Hey everyone! It’s been a little while since my last pose about destination Imagination where I went over what happened leading up and during the first Destination Imagination tournament of the year, and if you missed that go check it out here:
But after this there was still another tournament! I knew form the start of this that I would not be able to attend this tournament as I would be on a trip with the school band (which did go well and was really fun), but I still helped make some changes to our solution. I’d say may main creation was designing and fabricating a system to make our transporter machine easier to use for our other members of our group that will less familiar with its workings. Here is what it looked like:
I know it looks a little weird but it connected to our existing machine though the spots for lego axles to connect, and acted as a weight and a way to easily load the other weights onto the machine.
It terms of a more general reflection about the entire project, I feel I definitely learned some things from this experience. I learned how much a having a dedicated group matters to me, as I felt much more under control this year with a great group compared to last year where I had some challenges and a slightly more difficult group for me to work with. An extra year of experience and time to mature was also a key factor in feeling more comfortable. This was a great chance to expand and develop my own skills as well as work on my teamwork and collaboration abilities. My team was instrumental to success of course, so thanks to them for being collaborative, and open-minded throughout everything. As always I learned what I can do better in the future, in this case that was to stop overthinking things before actually trying a solution and start working on planning work in advance and using a healthy work ethic.
Overall D.I. this year went really well and I was happy with my performance. Huge thanks to my team as well for managing to get second place even though they were were missing two team members.
Hello again, its me! I don’t know who else it would be, but at least you know now that I have not been replaced by a doppelgänger. Probably. Anyways…
Our latest Maker project was an exploration on podcast creation and storytelling. For our product, we made a short podcast episode about something/s that has happened to us, and in doing so learn about creating a podcast and how to tell a story. It went alright. I made a story about my experiences with a yearly event my school does and it was okay. My story wasn’t the most engaging or fun, but it had some decent plot elements and would probably be bearable if you had to listen to it. If you want to take a listen here it is on Spotify:
It was actually a decent amount of fun creating the podcast and I learned a lot of good techniques that I can use to improve my workflow in the future, using speech to text to write the script being a prime example. It was also useful to review and refine my storytelling skills.
I have some critiques about the project itself, but I’ll start with some more of the good stuff:
Fun: This project allowed me to create some fun cover art and make some funky background music.
My cover art for this episode
Creativity: It allowed for huge amounts of personalization and choice, which is always nice and it can definitely help me express myself sometimes.
Storytelling: Definitely a good focus and a hugely important skill for life, both in school, out, and after.
Revision: There was definitely an emphasis placed on revision and improving your own work
But I definitely found somethings in this project didn’t fit right with me:
The criteria of this project was very shallow and just felt incomplete in some ways. The main problem was that the assessment section was not completed nor the learning evidence in the project guide
It just felt rushed is what I’m trying to say, the final product is kind of odd after just doing a much more sophisticated podcast. It was all just too simple, and felt a little incomplete
I also have a little bit of (hopefully) constructive feedback:
This whole project felt like an introduction to the topic and that what I think it should be. I think having this project as an extended launch into podcasting would work well at the start of the year, before some of the later projects that could build off of what we learnt in this one and save some time doing so. Also there was a lot of emphasis placed on the podcast itself, which is okay, but its the storytelling that really matters I think, and a deeper dive into that at the start of the year would be good.
Having the stories be from our life is a bit odd too; treating this like a launch activity would allow for potentially having the stories be personal choice, ranging from fiction, to interests, to whatever we can imagine instead of having to think of that one cool thing that happened to us once. (Although that is still a good prompt).
Thanks for reading, I know this was a bit of a change of pace from normal but it’ll be back to normal next time. Bye!
Hello, its me again! Aren’t you exited to read all about my latest school project? …You are? Awesome! Lets get right into it then!
I had always heard about kids learning about Shakespeare in school, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure if they still did that anymore, but low and behold, they do. In our case we knew we were going to be reading Romeo and Juliet and then creating a modern abridged parody and preforming it as a class. having just watched the other half of our classes performance, we were definitely a bit daunted by the prospect but we knew we could do it.
First, in order to understand the message of Romeo and Juliet which was one of the big parts of the unit, we did some practice interpreting theme and creating theme statements of stories by watching short stories like “KitBull”.
[Kitbull theme study]
We then had to read the play, I chose to read the simplified/modernized version in order to have a better understanding of the story if not the author or language of the time. I thought the story was alright, not my favourite but I’m also not exactly the target audience or even target century so I think that’s understandable. Along the way we had some small assignments and quizzes just to make sure we actually knew what we were reading.
After doing a bit of a deep dive into the concept of parody itself, we broke up into groups to work on creating our modern parody which we determined (after a lot of discussion) would be replacing the two families (Montagues and Capulets) with America and Canada. We themed the story around the stereotypes of each country and tried to make it humorous as possible. In terms of teams, I was working on the audio and visual side of things. This meant that I helped with creating backdrops, finding audio effects, and a little but of practical effects but the practical effects didn’t work too well.
I also worked on compiling the full script together although I was not assigned to do this, but I felt I could do it well and it needed to be done, as we had each act in a entirely different format. To help fix that, I also whipped up a easy to use formatting guide that I was very proud of, and may have been one of my better products from this project:
I was assigned an acting role too, originally our teacher was planning for me to be the second half of Romeo (We had too so that there was less stress on each actor to memorize lines), but I told my teacher I wasn’t great at memorizing lines, and as proof of that, I then struggled to memorize the lines I was assigned, and so I used a script during the performance and still got some lines wrong, so that’s definitely something to work on.
One of the biggest challenges we faced as a group was trying to make our adaption relevant to a modern audience, but I learnt a lot of the importance of relevance for a viewer, and how that helps them connect with the story though finding common similarities between the story and their life or the modern world. It just adds an instant level of interest from anyone who sees your story.
So in terms of adapting Romeo and Juliet we found that relevance through shared experiences, good storytelling and performance, and good planning were all required to help modern viewers understand the theme of Romeo and Juliet.
My favourite part of this project was probably either creating the full script and formatting guide, or doing some stage direction after I was done acting. I think there is some room for improvement in said acting, some of the initial ideas and execution of the audio and visual side of things, as well as just my performance skills in general.
Thanks so much for reading, and I hope to see you again soon!
Greetings fellow penguins! I believe this will be three posts this week. Can you tell we just finished some projects? Anyways, this was our latest Personal Growth Plan (PGP) project where we had a look at how other’s career journeys can shape our own.
From the start of the project we knew we were going to achieve this goal by shadowing a professional for a day and then interviewing them, although just getting an interview was fine as well, and then turning the audio we captured into an entire podcast episode! It did seem rather daunting at first, but I managed to make it work and I’m very proud of the end result.
We started by sending out emails to potential “mentors”, the people who we would be shadowing, so we did some work on how to send a good email before sending those out. My dad helped me connect with Ahren Britton, an engineer at AlgaFilm Technologies, and then I contacted him about what the day would be like. We then worked on some interview questions to ask after doing some research on the person/place in question. Here were my initial interview questions:
We also did a bit more of a deep dive into the the career we were going to be exploring, and we showed our learning by making an easy-to-read overview on the topic in turn also expanding our knowledge on the subject as well as that of the reader. Here is what I created about engineering, with a focus on bioengineering:
Then it was time for the actual shadow day, It was really fun and I learnt a lot about engineering, and also AlgaFilm’s work.
Some of Algafilm’s Algae
More details are in my podcast episode, which was finished after some music creation and a whole lot of editing. The episode is still being published on Spotify, so for now, here is the audio file:
I hope you enjoyed that, there was a lot of work put into it, but let me know in the comments if you had any comments or there was something you think could be better, and I’ll take it into account for my next podcast project.
This experience definitely reinforced my interest in engineering but also got me thinking about I would want in a long term job, such as variety of work and level of personal control over the product of my work. Going forward I know I want and need to work on a personal system to manage my professional communications in order to stay organized and on top of my work.
Overall though I was very happy with my end products from this project and my learning and I was pleased at how real-world this projects was, which I definitely appreciate, especially after just being hired for my first job. Thanks for reading!
Its come time time of year for mPOLs, our midyear presentation of learning. This year I was asked too reflect on progress made towards my “mission”, which was a kind of “where do you see yourself at graduation” type situation set at the start of the school year. Mine was “I am a student who can be engaged in my work, self-regulate, communicate, and collaborate. This helps me achieve my vision by reinforcing my good habits and helping me break worse ones. I also helps me enjoy my projects, which in turn makes me do much better work, as well as feeling proud of my own work and learning from it.”
Now that was all fine and dandy but now that we are actually a good part of the way through the school year, the teachers want to make sure we are actually making progress on our goals that we set for ourselves which I figure is fair. No point having a goal if you forget about and don’t work towards it. So now I’ve got to do just that.
So lets break this down. I said that I wanted to:
Be Engaged in my Work
Self-Regulate
Communicate & Collaborate
Learn from my work
Well that all sounds good, but how am I actually progressing these skills?
Engaged in Work:
I think my best example of this so far this year our WWII project where I created a sophisticated essay to go into our class zine. I really enjoyed this project, and I found the content interesting which definitely helped me focus and be engaged on my final product.
This is definitely a skill I’m still working on although I’m not to bad at it. I mainly get distracted when I’m overwhelmed with work and it feels like to much to handle or start. Better managing my time and working more efficiently will clear up some time so that these projects aren’t overwhelming. I need to do some more research and potentially creation of some methods that will me allow me to do this.
That being said I think I did this very well in our latest PGP project. I was able to focus on my work and just things done, and as a result, I had less work to do later and didn’t get bogged down with work, which would in turn make it harder for me to focus in the future.
(Blog Post Being Made)
Communicate & Collaborate:
I think a great example of where my collaboration and communication skills are at right now was our latest humanities project, where we read and analyzed Romeo & Juliet and then created a modern parody of the play. Throughout the project I maintained constant communication with the DRI and other main people working on the creation and presentation of the parody, and I was very happy with myself after I created a combined script for all the acts and a formatting guide, as the previous format had caused some chaos; I was just happy it all worked out in the end but I was proud of myself mor making something that ended up being very useful even though It was not part of my role.
In terms of learning from my work and learning skills applicable in real life, I think the project that was designed to just done that has done so. Marketing me was one of our PGP projects were we essentially learned how to be professional and create a bit of a brand identity for ourselves. Not only do I find this really fun and have been using it for a lot of things, but I also now have a job interview scheduled, and i had sent the resume we made in class, so I think I definitely learned a lot of stuff from this project.
Now moving forward, I’m thinking about how I can extend in my work and make some truly impressive things. I’ve feel already seen a large jump in the quality of my work this year, especially with my PGP podcast, which got praise from my interviewee that made me very happy. Continuing to refine my presentation and making real-world connections are what I believe will bring my projects to the next level
Building my collaboration skills with others though communication and practice will also be instrumental in my future success. It’s a skill I’m always trying to work on, but always find difficult as I prefer to work by myself, but Destination Imagination and our Romeo & Juliet project have definitely improved my ability to collaborate with others, and work towards a common goal.
Welcome to yet another blog post, for this this one our focus is our time working on and preforming in destination imagination (D.I.) 2025, It actually was a really good experience this year and I’m exited to share my journey throughout D.I. this year.
We began working on our challenge what in my opinion was far to late into the year, with only a little over a month into the first contest, but hey, that’s just the way things happened this year. I was very happy with my group this year, I had a strong team of dedicated people who wanted to do really well this year, so I was pretty confidence going into our design process. We then created a group messages chat to collaborate on which ended up working very well.
We were assigned to the engineering challenge, which only two of us were interested in, for the others it was their last choice (but they still did a great job). We started by deciding on a general team conduct to follow and then moved to identifying everyone’s personal strengths. We quickly realized it would be best to split into an engineering team and a story & props team; I was on the engineering team.
A test course we made to see if our transporter worked
I don’t want to reveal to much about our solution the the challenge yet (which was to bring weights across a cord on some sort of transporter), because I have been told not too, as there are still some regional tournaments going on, one we need to make sure no one uses our ideas. We had a good design process though and went though many rounds of ideation and iteration before we landed on something that we were happy with as an end product. It’s certainly not perfect and it did break a little later on but we have thought of some ways to improve it for the provincial tournament in a month-or-so’s time.
Some basic ideation sketches that we may or may not have used.
While we worked on that our story team was hard at work creating a parody of the greatest showman for us to preform. They did a great job with the story, script and props and I think the D.I. appraisers were very impressed. I’ve learnt a lot about what good team collaboration, collaboration, and communication looks like, and I’m really thankful to my team for that. I also devolved my brainstorming process and learned a little bit about mechanical engineering principles in order to build our transporter.
On the day of the tournament, our team agreed to meet early to get in a whole bunch of extra script run-throughs and practice performances. It was exhausting doing ~8 run-throughs in a row, but it all paid off after we had a really good performance. We then had our instant improv challenge which went well as our grouped worked well together towards a solution. After all that, our hard work was rewarded with winning our category, which felt awesome, even though I was rather confident we would win.
Our team after finishing our performance. I’m the one on the far left looking flustered, as I had just been running around trying to make sure everything was in the right place so we could finish our performance on time.
For the provincial tournament, we did some brainstorming and made a list of things to fix/change that we are beginning to implement now, but I still don’t want to say what it is so we don’t break the rules. Hope you guys found this interesting, and look for the part two in a month or so!
How do you manage to burn yourself, stab yourself, and create a system to connect wires to each other for a social studies project? To find out, use those handy eyes of yours (the things on each side of the bridge of your nose), and look this way ↓
I say salutations to my fellow penguins reading this (and humans I suppose), as we dive into a project a few of Canada’s worst moments and how they are reconciled and learned from, as well as a little bit about discovering and setting my own boundaries.
Our focus for this project was “How can we keep an apology alive so that the wrongs of the past are remembered—and not repeated—today”, and you can see me discover this throughout the post, and then at the end, I’ll give my answer.
We began this project with a quick activity where we tried to commemorate certain historical tragic events with some quickly constructed memorials, which was a nice jumpstart into learning about monuments and memorials, which is what came after along with learning where story played a role in these events and memorials.
We then went into a bit of history on the history of our home, British Columbia, and how it came to be. Here is what we learned:
We then learnt about and analyzed some of the biggest wrongdoings by the Canadian government in history: Asiatic exclusion, Japanese internment in WWII, and the Komagata Maru incident. We also learned about what an apology is, so have a look at that below:
I did honestly find it jarring that I had never heard of some of these events before; despite being a Canadian citizen who has lived in Canada as long as I can remember, I had never heard of the Komagata Maru incident for example, and with the role it played in challenging Canada’s discriminatory intentions at the time and shaping a better future I now find this kind of odd. However I am pleased to the lengths at which these things were taught to us, showing how Canada truly has a commitment to remembering and learning from the past.
As an accompaniment to our other learning in this project, we read and studied Obason by Joy Kogawa. Obason is a book about a young Japanese girl and her family during Japanese internment in Canada and their journey and experiences though it. It gave me new perspective on what this event was like, as well as some more information about the topic. I’m going to personally rate the book a 7 / 10.
We were then assigned (with some choice), our case study for this project. My preference was the Komagata Maru, and this was luckily what my group was assigned to. Here is a more in-depth overview of the topic that I created:
After some brainstorming, we had a basic idea for what we were going to make for our final product, which was in the style of a pitch of a memorial to commemorate the events of our case study. We decided we were going to have a wireframe boat supported by hands raised out of a rock pond. I know this may seem a little confusing, but it’s laced with metaphors, so here was my explanation.
We were also tasked with creating a prototype of what this would look like. It was a lot of work to figure how to create this in a way that would communicate our vision to others but I think we pulled it off.
My group with the finished memorial pitch (I am in the middle)
But its creation was not without struggles, as each group member was tasked with creating one section of our memorial prototype. I said I would create the wireframe boat, and as my teacher pointed out on more than one occasion, I probably made it a little more difficult on myself than it had to be.
I designed and 3-d printed an entire system specifically to join the type of wire I was using together in a modular way. After the many iterations of that, I still had to build the boat, but I got away with just a few small burns and a small cut. (I’m not great with hot glue)
… but I think it looked alright. I also ended up 3d printing the hands, and we were having trouble sculpting them.
All in all I think this was a very informative project that taught some useful information and skills, and I learnt how an apology can be kept alive though careful and methodical storytelling and symbolism to create a monument that resonates with and helps heal those involved.
Overall I give this project an 8 / 10. See y’all in the next one.
I never though I’d have to make myself a logo, much less for school, but that’s what happened in this project.
This was a PGP (Personal Growth Plan) project about marketing ourselves to the world in an authentic and purposeful way. In fact our driving questions was “How might I present my passions, strengths, and learning to the world?”, and therefore this is the question I will be answering with this blog post!
I understand how this project could look very boring from the surface, but as a student who hadn’t really tried to express myself professionally before, I was actually very exited and was hoping to make/learn some things that would actually be useful for my future.
I don’t feel like I was disappointed, we started off strong with a guest speaker, Curt Scheewe, who came to talk to us about some dos and don’ts of things like marketing ourselves and job interviews, as well as where we could fit into the workforce. It was great to have him talk to us, and it got me thinking about how I was actually going to y’know, market myself.
Then we started working on our first benchmark of the project, creating a personal theme and logo, and then combing them to make a business card:
It took a lot of revisions to get it right, but I was actually very happy with the end result and I think it’s one of the most professional looking things I’ve ever made, so yeah, I was really happy with how this came out.
we continued this theme by moving on to our resumes, which were a real challenge. We made visual resumes which I had very mixed feeling about,. because while it was technically a resume, it doesn’t work well for actual use but oh well. It went though many revisions, far too many to put here, so I’ll just show you my final version:
We also did some mock interviews which were interesting, and some practice, but I don’t feel like there was very much emphasis put on them throughout the project so I didn’t put too much effort into mine, although I still think I did just fine and it was a good preview/reminder of what a job interview is like.
This was also our exhibition project, so in order to present our learning be designed and created booths, trying to simulate the general look of a job fair. I really wasn’t sure what to focus on for a while for my booth, as it was such a personal focus thing, but eventually I decided to lean into the nerdy side of my hobbies (I don’t know why I’m pretending there’s another side). Here was the draft for my booth:
On one side I had all of the stuff we made in the project on 3-d printed display stands, and then on the other some of my hobbies like speedcubing and 3-d designing. Then came the actual exhibition night.., and it went great! It was by my and my class’s best exhibition so far, and we got a lot of praise from both teachers and parents so that was awesome. I think the success can be attributed to the amount of work put in, the personal elements of the project, and just having a little more time than usual. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of my booth on the day 🙁
I learned a lot about myself in this project, and finished it with a lot more pride in who I was and the things that I do than I did going into it. It was a good opportunity to preview some of my potential career decisions. I think I did a very good job of creating my business card and booth, as well as being a good team member, but I could have definitely improved my resume. In future I will do some more concept ideas and ideation for graphic design projects before diving headfirst into the actual design. It would also be fun to make a design theme/moodboard for ourselves if we ever did this project again
I was actually very impressed with my exhibition group and we all worked really well together to create a great theme for our area of focus (engineering & trades), as well as making sure all the guests would have fun and be engaged.
So throughout this project we presented our passions, strengths and learning to the world by developing an image for ourselves and exhibiting our work and interests to a public audience. This was great project that I have learned a lot of great strategies for presenting myself, and just building my general confidence. Thanks so much for reading!
Hello there fellow humans, and welcome to yet another blog post (I need a new intro, suggestions are welcome). From the start of this project, we knew we were going to be making many real-world connections, creating a class zine about WWII’s role in shaping Canada’s identity, as well as collecting $500 dollars in order to purchase a flag from the Juno beach centre (the museum at the beach taken by Canada on D-Day), and present it to a local place supporting military veterans, the Lynn Valley Legion.
In this project we did many a thing, in fact, I would confidently say that this is the largest project we’ve ever worked on in PLP. We started off just by learning about the severity of WWII and how the war played out. it was very insightful to learn about the war and how it has affected my life, I really feel like a started to connect some things in my head. It’s honestly hard to describe, but I definitely felt a strengthening of my national pride on those days.
We also had a guest speaker come in from the Lynn Valley Legion to talk to us about the notion of service and what we can do for our communities. I thought in general he was a really nice guy and he had a lot of good points when it came to volunteering and community. We then volunteered our time around the community, which was a nice experience, and I discovered a lot about how the world works in regard to volunteering and what it can mean for someone or something. I know that’s all a bit cryptic, but it’s a little hard to explain concisely. I’ll just show you what I did and my section for the about me section in our class zine:
James is a grade 10 PLP student at Seycove secondary who enjoys spending time with friends, designing things, and solving Rubik’s cubes. For his service project, he decided to participate in a cleanup of his local forest, removing trash and making the forest a better place for humans and all other creatures as the forest is very important to him, as he enjoys being in and around nature. He very much enjoyed cleaning the forest while exploring and discovering more about Canada’s forests and geography. His friend Matteo also came to help out.
(I’m on the left)
Then we get to the hard part, the essay. Why is there always an essay? So much essay. However it actually wasn’t too bad this time, as least the first draft, and even that didn’t happen until after a lot of planning. In fact, here was my plan; I think this took longer than the essay itself because I had to make sure the whole thing would make sense when it was finished:
The Plan
you might have to zoom out (CTRL + Scroll)
And lets not forget about the thesis which when though many, many iterations:
If you actually want to see them:
General vibe: “Canada’s multicultural identity was fostered and enriched by its military contributions in WWII, shaping the country’s unique and inclusive national identity.”
Potential points to argue:
The UN and NATO’s existence have prevented WWIII
The UN’s peacekeeping operations blah blah blah
How WWII contributed to Canada’s safety and security
The conflict of WWII directly led to the safety and prosperity of Canada though Canada’s acts within the war
Because of Canada’s contributions in WWII, Canada is safe and secure today
Canada’s safety and prosperity are a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII
Canada’s multiculturalism is a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – reword, add identity, fostered
Canadian’s values are a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – needs identity
Canadian’s lifestyles are a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – needs identity
WWII was only won by the Allies as a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – is a statement, too much nationalism, also an opinion?
Canada’s global reputation is a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – needs identity
Canada’s multiculturalist (<- Not a word) identity is a direct consequence of Canada’s military contributions in WWII – reword, add identity, fostered
Final: Canada’s multicultural identity was enriched and expanded by it’s military contributions in WWII, shaping the country’s inclusive national identity.
And then we had to learn about MLA formatting (which was not as bad as I expected), it was a challenge but eventually I understood enough to the point where I use it and be confident it was correct.
I also had to write the thing itself, which was definitely a challenge and after I finished planning I only had a day or two to complete my first draft but here it is:
After that I revised, revised, revised (around 6 total revisions) until I had a finished product that I was actually really proud of:
I think my favourite part of this project was either learning about the good part of Canada’s contribution is WWII or actually doing my service project. Both just felt right and were actually rather enjoyable. I think I over-planned my essay a bit to much, and as we learned about in our atomic habits project earlier this year, I did to much work that seems good but actually doesn’t get much done.
Some of my key takeaways from this project were about history, how it to analyze it, and a deeper understanding of how it shapes the present and the future. I also feel much more confident in essay writing now, which I’m sure is a skill that will benefit me throughout later life. It it kind of sound like a bit of a shallow explanation, but these are some of the most useful skills I gained in this project.
So yeah, in the future I will do more realistic planning for my essay, and I also think that learning some writing skills could be beneficial for my my focus and even personal well being. Big projects with a deadline can be very imposing, but I think learning how to succeed in that type of situation will set me up well for life.
So now we get to answering our driving question: “What role did the conflict of World War II play in shaping Canadian identity”. My answer, built off of all that we learned in this project is: World War II played the role of an instigator for the advancement of Canada’s society and identity though providing a necessity for innovation and assertion of Canada’s national identity. I hope that makes enough sense. its hard to condense an entire project into one sentence. Thanks for reading!
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:
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:
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:
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! 👋
