Do you know what time it is? Because I do.

It is a new year, a new term, and January is here, bringing foul weather, and along the way, through all the change, my old foe the mPOL has snuck him(or her)self back into my life.

Now, it’s the time of year again, and I, Jason Guan, will attempt to reflect on my learning, my growth, my goals, and hopefully set some new goals with the help of my new friend (or maybe foe), PGP.

As always, I will be going down the subject list, discussing all the usual things and using specific examples from my projects and work throughout the terms. Let’s begin:

PGP

PGP is our newest PLP addition, and it is one of my main focuses for this mPOL post. PGP is pretty much if there was a class dedicated to m/tPOLs. There’s a lot of reflection and a lot of goal-setting. PGP is where I make my goals, and try my best to achieve them. In PGP, we’ve been reading a book called “What Do You Really Want?”. This book has helped tremendously with PGP, mPOLs, and Goal Setting.

One of the assignments for PGP was to make a dream-board, which is like a mind map/collage of pictures or drawings of things that impact my goals. Idols, mindsets, values, beliefs all go in, as well as labels and quotes that stick out to you. I focused on my goals for the future and what I want to achieve academically, and what I will need to work on and what the skills I will need. I also have a section for my hobbies, especially music, and some other things I value.

Humanities

Humanities was a solid term this year, in my opinion. I stuck to my goals, and I’d like to think that I did pretty well. My biggest foe in humanities was time management. I got caught in a cycle and really had to grind it out in order to be on time. This year, with the help of some new allies (Things, Calendar), I’ve been able to stay on top of my work and not fall behind.

This year, I’ve adopted some new goals, the first of which being to continuously use critique, not just as a one-time-use type of thing. I feel the mistakes I’ve been making are sometimes ones that I’ve made before, so I’m now trying to keep an eye out for those types of things. For example, if I get a comment that I’m not using enough links or photos, I’m going to try to keep track of that so I don’t make the same mistakes.

My projects in humanities have been consistent, with mostly no major differences in how well I’ve done in the projects. However, I’d like to use an example from humanities as an example of how my new goal could have come in handy.

The Identity Video was my first big video project in Humanities, followed up by the Metaphor Machines project. These projects had many similarities (usage of video), but also had many differences. Some of the critique was very much alike, as there was critique related to audio and volume control, as well as video length. I think that if I had used my Identity critique more during the Metaphor Machine project, I could have avoided many problems.

The Exhibition also went well. I believe something else I may need to work on is communication, as that may have helped with time management during the exhibition and taken some of the workload off. I think the exhibition really helped me work well under pressure (construction) and helped me polish my teamwork and cooperation skills.

Maker

Maker has been a very useful class. Video skills have been incredibly useful as I’ve been able to use them for all of my projects. Maker is also very unique as it is a class that teaches skills to prepare for other classes, such as Growth Mindset and LAUNCH in Grade 8, and Video Skills in Grade 9. My main goal for Maker is mainly to persist, as sometimes I will get stuck on a project and sometimes get distracted with other things. In those instances, my goal is to able to resist all impulses, buckle down, and get the work done.

I think one of my greatest achievements in Maker has been the Live Event video project. My Live Event Video was very interesting as it was a culmination of everything I had learned so far, and I think I did a good job for a variety of reasons.

1: My Video was very creative. I was able to create some sort of event out of thin air, and make it somewhat bearable to watch. I think that’s a pretty good achievement.

2: I think that I did a good job in using all the skills I had learned before. I was able to successfully use the speed changes to sync up my clips to the music and reduce the time. I also edited it pretty well, with the score displays and the interviews.

3: I was able to think well on my feet. During the editing phase, I had way too much footage, and not enough time, so I was able to sue the iMovie skills (speed changes) to reduce the time. I was also able to work well on my time management during this project.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Student Blogging Challenge. In this project, my old nemesis, Time Management struck again, as I wasn’t able to keep up with the 1 post per week schedule and occasionally fell behind. The vicious cycle continued for most of SBC as I wasn’t able to catch up too well. However, I think if there’s one good thing to take out of this experience, I was able to stay calm through tough times, and didn’t have to rush my posts and kept the quality up and consistent.

Scimathics

Scimathics was pretty calm most of the time. I’ve been taking math and science enrichment classes since 6th Grade (not trying to brag), so science and Math classes were pretty breezy, but I have a specific habit of Mind that I’m referring to for this unit, and that is remaining open to continuous learning. Anyone who knows me can tell that I can sometimes be a stubborn person. That’s why I think this habit of mind can be good for Science and Math, as I need to know that I can always learn more. My learning is not restricted and it hasn’t stopped just because I’ve already learned the topics we study.

This is one of my main scimathics goals, and I’ve already started to work on it. For example, I was able to learn much more during the Circuits unit as I hadn’t learned too much in Circuits. Metaphor Machines taught me much more circuit knowledge that I knew before, and I was able to keep my mind open and keep a growth mindset.

However, chemistry was where this skill also came in handy. Much of the chemistry unit was a review of knowledge I had previously known, but I was able to use my knowledge to help my peers who were having trouble understanding the concepts. I was able to use my knowledge to help teach others, and that’s a success in my books. I could have been easily distracted in this unit, as I could have not payed attention in class and focused on other things, but I resisted impulses and was able to complete the unit pretty well.

Final Thoughts

The mPOLs are a time to reflect on work, and that’s what I’ve been doing. As I mentioned before, every subject is unique, and requires different goals, so I have quite a few goals for the New Year. Time management is not as big of a concern anymore, with organization also taken care of. As I said before, my goals go as so:

Humanities: Better utilising critique continuously

Maker: Persistance (and Time Management)

Scimathics: Remaining Open to Continuous Learning

My process for selecting these is that I’ve gone back and looked at all of my projects and thought to myself, “What could I have done better?”. However, I also have a main goal, which is to use the skills learned in PGP more often, such as using time blocking better. Another thing I’m also trying to work on is using PGP in other classes as well. The skills of PGP can be used in many solutions and can come in very handy in other classes.

I think I’ve had a good half of a year so far, and I hope to stick to my goals. In terms of growth, I think the goals I established have already helped me grow as a learner so much already. For last year’s goals, I think I’ve been able to stay on top of them and keep them in mind when doing work or other assignments.

Whew. That was a very long post. I hope you enjoyed it. I very much doubt anyone would read to the end of this 1500 word post, but congrats to you if you did. You deserve a medal or something. Well, bye.

This is a very tired Jason, signing off.

Hello people of Earth, it is Jason, here again today to talk about the 2018 Winter Exhibition. This was a much anticipated event, and has proven, time and again, no matter how confident you feel about the exhibition, something always goes wrong (or not the way you hoped). This was the situation for us, as the exhibition proved to be a powerful foe, but fell to the might of sheer willpower (and complaining). This project revolved around storytelling, and bringing stories to life in an interactive experience.

So first, let’s talk groups. At first, we were divided into Chem Story pairs. I was paired with Kyle. In these groups, we made the infamous Chem Story Animations for science. I won’t talk too much about this as I already have a blog post for this.

However, in Humanities, it was a different story (subtle pun). We started in Humanities by reading a variety of stories, ranging in content from a spooky, scary, robotic nursery (The Veldt), a man eating river monster (The Sea Devil), And a possibly murderous hamster (Barney).

moreharmony / Pixabay

The point of these stories was to prepare us for our project: To bring our chemical story to life in an interactive experience. To accomplish this, we also attended an escape room.

Escape rooms. You know what they are. Rooms that are rigged up with clues and many, many, moving parts. The escape room establishment we attended was the SmartyPantz Vancouver. Our escape room was the “Morning Never Comes” room, described as “Disney creepy”. It certainly was. I’m legally not allowed to go into detail, but if you’re in the area, head over and give one of the rooms a try. You won’t regret it (unless you pick the scary cannibal one).

After our experiences and research, we merged groups, with our group consisting of myself, Kyle, Jordyn, Gabby, Fraser, and Luciano. For those veteran readers, this coincidentally formed the world-renowned Space Cows from DI.

We then slowly and painfully combined our stories, taking elements from all 3 and merging them into some abomination of death and destruction (just kidding). This is when things started to heat up. After the merging and several painful rewrites, we had a completed story. Fun.

Using our escape room knowledge and storytelling experiences, we pieced together the elements of our room, incorporating the audience interactions. We came up with a few ideas, such as a newspaper puzzle, a Rube Goldberg machine, and a good ol’ fake newscast (this one was especially impressive).

Our Story revolved around two gangs, the Halogens, and the Alkali (based on real periodic table “periods”). It involved two star-crossed lovers, rival gang leaders, and a brawl. Pretty much “West Side Story” with atoms.

We came up with the catchy name of “Atom City” as our title and soon, it was Exhibition day.

Little known fact: I spent most of my Winter Vacation having nightmares about the exhibition. It was that bad. We had 5 hours to throw together an impromptu escape room, and we got through it by the absolute SKIN of our teeth. Here are stats:

5 and 1/2 hours of hard work

3 Walls having to be covered completely with newspaper

Over 40 chairs and desks moved multiple times each

Several bags of food requiring to be bought

Take that into consideration, as well as the fact that we had 6 hours or less of sleep in the days leading up the the exhibition. However, we greatly bonded as a team during the whole construction process. We were able to throw together something that actually looked pretty good.

By some divine miracle, it all came together and the best part was, I got to wear a tux for the whole night. (And day.) After a quick dinner, we got to our rooms and the visitors began to trickle in. The food rations sustained, and so did my mental health after 2 hours of pretending to be a crime boss. That’s right, I wasn’t Jason Guan anymore, I was Christopher Chlorine, Halogen Crime Boss.

But of course, after construction comes clean-up (or deconstruction?). We spent quite a while restoring the classroom we used to exactly the way it was before. I’d like to think we did a pretty nice job. We were in and out, leaving only haunting memories.

The Exhibition didn’t really teach me anything new, just brushing up on skills I’d learned before. Nonetheless, it was good as I was able to brush up on my storytelling, my construction skills, and my chemistry. I enjoyed the exhibition, but it really drained my energy. I almost wanted to skip the next day of school to catch up on lost sleep, but it was the last day of school.

Alas, the actual presentation of the exhibition was a memorable and fun experience, and I have just as many positive memories about it as I do negative.

This is Jason Guan, signing off.

Hey all, it’s Jason again, and today we are saying goodbye to the Student Blogging Challenge. This is my formal reflection post about what I’ve learned, and my experience. Without further ado, let’s go.

So, going into the SBC, I was a little sceptical about the whole idea, but I had no idea of how much this would eventually help me with my blog and other things that all lead into PLP.

So, one of the main things the SBC helped me with is organization and blogging skills. Before, I really didn’t care about how my blog looked, but after I learned about the global competition of the SBC, that encouraged me to really step up my game. I changed my header, and went through many theme changes until I decided on my new theme and the overall look of my blog now.

SBC really helped me learn new blogging skills as well. HTML, Creative Commons, and much more were pretty much No-Man’s land to me until SBC, as they were skills that I knew existed, but never really made an effort to learn. Now, I know how to italicize, bold, and hyperlink. (But I’m too lazy to do it)

SBC also really helped me with some skills that may be surprising. Video skills, science, and even emoji studies were all topics for the SBC, and after writing those posts, I was shocked by how much the SBC helped my comprehension of them. I brushed up on my iMovie, learned about the first emojis, and touched up on my nuclear studies (don’t ask why).

So overall, I’m pretty thankful for all the SBC has helped me with and everything I learned from it. Surprisingly, the SBC was also where I adopted my new signature finishing move.

This is Jason Guan, signing off.

MHave you ever wondered what it takes to be a hacker?

I totally haven’t (legal reasons), but now I know, all thanks to week 9 of the SBC (Student Blogging Challenge). This week, the challenges were to try some HTML on my blog (bold, italic, links), and to have some fun on Hour of Code. In this post, I’ll be walking through what I’ve learned, and my process.

Hour of Code

So I decided to do the flappy game one, as flappy games always intrigued me and I think there’s a lot of (metaphorical) creative room to with with. However, I soon realized it was not meant for my age group. Nonetheless, it was fun, and taught me basic coding skills.

The first few tasks are simple. There aren’t actually any obstacles, just you tapping frantically to react certain points and inputting code blocks.

They soon threw some curveballs at me, adding obstacles, sound effects, and most importantly, speed changes. This is what made it fun and challenging for me, as I set it to “very fast” and the rapid movement made it somewhat more enjoyable.

I was able to make the game even more challenging when I set the “flap” option to flap a random amount when I click, making for some fun times when combined with my very fast speed.

Here’s where it got creative. I was able to change the background and add sound effects to fit it, making the game much more customizable. I was then able to change my character, allowing for even more customization.

And if it wasn’t confusing enough, there was now an option to set the score to a specified number after an event. Needless to say, I made good use of this function.

And then, as quickly as it begun, it ended. The last level really let me use my knowledge to create a nice, wholesome, flappy game using everything I’d learned.

And then, it was over. I received a certificate to show that I had completed it, and I also got a link to my game. If you want to try it out go ahead. Link’s right here.

However, the second task was to use some HTML on my blog. I learned how to bolden words, italicize words, and also to hyperlink in a different way. Here’s a sample sentence that makes absolutely no sense.

The green cow jumped over the tall sunflower while drinking a tall glass of warm water.

Well that’s it. I hope y’all enjoyed my post. This whole coding thing got me interested in what code is capable of doing, and also showed me how simple it is. As some of you may know, I hope to pursue computer science as an adult, and this has helped spark my interest.

This is Jason Guan, signing off.

Hey hey hey, readers, it is Jason (as always), and in this post, I’m going to review the video projects I’ve tackled this year. Along the way, I’m also going to be answering the question: What makes a video awesome?

I’ll use each video as a way of showing an example of an important aspect of video-making, such as editing, angles, lighting, and much more.

One of the first concepts/skills we focused on was angles. We learned about how angles can help convey mood or themes, as well as different types of angles: Bird’s Eye, Close Up, and Far Angle being some of them. The project I would say best represents our knowledge of angles is the recreation video.

First, our video was revealed:

Next, we mapped out what our video would contain, such as shots, costumes, and location. We filmed ours in a little forested area by our school. Take a look.

Next, we began to work on editing and audio. We worked on finding non-copyright music, with most of us resorting to good ol’ NCS (No Copyright Sounds). That’s where most of the music for my videos comes from, with my soundtrack stuff coming from Kevin Macleod.

We also took on the task of tackling the whole microphone problem. We were given little microphones that clip onto our jackets and plug into our iPad headphone jacks. We used these for several videos, such as our Royal Tyrell Museum Artifact videos and, mort importantly, the interviews and voiceovers of our identity videos. Remember those?

The Ghost Town videos provided some problems, as well as lessons. It was one of our first encounters with storyboarding and planning. We used the story spine to plan out everything we wanted to do as soon as we got to the ghost town.

The Ghost Town Video also evoked some editing lessons from our teachers. We learned how to use filters, change speeds, and much more. Editing (in my opinion) is one of the absolute necessities for good video making, as it’s how you assemble and polish your videos. If you just lumped the videos together with no thought, than your video isn’t going to be too good,

Our final Albertan Video was the one, the only, the enchanted Forest Video. This was sort of like a culmination for all of the skills we worked on in Calgary. Acting, editing, writing, and all sorts of other skills were all put to the test for this final project. I’d like to think that Gabby, Izzy, Nik, And I were able to create a pretty good video in the limited amount of time we had to plan and film the shots and writing.

Now onto the videos we created post-Calgary, the first of which being the infamous Live Event project. This was the video project that scared me the most. Why? It involved one of my greatest weaknesses: My social life (or lack thereof). Also, it all depended on how iMovie decided to treat me, and iMovie was not nice.

Nonetheless, this project went a lot more in-depth with iMovie and provided us with even more information on editing, time and speed changes, and split screen type dealios. One of the best things about this project is all the audio skills that it taught me. I was able to figure out correct mic placement and where/how to get non-copyrighted music and sound effects, links to which are in the video I will link below.

And onto the final video of the bunch, Take thy Child to Occupation Day (Take your kid to Work Day). This was sort of like the final review of everything we learned in the past term, so yeah, this was kind of a big deal. In this project, we used everything we knew to throw together a little video about us experiencing what it’s like to be an adult in a workplace. This included interviews, shots, angles, audio, and everything along those lines. To be honest, this project was really helpful as it helped me recap everything I’ve learned and revise those skills so that I don’t forget them because, to be fair,  you’re never actually done with something that you’ve learned. I may be finished with learning about videos, but I’m not done using video skills. Alas, without further ado, here’s the final product.

The video unit was incredibly helpful, as it helped me in all my subjects:

Humanities – Identity, Metaphor Machines

Science/Math – Metaphor Machines

Maker – Every other Video project

As I mentioned previously, I’m 99.75% sure that we’re not yet fully done with video-making yet, and I don’t think we ever actually will be. This unit was incredibly in depth and really helped me develop my skill set and improve my knowledge of iMovie, Clips, and many other aspects of video creation.

This is Jason, signing off.

Hello all, it is Jason back again to talk about a little something called Christmas. It’s a fan favourite holiday and celebrated by many, including my family. In this SBC post, I’m going to talk about some of the Guan family Christmas celebrations. 

No Tree?

So, this technically doesn’t count as a celebration, but we do not buy Christmas trees. The stem of this celebrations started in 2015, when my dad went out and bought a Christmas tree after endless bugging from my brother and I. The next few days were filled with sweeping up pine needles and constant redecorating after the ornaments fell off of the tree. On Christmas Eve, the tree threw its worst at us and tipped over, spilling all of the ornaments and getting pine needles everywhere, inevitably resulting in my dad losing his mind and vowing to never get a tree ever again. On Christmas, we just put the presents on a table. 

Christmas Lunch

On Christmas, we get together for a meal, as most families do, but our relatives come over for lunch, not dinner. There are many reasons for this, but the most important of which is that most of our relatives live in West Vancouver, and the traffic around then going back is an absolute NIGHTMARE. Also, my family started Christmas lunches far before I was born, so it’s a tradition that probably won’t change for a while.

Well, there are some of the Guan family traditions. I know they may be a little different, but they’re what my family does, and that’s how my family likes it. 

This is Jason, signing off.