Welcome back, to the first post of the school year. This post follows our first attempt at world fame, through a podcast about why Canada needs more recognition. This was a mixed maker and humanities project, with both classes having active components. To start this project we research our driving question of, Why the world needs more Canada. Most of this research was done by researching new and old Canadian literature, we review 5 total documents, and I had even found some that fit towards my project. We then started our brainstorming of essay topics, and I had landed on the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms. We had began the research for our topics. Most of my information came from the Canadian government website, where they had multiple links for the charter, including the history, and the charter in its original form, and in pdf form. Once I had most of the research done I started on our humanities final product, the essay. The essay was supposed to answer the question of why the world needs more Canada, like our podcast. This essay was both the final part of our humanities project, but also would be our base for our script. Once I had finished my essay, I started to translate my essay into my script. One of the bigger differences with the script was that I had added an gameshow element. After I had covered most of the information about the charter I had added a little gameshow section about what I had previously covered.some of the question followed the lines of the charter categories, and when it was put into place. Once we had done the script, and had it reviewed, we were ready to start the recording if our project. To start off my recording sessions, I got my extra sound effects, and also got my script broken into easy parts to record. After everything was prepped, it was just a matter of recording, and then editing, to be done with this project.
Reflection
In total this was a great start to this school year. I really enjoyed that this project was very varried, with having a great balance of mskaer and humanities components. I felt pretty accomplished, enjoying lots of the elements. The only fields that I feel I could improve in was the improvement of depth in my thinking Thursday presentation, and tying it more to Canadian identity. And also A little more coherence in my first few essay drafts.
During the spring exhibition 2024 we made Comic books, that were a historical fiction based off an event we were given. This blog post will follow the creation of the comic, and the night of the exhibition. The first step of the comic creation was the research about ww1. We did a lot of in class work, one of our main sources of information was a video called “Canada, the story of us”. At the same time as our note taking. We learned about comic creation, and the type of frames that good comics have. Some of those frames included long shots, close ups, bleed panels and reverse. After we had completed all of our research, we were prepared to start creating our storyboards. My storyboards had very basic drawings, but did show the story, and plan out what images I would need. Once I had completed the storyboard, I started the creation of my comic. As I am not talented at drawing whatsoever I opted for tracing instead. I used an AI comic generator for base images which I would trace, and then alter. While this did make it a lot easier, I still had put 30+ hours of work into this comic. In total I had 20 frames and every single type of panel that I needed. My comic was in a 1950s style, which made it harder to try make all the drawings look like they had the same style. Once I had some of the images finished, I started the process of colouring. Once all of my images were completed, and put in the comic with captions and extra effects, it was two days before the exhibition. The day of the exhibition, we spent the class making cardboard trench paneling and preparing small other things for the exhibition.
Once school had finished, we prepared to setup the exhibition. We were located in the cafeteria, and had from under the stair all the way to the stairs by the gymnasium. In that area we had tables set up, and decorated them with some coloured paper and some plants and sticks. Once our area were set up, we were given some time to eat, and then the chaos began at five. It was a very slow start, but it was consistently going increasing. Once we had open the gates It felt as if most of the crowd was quite impressed by all of our comics. This led to some nice conversations about the production process of these comics. After a the guest had left, we started the takedown process. It was a relatively fast clean up, which led to end of this exhibtion
“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
Throughout both the first and second semester we had projects ranging from a futuristic ww1 book, and Frankenstuffies to our trip to Alberta, looking for reason for travel and tourism. We have had a range of projects, but there were a few projects that I enjoyed more, and found that I learned and grew the most on. One of the projects that I would like to highlight is our joint Maker and Humanities project, Rocky Mountain field school. This project was during our trip to Alberta, where we looked at the impact of geography on how we live. On the maker side of this projects, we made multiple videos.
The first video I was our Alberta TikTok, where we had to make a TikTok trend video, that fit in to the trip. The second video we made was our at home video about what inspires us. The third video we had was the silent video that we made at the three valley gap ghost town. We made this video in one day at the three valley gap, where we had lots of old western themed building to choose from. Our final and largest video was the investigative video. This video was our answer want the allure of the Rockies was for tourism. We were to interview 3 people about why they travelled to the Rockies. On the humanities side of the project, we were to make a comic about the five themes of geography, being movement, location, region, place, and human environment. I enjoyed this project because it was awesome learning about Canadian geography, and because it was part of an awesome trip.
The next project that I want to about was our revolutions project. This project was our winter exhibition project during this project we had to make a Rube Goldberg
machine that correlated with the revolution we were assigned. My group wads the Irish revolution. Our machine was built on a piece of wood, painted like the Irish flag. Our machine used lots of different parts to achieve the goal of a total run through. I enjoyed this project because there was a massive creative element, and a making element which I enjoyed. I also found this project great because I learned a lot about the Irish revolution itself and the massive effect that it had on Ireland and England.
The another project that I would like to show is the frakenstuffies project. This project was recent, and started with us reading a book called leviathan about a different version of ww1, with Austria-Hungary having massive mechanical beasts called clankers, and the English allied forces having beasties, which were genetically modified beasts, that were created for all sorts of purposes. After that book, we made our own Frankenstuffies, using parts of multiple stuffies, and then made a story about our stuffy, and then turned it into a short video. I enjoyed this project because we had a component of creativity, technical skills, but also a chance to make something physical. I chose this project because it was fun, but it also taught us the proper way to set up stories, and the heroes journey. It also taught us to use real world creation in videos which I also found awesome.
The Final projects that I would like to show off is our winter exhibition and the comic that went along with it. I feel that this project deserves the final slot in my Tpol, as it was very recent, and a project that made us put lots of time and effort in. This project tasked us with learning about the First World War, and Canada’s contributions. We watched a few videos on the Canadian contributions, and learned about how to make comics, and what kind of things we should add. After that was completed, we jumped straight into the planning of our comics. The planning faze would start with us getting our topics, and then starting the character creation. After we had our characters created, we started on our storyboards. My storyboard had very basic drawings, but Planned out my comic well. It was a total of 20 frames, and set me up for creation well. In total my comic had taken me over 25 hours to complete, but was something that I was very proud of.
Once the comic was completed, we had arrived at exhibition. After one or two mishaps, we had our comics printed out, and were starting to set our areas up. Once we had set up, the gates were opened and we the parents were let loose. This was one of my favourite exhibitions that I was a part of, because I enjoyed and was proud of the work that I had done. While we might not have had the most time to work on this project, or had other parts to prepare for the exhibiton, i will always be able to be proud of the work I had done
In this most recent project we were tasked with making an informational YouTube video about a country of our choice’s nationalism. I picked America, where I was researching nationalism from the creation of America, till pre WW1. My research started in the 1800 with the separation of America from England, and the war of independence. Some of my early notes were put into a graphic organizer showing off the who what when were and how.
After the graphic organizer we started to work on our YouTube script. The requirements for the video is that it must cover the who, what, where, when, how, and why, as well as the cause and consequences. Other requirements included having it be around 4 minutes long, with media both firsthand and secondary. Some of the firsthand sources I used were some civil war pictures, as well as secondary images that fit the video. Some of the images I used were painting of the Boston tea party, along with some picture of important figures.
My final video is here for anyone who wants to check it out,
“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
Throughout both the first and second semester we had projects ranging from a futuristic ww1 book, and Frankenstuffies to our trip to Alberta, looking for reason for travel and tourism. We have had a range of projects, but there were a few projects that I enjoyed more, and found that I learned and grew the most on. One of the projects that I would like to highlight is our joint Maker and Humanities project, Rocky Mountain field school. This project was during our trip to Alberta, where we looked at the impact of geography on how we live. On the maker side of this projects, we made multiple videos.
The first video I was our Alberta TikTok, where we had to make a TikTok trend video, that fit in to the trip. The second video we made was our at home video about what inspires us. The third video we had was the silent video that we made at the three valley gap ghost town. We made this video in one day at the three valley gap, where we had lots of old western themed building to choose from. Our final and largest video was the investigative video. This video was our answer want the allure of the Rockies was for tourism. We were to interview 3 people about why they travelled to the Rockies. On the humanities side of the project, we were to make a comic about the five themes of geography, being movement, location, region, place, and human environment. I enjoyed this project because it was awesome learning about Canadian geography, and because it was part of an awesome trip.
The next project that I want to about was our revolutions project. This project was our winter exhibition project during this project we had to make a Rube Goldberg machine that correlated with the revolution we were assigned. My group wads the Irish revolution. Our machine was built on a piece of wood, painted like the Irish flag. Our machine used lots of different parts to achieve the goal of a total run through. I enjoyed this project because there was a massive creative element, and a making element which I enjoyed. I also found this project great because I learned a lot about the Irish revolution itself and the massive effect that it had on Ireland and England.
The Final project is would like to show is the frakenstuffies project. This project was recent, and started with us reading a book called leviathan about a different version of ww1, with Austria-Hungary having massive mechanical beasts called clankers, and the English allied forces having beasties, which were genetically modified beasts, that were created for all sorts of purposes. After that book, we made our own Frankenstuffies, using parts of multiple stuffies, and then made a story about our stuffy, and then turned it into a short video. I enjoyed this project because we had a component of creativity, technical skills, but also a chance to make something physical. I chose this project because it was fun, but it also taught us the proper way to set up stories, and the heroes journey. It also taught us to use real world creation in videos which I also found awesome.
Just recently we had our first Destination Imagination, and it was a bit of an DIsappointment. It was a shame because we had done a decent amount of work before the tournament but our machine still felt lacklustre. We had very simplistic machine modules, and it didn’t look the best, as we didn’t put much time to painting it. But after some work the night before, the machine looked like it was going to work as intended. The day of the tournament was not that bad, as we had had lots of time in between our instant challenge and our actual machine presentation to practice our story and presentation. Our instant challenge wasn’t that bad, however I am not able to talk about it until may, so I will not go in depth about that, but I will say that it did require our team to work together the entire time, and let each person contribute.
After our instant challenge we had 3 hours till our main challenge. During that time, we practiced our presentation, which gave each person a roll. Our entire machine was themed off of Mario, where our script, our art on the machine, and our props were all Mario themed. The actual creation of our machine started right after the winter break, where we started both the creation of the story, and the creation of the machine. I mostly worked on the machine at the beginning of this project, where I tried to make a story based off of Mario without blatantly copying it. After I had finish the story, I revised it, and the with the help of Logan and Izzy, who also worked on the story, and props, we then transferred the story to our script which would be used during the presentation. After we had created the script we started working on props/ our team choice elements.
Our team choice elements, was the painting of our props and machine, and our recreation of the Mario theme. I worked on the Mario theme, using a keyboard in GarageBand, to record and play my version of the song. The other team choice element was the painting of our things. Some of our props,/ things that we painted were the actual machine, after the completion of it, and some of our props like the turtle we created and Mario style mushrooms. I think that some parts of our machine and some costumes could use some improvement. All thing considered it was a quite good start for DI, and I hope that the next presentation goes better.
In this project we learned about louis Riel, and how he has been perceived throughout history. Our driving question was “ How has the portrayal of Riel changed over time” to answer our driving question we researched all about Riel, using both firsthand, and secondhand sources we were able to understand how Riel was viewed throughout history. To show off what we had learned about Riel we made a multi compositional paragraph. To start off our researching we first learned about the red river settlement, and how when Louis Riel came back from University he learned about how his brothers farm was on land that was going to be sold to the British empire. He disliked that so he decided to stop the surveyors, by threatening them, and then taking the fort they came from. We also learned about Riel fleeing the country, for murder and how he was in a mental hospital for ten years. After he came out of the mental asylum, he help the Métis in Saskatchewan for their land, and helped them fight for their freedom.
To display our learning we wrote these multi-compositional paragraphs about Riel and how he has changed in public opinion, this was the essay that I wrote.
Louis Riel, Hero, or Villain?
Louis Riel has been seen through many lenses that have changed throughout time. Louis Riel’s story starts in the early 1800s in what is now known as Canada. European settlers came to Canada in search of riches through the fur trade. A settlement was founded on the red river in what we now call Manitoba. This was before Louis Riel was born, as he was born on the 22 of October 1844. In 1868, one year after the Canada constitution was created, the Hudson Bay company, who controlled most of the Canadian fur trade wanted to sell Ruperts land. Louis Riel, who had just come back from University, to his brothers farm that was part of the land to be sold. Louis Riel despised the indefatigable of the farm being sold, so he and a group off armed Métis scared of the surveyors. After this Riel decide to launch an attack on a nearby fort called fort Garry. He was able to easily take the fort, as it had little to no reinforcements, this is where Louis Riel was first seen in public. These actions portrayed him as a rebel, and also as a problem that needed to be stamped out. As a threat to the “establishment”, even though he just wanted equality for the Métis people.
Recently, statues have been the portrayal where Riel is seen through the most varied lenses. The first statue was made by Lemay, the statue depicts Riel slightly deformed, and it looks like he is melting away. The statue is meant to depict Riel being taken away by the police, however this statue was very controversial, because it showed Louis Riel as a weak person, which got lots of backlash. This cause so much controversy to the point where the statue had to be removed, as the public detested it.
The second statue we looked at was the statue by Joyal. In this statue he looks much more profound; he looks like an authoritative figure. He is seen with the Métis bill of rights in his hand and he looks like he is observing his victory.
The final statue is by Nugent, and it is a stone statue of him looking up, as if he is looking for something with his hands stretched out. It is supposed to represent Riel having his vision of god, telling him to protect the Métis people. Something that I had observed with all of the statues, is that they all seemed to portray Riel as a hero, even the one of hime that was taken down still seemed to show Riel as a hero rather than a crazy person
All of this just shows how the perception of people can change through out time as in one generation he is seen as a psychotic killer, the next as an hero hero, who fought for equality
In me writing I talk about how there public view has shifted throughout generations, because there was more information about him, and his cause. This has led to him being seen as a hero in our time period, because our views as a society are more aligned with his views, and his intentions. Throughout all of history, people will change there opinions, and we will see how the view on Riel might shift in the future.
Hello, and welcome back to my blog, this blog post is for the final project of 2023!!!!! This projects driving question was “how do ideas spark change?” To convey this message we built a Rube Goldberg machine about our revolution of choice, with each important part of the revolution being explained by a part of the machine. My revolution was the Irish revolution or more commonly know as the Easter rising revolution. Our machine was made up of 8 parts, where each person was in charge of building and talking about that part. The machine starts with dominoes being knocked over by a marble, which dislodges a heavy ping pong ball, that rolls down a long path until it knocks over a weight for a pulley setting of a rubber ball that rips through the Irish flag. After the ball rips through the flag it dialogues another counterweight which pulls away a domino allowing marble to roll into a teeter totter. The teeter totter than releases a marble which runs down the track where it meets a length of track that has teacups under it, and a tea bag for each cup, sitting above. The marble then dislodges the teabags, making them fall while it keeps rolling. It meets on final section of track where it bumps into 2 more marbles sending them down the track. these 2 marbles roll down the path until the fall into and fill up a hole, allowing the third marble to pass over the marble is now almost finished until it bump into a rubber ball attached by a string to a domino holing fifteen marble, making it and the fifteen marbles fall into a bucket, signifying the end of the conflict. Now this is just the final product, but here is a little bit of a story into the building of our machine. Our first step in building was the creation of our roles, I got the role of scriptwriter, where i would write the script for the talking part of the machine, however we ended up only taking notes from scripts, and trying to speak more freely. Once i had finished the script I started to help my team with the assembly of the machine, and trying to make each connection work with the other ones. The it came to the night of the exhibition, where we set it up in the library and let it run the magic.
Just a while ago we were down at the UBC forestry site, at a team building program called loon lake. When we had our first team building session, we were all in the pan abode were we would meet with Jono, our group leader we would meet with him multiple times per day, and each time would be on a different page in our workbook these would range from social emotional skills, to trust falls in groups. In between these working sessions we would usually be doing an activity outside to get our energy out. Some of these activities were climbing a rock wall, high and low ropes courses, shelter building in the forest, and last but not least a team scavenger hunt the second to last day. These outside activities were fun, but they were also great for team building, an example of this was the low ropes course, where one of the obstacles was getting people from one platform in alphabetical order without talking, this was a good exercise because we had to communicate in other ways, and we got it mostly right with only one small mistake. Another good team building exercise was the ropes course where you were with a partner, and you held onto each others hands, and walk down to ropes that got farther and farther apart. Some of the other activities like the scavenger hunt were also good because the entire team was incorporated. One of in my option the biggest and most powerful exercises we did was the gym walk. The gym was split into two parts, and Jono would ask a question, and then people would walk to the other side, if it applied to them, and some of the question were sad, but overall i found this the most powerful exercise to see what peoples lives are really like. Some of the other great parts were the team race, and the shelter building. The shelter building was done in the forest, where we got to choose our teams. We were then given a small area, and 20 minutes to build ours. Even though we were able to fit our entire group into our shelter, after some shaking it did sadly collapse, but it was still a great exercise. The other great team building exercise was the team race. Our entire groups were split into 4 main colour groups, and the split up into four Individual groups within that colour. Each small team would race against 3 other small teams and then each colours points would be added up to a final score, and our team blue got second place. I found that this field study was very beneficial to us as a group, and that I feel like I learned about my classmates.
This is my reflection on take your kid to work day. The workplace of my choice was my dads home office. He works for a company called smart technologies. They specialize in making smart whiteboards for schools that are trying to be more involved with technology in classrooms. The smart board are designed to work like a regular whiteboard with pens, but are also able to run lots of other applications like Microsoft teams and Canva.
I learned more about this company and how the smart board work. I was able to sit into some meetings and learned about team dynamics in the workplace and just a general overview of a tech job, and how they run.I also was able to listen and watch a presentation of a sneak peek of there software that they have also made in an attempt to make sharing work from schools to teacher easier called Lumix. To learn a little bit more you can watch the video linked below
I found that this was a good experience for me and I feel that this has shown me the benefits of a tech career, that is all I have for this day of fun experience, until next time, Jannik.
