learned for creating good habits, but I also tried to implement throughout the rest of this project as I will touch on later. While reading the book we also had some tests just on the content of the book. Yes, you read that right, paper! every PLP kids worst fear.

We also did a little bit of work on who we want to be and our learning intentions for this year. Then we created our artifact, which was something we came up with and created that showcased what we learnt in the book and how we were going to implement it into our lives.

I decided to create a slightly odd marble run/habit tracker hybrid that used marbles to track your progress on your to-do’s. Here is the final 3-d model:

My artifact represents a couple things from the book. It was created using design principles that were the same as those for forming a habit in the book: easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying. It also uses the paperclip method (A visual method to see completed work) of a very visible indication of what has been done and what needs doing. It can/will help me manage my time and have a clear visual indicator of my work as talked about in the book as well as a few other things:

• Reducing friction
• Immediate reward for good actions
• Designing my environment for success

It was also very fun to design and went though many different iteration of each part. Revision as always.

Concept design:

And the finished product!

I also have a time-lapse of me designing a single part. (half an hour real time for reference):

I think that this project was very helpful for me, as it did help me develop some methods for forming good habits, but it also taught me about my own mindset and how I work much better when working on something I find fun or care about. I do genuinely feel more competent and in control after this project, so thanks to the teachers for that.

As for answering out driving question for this project: Small changes in my habits can enable me to live a better, more controlled life where I am organized and in control this year and beyond.

Thank you very much for reading as always. Goodbye. *BWweDeloOop