A Summary of My Semester – mPOL 2023

Now first things first, what is an mPOL? Well, an mPOL is essentially the worst form of torture that you can inflict on any PLP student. Just kidding (somewhat)! “mPOL” stands for “Mid-year Presentation of Learning” (I think lol), in simple terms, an mPOL is a reflection and summarization of the previous few months.

Continue reading “A Summary of My Semester – mPOL 2023”

The Storm Barricades – Russian Edition

This project was about some of the great revolutions of the world, the French revolution, the American revolution, the Russian revolution, and the Haitian revolution. We were split up into groups, and picked a revolution to research – my group decided on the Russian revolution – and started to research. My group *technically* consisted of 3 people, whereas the other groups had a minimum of 4 people, and the other class had 6 or more people, we knew we would h be the group that would have to work the hardest, we had a HUGE disadvantage, we were going to have to compete against the other Russian revolution group (who had 3 or 4 more people than we did…).

 

The very first thing we did was some roleplay! We roleplyed that we were citizens in a new nation – “Nation X”, and there were 4 (I think) classes, royals, jailers, store keepers, and peasants, in order of most power to least. I was a part of the peasants class, we had to write a paper a day (1 roleplay day = 5-10 irl minutes) consisting of at least 100 words about our day, we would sell this for $1, if we didn’t write a paper, we wouldn’t get payed. I would consider myself a writer by heart, so naturally I wrote 200+ words per day (yes, this is in fact a flex.), although I still only got payed $1/day lol. I think I might’ve thrown out some of the paper or got mixed in with some other papers at home, I’ll look around a bit and update this once I get home :’)

 

Unfortunately, I was sick for the first two assignments so I’m not exactly sure what the are they are or how to explain them, but when I got back, we did the the Revolution Graphic Organizer/infographic! An infographic is a visual form of notes kinda, you know what, I’ll just show you!

First draft

:

Second/last draft:

 

“Continuity and Change” was the next thing we did, uhm I don’t think I was there the day we were taught what to do for it, and my group was all split up for this, so I joined hands with the American Revolution group, although they never gave me the finished product so I have nothing to show for it 🥲

 

Next up, our Affidavit, an Affidavit is essentially just a list of arguments for a court case + exhibits/references, we were prosecution (the side arguing why the Russian revolution was ineffective). My group was unaware that we were only supposed to make one amongst the 3 of us, not one per person, regardless, here’s mine!

 

Next, the Trial script. I don’t think I’ve explained it yet, but the finished product was going to be a trial about if the Russian revolution was affective or not, my group was on the prosecution side, AKA the side trying to prove the revolution ineffective. Anyways, I was the one that wrote the majority of the script, one of my team mates was rarely there, therefore I had to write the script myself. Although I am proud of myself for taking initiative and coming out with a more than adequate product! Here’s how it turned out:

 

Lastly, the filming of the trial. Originally, we were supposed to be working together with the other class, but we ran out of time and we ended up having to film our parts separately. Here’s the finished trial (featuring cameron from the American revolution group):

 

Thank you so much for reading my blog post! I rushed it a bit, but regardless, I hope you enjoyed! See you in the next blog!!!

The Storm Barricades – Russian Edition

(WORK IN PROGRESS)

This project was about some of the great revolutions of the world, the French revolution, the American revolution, the Russian revolution, and the Haitian revolution. We were split up into groups, and picked a revolution to research – my group decided on the Russian revolution – and started to research. My group *technically* consisted of 3 people, whereas the other groups had a minimum of 4 people, and the other class had 6 or more people, we knew we would h be the group that would have to work the hardest, we had a HUGE disadvantage, we were going to have to compete against the other Russian revolution group (who had 3 or 4 more people than we did…).

 

The very first thing we did was some roleplay! We roleplyed that we were citizens in a new nation – “Nation X”, and there were 4 (I think) classes, royals, jailers, store keepers, and peasants, in order of most power to least. I was a part of the peasants class, we had to write a paper a day (1 roleplay day = 5-10 irl minutes) consisting of at least 100 words about our day, we would sell this for $1, if we didn’t write a paper, we wouldn’t get payed. I would consider myself a writer by heart, so naturally I wrote 200+ words per day (yes, this is in fact a flex.), although I still only got payed $1/day lol. I think I might’ve thrown out some of the paper or got mixed in with some other papers at home, I’ll look around a bit and update this once I get home :’)

 

Unfortunately, I was sick for the first two assignments so I’m not exactly sure what the are they are or how to explain them, but when I got back, we did the the Revolution Graphic Organizer/infographic! An infographic is a visual form of notes kinda, you know what, I’ll just show you!

First draft:

Final draft:

My First Film!

During this project, we explored the wonder that is filmmaking, you must have at least heard of the movie “Avatar”? well, the sequel came out recently, it’s called “Avatar, the Way of Water”.

I’m not very fond of spoilers, so I won’t spill to many details, but this movie was about Jake and his mate Neytiri, and their kids! They though that they were free from the wrath of the sky people, but they were wrong. They had to leave the forest in order to join hands with the water people. Naturally, the war they were waging with the sky people followed them, the movie is about the how Jake, Neytiri, their kids, and the water people fight the war.

 

Aside from watching Avatar (AMAZING movie btw), the first thing we did was interview a fellow classmate as practice for the documentary (I’ll talk more about that momentarily) about their favourite food – with follow up questions of course! I had the honour to interview my friend, Cameron, and vice versa. Here’s how it went, filmed and edited by yours truly!:

Cameron’s interview

 

Next thing was a B-Roll interview! A B-Roll is basically just an interview but with an assortment of images with audio of the interviewee talking over top of it. The featured actors art Julia (interviewer) and Jupiter (interviewee)! Here’s how it turned out (again, filmed + edited by yours truly ✨):

B-Roll interview

 

The film we made was a documentary inspired off of an aspect of the Avatar movies. I had decided on military, as this was a topic I was interested in, it was also one of the main topics in Avatar. Of course since we’re in PLP here, there had to be more to it, and so I added “and how they affect the people, and the world around them.” After searching around a bit, I decided that I would interview my grandmother, she grew up in a few army bases so I figured that she would have some insights. To my luck, she agreed! Here’s the finished interview:

The documentary as a whole was supposed to be much longer, although I didn’t manage to finish it before the exhibition, speaking of which, I didn’t make it to the exhibition either! I caught a cold, everyone told me I didn’t miss out on much though lol.

 

My “Because” + the driving answer!

“What does James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar reveal about society today?”

That humans being can be greedy, we take what we want, not what we need. We only ever think about how our actions will impact present us, not future us. We hold the fate of the earth and our future generations in out hands, and we decide to throw it around like a game of hot potato. What we have is a privilege, not a right.

I believe that James Cameron wants what’s best for the world, not himself. If we don’t all life on earth to go extinct due to our greediness and our current benefit in just a couple centuries, then we clearly need to do something about the way things have been going.

 

Thank you so much for reading my blog post, I hope it was adequate lol! See you next time ^_^

Vibrant Video

This project was all about goal setting! I believe I did a goal setting project of some sort for school last year as well. More specifically, S.M.A.R.T goals!

S.M.A.R.T stands for:

S: specific

M: measurable

A: achievable

R: relevant

T: timed

A S.M.A.R.T goal is pretty much just a goal that’s bound by rules. According to S.M.A.R.T goal setters, a goal isn’t achievable unless it has all 5 factors of a S.M.A.R.T goal.

Anyways, the vary first thing that was done in this project was called “Clips”! It was an assignment based off of a little assignment (that I went absolutely all out on lol) called “what inspires me?” Which was just a series of questions about myself, what I like, what I don’t like, what motivates me, etc :’) it looks like this!:

“What Inspires Me?

  1. What do I enjoy doing? Why?

Well as you probably know, drawing. Drawing is my creative output, it allows me to be creative in my own ways, but it also acts as a dump for my negative thoughts and emotions, it helps me make room for the important stuff, like school. It also makes me money lol

  1. What don’t I enjoy doing? Why?

Probably arguing. I get really competitive and try to “win” the argument as if I would win an award for most amounts of actually offensive insults in one sentence or something. It just makes me feel horrible knowing that I’m making someone else feel horrible. I’m not a mean person, at least I try not to be – I’m only human so of course there will be a few slip-ups, but I try not to upset someone, which usually results in an argument.

  1. What gives me meaning and purpose to my life?

People. People do, people are such wonderful specimens, they can make or break your life. Of course I play a big part in that, but so do my peers. Most of us are so spontaneous and unpredictable. The curiosity of how other people will shape my day tends to get me up in the morning.

  1. What are my talents or skills? How might I improve them?

Again, drawing. I’m personally pretty happy where I am now, but theres always rooms for improvement. Again this is a relatively big cliché, but practice does not make perfect, but it does make better. If I want to get somewhere in my artistic career, I have to practice. All the time. Get opinions and constructive criticism from other people, try new things, take risks, etc.

I’m also really good art comforting people, at some point I wanted to be an art therapist, not exactly sure where that idea went, but it still hovers in the back of my mind sometimes. I would be so much more comforting is I had a larger “audience”. I don’t have a ton of friends to comfort in the first place, most of them deal with their stuff silently, and alone.

  1. What do I like to read or watch movies about?

I honestly don’t read or watch movies that much, I prefer TV shows more than anything. It lasts longer. I watch a lot of drama, soap operas, that kind of thing. I watched all seventeen (eighteen?) seasons of Greys Anatomy, I cried in some scenes, sometimes it made my day, sometimes it did the polar opposite. I recently finished “Orange is the New Black” and it was a lot better than I was expecting. I was kind of expecting a more soap opera-y vibe like Greys Anatomy due to how long it was, but it wasn’t, it was actually a show that my parents could get into as well (surprisingly).

  1. What do I daydream about?

If I’m being completely and entirely honest, furries. My brain is made out of fluffy animals it this point lol. I have some form of ADHD and it is my main hyper-fixation, it’s what I obsess over throughout the duration of most of the day, and it’s basically the only thing that I draw nowadays. I can’t remember how I got into it in the first place, I think someone introduced it to me? I’m not entirely sure though.”

If you want to watch my clips video, you can watch it here!

 

Next up is shot and angles! This was an assignment about well, shots and angles of course! I did this one with Tom and Ronan. We were meant to do a short film with an old vibe to it, like with no sound, black and white, etc. It was supposed to be about an achieved goal! The goal that we came up with was about rock climbing! Aaaand here it is:

Next thing was called “Planning and shooting”! This one was also about a goal kinda thing, although it was supposed to have more of a tutorial kinda vibe. That’s literally it lol, I was teamed up with Keaton, Logan, and Charlie R! Considering there were two trombone players in our group (Charlie R and Logan), of course we had to do a tutorial on how to play the trombone! I filmed and edited. I feel like I could have done a LOT more in the editing category but it’s a don’t deal now :,) here’s how it looks!

And that’s it! Overall I think I did a pretty decent job on this project. I only missed one assignment throughout the whole project! And plus I haven’t gotten a single sun-cloud or a cloud so far – only suns and rainbows (PLP slang for B+ to A+ lol). In the beginning last year I i was getting sun-clouds left and right! Throughout the entire year I only ever got one or two rainbows (essentially an A to A+), and in the first two(?) months of this year I’ve already gotten 3 rainbows!! I’d say that is a pretty A-OK improvement since last year :’)

 

Thank you so much for reading my blog and I hope you have a wonderful day!

Handle with care!

This blog post is about my favourite subject – science! The project that this post is about is called “Handle With Care! 🌱”, the very first PLP grade 9 science project of this year. It’s been quite a while since ya’ll last heard from me hasn’t it? I may not be making as many blog posts this year, but I’m trying my best.

This project kept it’s focus on climate change and natural disasters that are causing harm to the planet we call home. For the first little while we focused our attention onto purple sea urchins and how they affect the giant kelp forests. We learned that giant kelp forests are the ideal habitat for purple sea urchins, although not exactly ideal for the giant kelp. The sea urchins are rapidly eating away at the kelp forests, therefore producing more offspring that then continue to devour these giant kelp. Not-so-fun fact: purple sea urchins have eaten away over 95% of these giant kelp forests! We are working hard to slow down this process in every way we might know. Although we are having quite a lot of trouble (which is odd considering how good humans are at killing off species), since the area that this is taking place is.. well… quite exotic one might say – the sea floor! We have figured out that eating the purple sea urchins is the best way that we can slow the devouring of the kelp forests, what part of them do we eat you may ask? Well their gonads of course! Sound delicious am I right…? Well actually, its quite popular in places like Japan, Chile, the Mediterranean, and even the West Coast of the United States! You could have them on toast, you could put them in salad, you could eat them straight up, you could eat them cooked or raw, there are many ways of eating them! I cant say I would try it if I had the choice, but if someone offered me a sea urchin gonad for free, I might give it a go!

One of the first things that we did was create an ecosystem drawing with 5 biotic (living organisms) and 5 abiotic (non-living) features. As an artist myself, you already know that I had to go above and beyond for this! I put all of my artists knowledge and created *drumroll please!* this!!:

After that, we learned a bit about food webs, like how living beings interact with each other in the wild, who get their energy from who, who profits off of who, etc! There’s not much I can say about this but we did create an interactive food web on scratch, if you’re interested in see it, click on the link below 🙂

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/733049706/

Next up, we have a Bioaccumulation GIF (and it’s GIF, not JIF!!!)! As a prior animator, again I had to put my full effort into this. The simple definition of what bioaccumulation is – is little micro-plastics that typically come from processed food (typically from a factory), yes we are in fact eating plastic with our chips, and yes you have the right to be mad, that come out of our clothes when we wash them on hot (try not to do that unless your clothes have been soaking in the mud or something, they’ll be just as clean if you wash them on cold, than if you wash them on hot), and get flushed into the wild for animals to eat, and then for us to eat – no mater what you do, you’ll always be eating tiny little micro-plastics with a lot of your mean, and processed food. Another reason why we should start trying to eat more fruit and veg! Anyways heres my GIF:

For the next one, the news report. If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t do as much work for this as I could have. My group members were Jupiter, Cameron, and Judah! First thing that we did for this keystone was read about our topic – purple sea urchins and the kelp forests, which was good for me considering how much I had learned about it! Although as mentioned before, I really didnt play a big part in this… all I got to do was pretend to whisper in Cameron’s ear something about sea urchins once we got to filming, which sucked considering the sea urchins were my favourite topic that we worked on in this project 🙁 regardless, the end product looked pretty good, here it is:

And the last assignment, PSA! I have absolutely no clue what it stands for whatsoever but I do know what it was about! This one was probably one of my favourite assignments for this project, it even tops all the artsy assignments! It covered a lot of familiar ground because… we had to make fake instagram posts! I know how to get someone’s attention online, and it shows – because I have over 1,100 followers on my main instagram account, which is actually a HUGE milestone for me, I’ve never had anything over 100 followers on literally any social media platforms I’ve ever been on :,) anyways enough about my instagram (@kai_says_owo go follow me if ya want 👁👁), Cameron was my partner for PSA, (I’ll link the website in which we created these on) we had to create 5 fake instagram posts about all of the topics we had learned about so far in this project. One on The Earth’s spheres, and human impacts on each of them, one on Bioaccumulation/biomagnification, and human impacts on them, one on Local, interconnected, food webs and how humans impact them, one on Local wildlife management practices, and how humans impact them, and finally, one on Nutrient cycles, and how humans impact them. One of the main reasons why this assignment is the one I’m most proud of, is because I did more work than my partner (which is considerably rare for me I won’t lie lol). I did 3/5 of them, and he did 2/5! Anyways here are my 3 fake instagram posts:

(Here’s the website in which we created these fake posts: https://generatestatus.com/generate-fake-instagram-post/)

If I’m being honest, not entirely sure what the driving question is, but once I find out, I’ll give it my best “driving answer” here!

And that concludes this project’s blog post! Thank you to whoever is reading this (more specifically my teachers, as far as I can tell ya’ll are the only ones that tend to read my blog posts lol)! And as always, have a nice day!

t-POL Blog Post!

DRIVING QUESTION: “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”

 

This blog post is for my t-POL presentation! A t-POL is basically the same thing as an m-POL, but instead of mid year, it’s end year! That’s the only difference lol

 

Lets start by taking a quick look at my blog posts from the past two projects (that I have blog posts for)!

 

K.O. Pizza, “Our Pizza Packs a Punch!”

This was a project that fell under the subject of Scimatics (in the project “Ultimate Design Challenge”)! My “partner in crime” was my friend, the Great Cameroonian! This project was supposed to end in us making a 3D thing and printing it out using a 3D printer! Though that didn’t work out sadly :,(

Lemme elaborate a little! We were asked to make a 3D object using Tinkercad (a 3D printing/3D modelling app), me and Cameron originally wanted to do a circular pizza box, that ended up being to simple, so we decided to do two separate objects! A pizza, and a *normal* pizza box! After that, we went through the very painful process of presenting it in front of the class..

If you wanna see our presentation, here it is!!

Time to reflect…

I wish I had done more work to help Cameron, he probably did over 80% of the work if not more if I had helped out with the simple task of taking note of the calculations so that Cameron could figure out the volume and surface area.

 

That was on the second to last scimatics project, lets take a look at my most recent humanities project, “New Beginnings”!

Welcome to New France!

This was most DEFINITELY my best projects, I actually really enjoyed doing the work, it was a fun last project! The fact that I was able to hand in every single assignment (although yes, some of them were late, BUT NOT BY MUCH!!), in my opinion, I did everything fairly well, but there is ONE thing that I could improve on. Actually getting things done ON TIME! That is something that has always been a bit of a challenge for me, although based off of my last few projects, I’d say that I’ve been ding much better!

 

Before I answer the driving question, I will be answering a few extra questions!

Q: Of the work you completed so far this year, what are you most proud of? Why?

A: hmm thats kinda a hard on to answer, that’s why I picked it! I’m going to be honest here, even though I wasn’t  amazing at following the rules, I am really proud of my final images in the New Beginning project! I think I represented everything best I could, as well as how pretty the background photo is.

Q: Did all the work you completed this year meet your standards?

A: DEFINITELY NOT! I have extremely high standards for myself, but that just means I tend to work harder! Although through the past couple of months, I have worked harder than usual, and (for the most part) met my standards!

Q: What did/do you find frustrating about PLP work?

A: I am a VERY distractible person, and since half (if not more) of my life tends to be on a screen, including school, there are far to many distractions for someone like me. I am working on being less distracted, and I can promise you that it is getting better!

 

Alright now that all of that has been established, it is time… for everyone’s favorited part of a blog post… THE ANSWERING OF THE DRIVING QUESTION!!!

Question: “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”

Answer: “I don’t! But thats what it going to feel like ever year isn’t it? I have had an entire year to improve and I took the opportunity, and I made use of it. Throughout the past 2 months, I have skyrocketed into my work and in my opinion, succeeded greatly in it. Most things I do now is made in a timely manner, yet is also quality work. I don’t feel ready to advance, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t. I most definitely can, I know I can, I’m just afraid of what the next year will bring me.”

Welcome to New France!

Click on this link to see my final images!!

New beginnings was a project very similar to the last few projects, Argh Matey, and the Renaissance: a Change Engine (in my opinion)! We explored a lot of old famous inventions that helped the people of (somewhat) let them live with ease! The printing press, guns, the Compass, etc. in this project, we explored about the trading market during the New France age. We learned a lot about certain groups of people that inhabited New France in the early days (e.g.: Les Filles du Rois, Coureur de Bois, the Haudenosaunee, the European settlers, etc)! 

 

Let me elaborate a little <3

 

Originally, the final project was to make an ad that was advertising New France! And advertisement trying to get people to come to New France if ya get what I mean! We kinda ran out of time so we had to change it to something more simple sadly, it would have been fun though!!

Anyways the very first assignment that was assigned to us was an advertisement warm up kinda thing! Basically, we got into a groups of three and revisited our skills from our very first humanities project, The Medium is the Message! We made an ad advertising Seycove, and why you should come to our school (lol)

I cant find the first draft for some reason 🙁 But I did find the revised one (revised by meeee)! Here it is:

 

The second thing that we did was go on a quick lil nature walk! Just around our school, nothing much! We had to revisit our Maker project, Constructing Creative Communication! This was actually a relatively fun project, so. Enjoyed using my photography skills I learned during that project :] Aaaanyways, we had to take 3 different photos with 3 different angles! Birds eye, worms eye, and close up! I definitely made sure to use the Rule of Thirds!

Here are the 3 photos I took <3:

 

Then we started doing weekly reflection on how we thing the last week had gone (which of coursed I hated XD), I don’t have much to say for this cuz it only lasted about 2 weeks LOL

 

The third thing that we did was probably on of my favourite assignments, the Trade Simulations! This was basically just a roleplay situation where we all sat down and traded furs, guns, hats, tokens, and a bunch more! Each item was worth a certain amount of tokens/furs, and our goal was to get one of each item (if I’m remembering correctly)! Every now and then, our teacher would throw in a new and challenging situation, e.g: “your boss tells you that you have 1 month (5 minutes IRL I think?) to collect 10 or more beaver furs or you will fall apart during the cold winter” or something like that! My team won SO HARD lol, we had like 18 beaver furs or something by the end of the game!! Oh right! Forgot to mention, each group was a different trading company, my group was the NWC (North West Company), but sitting across from us was the HBC (Hudson’s Bay Company), to the left was the Haudenosaunee Nation, and to the right was the Ouendat Nation! These were the main trading companies that we roleplayed :]

 

Next up is the visuals pitch! Pretty simple, just pitching what my two visuals wold be! All i had to do was edit a photo take make it more effective to the kinda “vibe” I wanted to give off! Along with some symbols to represent certain aspects of my topic. Here’s what I came up with:

topic: Les Filles du Roi

Description of the photo i plan to use: a gravel path with greens on both sides.

Visual 1 symbols:

1: a man, because there weren’t many woman before the FDR came TH New France.

2: beavers, because there were probably more beavers before the FDR started to populate New France, and their children used the beavers furs.

3: a token, because children take a lot of money to take care of.

Visual 2 symbols:

1: a bunch of children, because the FDR were brought to France to have a lot of children

2: a pregnant woman, for obvious reasons

3: a wedding ring, because the FDR had an option to marry the father of their children.

 

Next thing I actually had to MAKE the images! Again, pretty simples, all I had to do was copy what I wrote in my pitch and turn it into an image! After I finished the first draft, I just had to revise it! Sadly, I didn’t have any time to make a revised version, so I just stuck with the first draft since it was “good enough” Here’s what they ended up looking like (idk why the woman and her babies look so cursed lol):

 

If I’m being completely honest, I think that aside from my maker project “geek out blog challenge”, this was by far one of my best projects. I handed everything in, and MOSLTY on time. Not only was everything done in a timely manner, but it was also quality work! That’s NEVER happened before! I don’t know what hAppend lol, I guess I just had a lot of motivation maybe?

 

And now… basically the only point of these blog posts… answering the question!!

 

question: “What did the establishment of New France mean for the people involved

answer: “The establishment of New France meant that the people that discovered/was involved with New France to to live a life full of pride, curiosity, and happiness. They did something for the entire world, they did something amazing for the people living in Quebec now.

 

thank you for tapping onto my blog post, but I’m gonna tap off for now!! I hope yall have a great summer and I’ll see you sometime in September!!