Monthly Archives: October 2021

Summary of Becoming a PLP Learner

Editors note: there is a video with my Keynote Guided Tour at the end that has all the things that Judah talked about in this post(yes this is Judah making this note but I thought it would be funny).

Hello! This blog post is the story and summary of my first Maker project, Becoming a PLP Learner. This project was about exploring who we are as people and applying that the PLP Team. The Driving Question for the project was “How do I build and strengthen the PLP Learning Team?” My main team members and people I worked with were Dylan, Jupiter, Andrew, Max, and Caitlin. The final part of the project was making and giving a presentation on a time capsule of yourself including the main things we did for this project.

As soon as they taught us about what we will be doing for this project and how to use the main apps, they through us into it head first. The first thing we started was the Big Life Journal. It is a workbook that we went through each day for the whole project. It was filled with thinking about the future, making goals, and strengths and weaknesses among other things. Something that I had fun making was my interest brain. It was a a picture of a brain with arrows coming off about the main things I like, my interests. Another thing I created was an app idea. My app was one that helped you improve your memory by choosing a picture to remember then later you will get a ping to choose the picture that you were supposed to remember. 

We also made a Team Member Contract for the time capsule. This was something we created to represent what we can do and will do for the PLP Team. It included my Memoji Laptop, an picture I specifically drew for the Contract, and some parts of my User Manual. A User Manual was a text we created that was basically an Apple manual for ourselves. I had a setting that was Emotional Monster! It was quite enlightening and fun to make, especially when we got to see our teachers. The drawing I did for the Contract was of different objects or symbols for things I can help with. For example I drew super glue because I bring us together.  My Memoji Laptop was a emoji of myself that had a laptop with stickers of things I like. Some stickers that I remember are my sweatshirt and the MTG logo. 

I also made something physical! I know, crazy for PLP but it’s true! We called it a physical representation, well since its physical and it represents something. It represents how we can contribute to the PLP Learning Team. It that sounds familiar it’s because it is. We are making lots of things that represent us in this project. You might be confused why I made it with such weird and obscure objects. Well, we were given three choices of objects and I choose Table B. (Mr. Hughes teased Ms. Willemse unsurprisingly about calling the different choices tables) I also made a key to what the different objects represented which we called a Artists Statement for some reason. It kind of makes sense, but I think calling it a key makes more sense. Making the Physical Representation was actually a nice change to working on the iPad.

We also had to choose one more thing to put in our time capsule. I choose to put the Mentor Text Connection. I loved creating this, it was amazing. Remember the User Manual? Yeah, our teachers made some to give us as an example (for some reason they called their’s Mentor Texts). After we read them but before we made our own we analyzed them and found different things that were different and similar. My favourite part about this was keeping in with the theme of Apple products, so I wrote it as an product review (you can probably see I found myself quite clever there)!

Overall, this project was a great learning experience and was super fun like all of PLP so far. My favourite part of this project (though not really connected) was realizing that I wanted to work for Wizards of the Coast through the BLJ!

See ya around and goodbye, Judah G!

PS: here is a video of my time capsule presentation (also known as a Guided Keynote Tour).

PSS: I know I could have edited the post but I wanted to use PS!

Summary of Medium is the Message

Summary of Medium is the Message

 

 

 

 

Hello! This blog post is the summary and story of my first Humanities project, Medium is the Message!

This project was all about learning and creating ads for real world businesses. The driving question for the project was “how does what we hear, read, and see influence us?” I did the this project with my fellow PLP students, Dylan, Caitlin, Max, Andrew and Jupiter. The business we were assigned was Deep Cove Music, which is a business in Deep Cove that teaches music lessons and sells instruments.

After we learned what the big idea for this project is, we started developing knowledges about different ads. Some key things that we did were our Advertising Photo Journal, a Zoom Interview with a Mr. Hepburn (somebody in Vancouver that is an advertising consultant), and a Historical Media Analysis. Our Advertising Photo Journal was a place where we put pictures of ads that we found in our day to day lives. After we got lots of photos we answered some questions about the them ads. The Zoom Interview was done as a class and we all took notes about the things he had to say. The main thing he taught us was KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid. I didn’t like how he put that so I just remembered to keep them simple. Another key thing we did was a Historical Media Analysis. We chose an historical ad and then we analyzed it and answered some questions. The ad I chose was the “How many licks” by Tootsie Roll in 1968.

 

            

Then with all the knowledge we have about advertising, we started making ads. The original one I had was not very eye catching and it also had to much information.  I went through quiet a few drafts before I realized this. When I did I changed the the lists that I had to one sentence about their lessons, which was the main product they wanted us to advertise. It looked much better but I could do better. Then I got some feedback about how I should make the photo around the words, but instead the words around the photo. Immediately I changed it by making the photo bigger and touch the sides. I was happy with my final group ad.

 Next we looked over the other ads my group members had made. We look parts that we loved about them and smushed them together. We worked hard on drafts for our Final Group Ad. We sent them to Mr. Hepburn and Deep Cove Music. We got feedback about making the background something in Deep Cove and also to make the formation of the title more interesting. We make the title pop fast. We did have to do drafts but it wasn’t that hard. Then the background. We needed to remove some of it from the photo we had of a guitar. I spent hours doing this because as soon as I completed the task, it deleted the progress. I couldn’t do it. Luckily one of my group members got it and finished my Group Ad. We chose which one we though best and we finished our Final Group Ad.

Now some things I had trouble with in this project were, admittedly, working with my group members. I am not really a team player and I don’t like group projects. I really want to get better at this and I believe I am. This is a big reason I joined PLP, to learn to work with others. Another thing that was challenging was just all the homework we had to remember along with our other classes. I have gotten through it though and I have learned to write homework to do as soon as I get it. Some of the things that wasn’t so hard was staying on task and reminding others to do the same. I remember so many that my group was derailed and I got them back on.

Now on to the answer to the Driving Question: how does what we hear, read, and see influence us? It influences by getting into our brain and sitting in the back of the unconscious. When this happens we will remember it and do what it tells us to do within reason.

Hope this was either helpful or interesting.

Goodbye for now, Judah G!