An average post about my mPOL

Hey, For this post I will be talking about my learning and reflecting on the skills I have learned throughout this year. This post will include a reflection on each subject covered in PLP. This includes: Humanities, Scimatics, Maker, and PGP. For each subject I will provide an example of my work ethic, habits, and proficiency.

The first thing I would like to talk about is this question. “What is my learning goal that I want to reach by the end of the school year, and how will I meet it? This is a very tough question that will come up a few times in this post because this is something that will stay with me for the rest of this school year. Anyway, let’s get to the reflecting.

Humanities: this is one of the two classes that we have every day, meaning that I have lots of examples of work habits and such. The example that I chose for humanities was actually part of our first humanities project, this being The Media is the Message (you can find my post about this project HERE). I have chosen milestone 3 as an example of my hard work because it shows that when I get invested into something I can put a lot of hard work and effort into it to be the best it can be.

This is an example of some work in humanities that I went beyond the expected work without even realizing it.

Scimatics: this is the other class that we have every day! Anyway, in this section I will talk about and mention parts about teamwork and evidence of high quality work. For the scimatics portion of this post I want to talk about our Laser Maze (find it HERE) project. This project was based all around dividing work and teamwork when needed. To be honest, I think I took a little too much of this project on by myself, and made it harder than it could have if I had help from my group members. The thing that I am most proud of in this project was actually the final product. The final product of this project was to make a triangle out of lasers in a Star Wars themed ship/object. We made a Venator class republic star destroyer.

This is the “laser maze” my group made. It’s a Venator class star destroyer from the clone wars.

Maker: this class takes up one of our elective spots, for better or worse, I’m not sure yet, but there have been some great experiences with this class. One of those being the subject for this section! A great experience that I am proud of in maker class was part of the “Power of a Pencil” (find that post HERE) project. The part that I want to focus on is the first milestone A.K.A. name art. The reason I chose this piece was because I was so invested that I even decided to take my time and add to the original and send the second version in. I thought that overall that project let my creativity come out a lot and help me make something that represents myself.

This is the final piece of art I made. I’m very proud of this one!

PGP: PGP definitely isn’t a conventional class. Every month or so a PGP meeting is help where we discuss something important. A part of PGP that I haven’t really used as much as I want to is Things. Things is a great time management app that has a bunch of features built in to help you stay on-track. I try to keep up with things as much as possible but a lot of the time I forget to look at it. I’m looking forward to the PGP meetings ahead of me to help me learn new strategies to keep on top of the game!

This is the Things logo!

Now, for the part where I reflect on my work! (Yay)

This first half-school year in high school has been a huge ramp up in terms of work, but I like that I have to work hard to get better at something like this. Of course, with learning comes FAILure the FAIL meaning “First Attempt in Learning” I have had many of those, but of all of them the piece of work that I am least proud of is definitely my first business advertisement. It was a train wreck and I had no idea if it looked good or bad but I think that over this first half-year I have definitely improved and learned that FAILure isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And now, for the final part of this post! A question! One for myself, or whoever’s reading this.
What new strategies can I use to help further my understanding of what I’m learning?

Thanks for reading this far!

-Keenan

 

 

 

 

An average post about the winter exhibition

Hey again! It’s been a while since I posted but lest get into this explanation! In short the winter exhibition is an event for everyone in PLP to participate in a themed 2 hour showcase of whatever product you created. I made a possible design for a practical lightsaber for every day use (this year was Star Wars themed). To make this product though, we had to go through the L.A.U.N.C.H cycle.

 

The first thing that you have to do in this cycle isn’t go to the l phase. It’s actually that you have to find a question that you want to answer at the end of this project. My question was “how might we design a practical lightsaber for everyday use?”.

The first phase is L the L means Look, Listen, and Learn. This mean to look into, and learn more about the question that you want to answer, for example if I were to make a lightsaber design (like I did) I would do research on lightsaber designs and find practical ones that could be re-created in real life.

 

The second phase (A) means “ask tons of questions” in this phase you ask questions about your question or how you might make your product work. On my project I might have asked “how scientifically accurate is the lightsaber?” Or something to that effect.

In the third phase (the U phase) was all about understanding the problem or process. This meant trying to understand your question to the best of your ability and really start thinking about what your product is going to look like.

The fourth phase (N) is the one where you brainstorm a bunch of ideas for a final product and finally choose one. I might have had “investigate why blaster bolts bounce off of lightsabers and if it is scientifically accurate”.

This is an illustration of what happens in this phase

The fifth and second last phase was the C phase. The c phase was where you created your first physical prototype. This was mine!

Here’s a photo of the first prototype that I made in an app called shapr 3D

In the final phase (the H phase) we looked what was wrong and right with our first prototype and fixed the mistakes and improved on the good points. And example of this for me was that my first prototype was very uncomfortable to hold, so, I fixed that.

This is an image of the revised prototype that I created (also in shapr 3D)

 

Now that I’ve told you about the launch cycle and what I did with it, I can tell you about the exhibition! The exhibition was a great time all around. We got to show everyone there (a few hundred people) what we had created over the past few months. All the students at the exhibition had their own project similar to mine. We were split up in the school into multiple planets. There was Endor Tatooine (the best) the Death Star, and Hoth. I was on Tatooine as you probably already guessed. During the prep week leading up to the exhibition we tried to make our “planet” as much like the actual one in the Star Wars movies As much as possible For example we brought in heaters to make our room hotter (like a desert planet would be).

The day of the the exhibition was definitely the most hectic. We were all over the place trying to make our area look the best it could look. We even brought food! The food at the exhibition was all based off of something from Star Wars. for example I brought in a drink (cream soda) but told everyone it was a drink from Star Wars called bantha-blood-fizz. Overall the experience was great so maybe I wont be as nervous for it next year!

Here are some curricular competencies used in this project

Innovative thinker: this competency is proof of you using many sources to complete and verify your data and product. I think that I used many sources to find the information and tools that I needed to complete this project.

Computational thinker: this competency s all about the strategies you used to learn most effectively. I think that I used lots of strategies some more effective than others but I still used many.

Creative communicator: this final competency was all about showing your creativity in a creative way. I think that I’ve used many ways to show my creativity in this project and am proud of the way it turned out.

 

This is the last section of this post! Before I go I figured I’d show you my LAUNCH journal. This was something that we did while going through the phases to remember what we did.

 

 

Here’s a link to my laser maze project that was also at the winter exhibition [click here]. Byeee!!

 

Keenan

An Average Post About Nuclear Development

On August 6th 1945, over 100,000 people died, approximately 80,000 instantly. This was the bombing of Hiroshima using the newly developed nuclear bomb, little boy. The focus of this project was the development of nuclear science (more specifically the Manhattan Project) and its consequences on the world, both good and bad.

During this project we asked ourselves, “How did splitting the atom change the world?” and explored many affects that it has or had on the people of the world and us personally. There were many ways that nuclear advancement has shaped the current world we live in, these being important things we could often think about like healthcare and medicine, or things we might not think about like food production in farming. Many of the important effects that the advancement of nuclear science had on our world are explained in this borderline propaganda movie from 1952.

Throughout this project, we learned about the categories of historical significance from the acronym NAME and applied it to the Manhattan Project and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.

Novelty
Applicability
Memory
Effects

This can be explained in this more in-depth video

To get a new perspective on these circumstances and help see them as less of a historical piece and more of a real event, we read the book “Hiroshima” by John Hersey. This book takes you into the perspective of six residents of Hiroshima through the days following the dropping of “Little Boy”

The final product of this project was a speech to be made in front of our class. For many members of our class including me, public speaking isn’t something that we were comfortable with. this added another layer to the learning from this experience, allowing us to begin overcoming some of the fears or difficulties that we face ourselves with. The objective of this speech was to convince the audience that the Manhattan Project was a historically significant event.

Do you think that you could order the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the name of hundreds of thousands of others?

This is the decision that had to be made in the face of power that the Manhattan project contained.

The power to change the world, for better or worse. The Manhattan project caused the deaths of over 200,000 people in the few years after its completion, but prevented possibly even more.

But what does that mean for us in the present time? How did splitting the atom change the world? I will answer this question using our criteria for assessing historical significance.

The first criteria that we use to assess historical significance is “how important it was thought to be at the time” The amount of effort that the US government employed to hide their development of the bombs from the public eye, makes it very clear that even the initial effort, without considering the consequences and outcomes.

It is very clear that it was thought to be of utmost importance at the time. The bombing of Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also thought to be important enough to cause the Imperial Japanese regime to surrender, thus leading to our modern age of peace.

The second criteria depends on how many people it affected. While not directly affecting that many people in the beginning, the manhattan project eventually affected at the very least, the people that did the research and the 100-200 thousand deaths from the atomic bombs.

This is quite the significant number of people, especially considering that those are just the deaths that the Manhattan project caused.

The lasting effects of the manhattan project extend much farther, affecting modern medicine, farming, and much more.

The developments funded by the us government for war, unintentionally catapulted our use of radioactive isotopes into the modern era. Thirdly, is how deeply it affected people.

This deep impact can be seen when you look at the families of the Hibakusha, those who were affected by the atomic bomb.

The bombs that were dropped on Japan as a direct consequence of the manhattan project not only killed over a hundred thousand people, but stopped possibly more than that many people from going to ware in the near future afterwards.

The developments to our modern industry have saved many lives, and affected the economy equally as much.

The fourth and fifth criteria reference the events ability to influence people and their beliefs for years afterwards. This criteria is interesting because they regard our lives today.

The manhattan project and its direct consequences have moulded our worlds modern power dynamic. This is because of the seriousness of modern nuclear weapons, and the damage and moral implications that using them would cause.

Today, many believe that using nuclear weapons without purpose is as close to evil as you can get. The sixth and final criteria we use to assess historical significance is whether or not it lead to other important events.

The manhattan project can be directly linked to the Cold War, and many other modern problems or situations regarding nuclear power or weapons.

Overall, the splitting of the atom has changed the world in many fields.

This change has affected most of the world’s people due to the developments in sciences, agriculture and more.

It’s deep, widespread, long lasting, and residual effects on the world and its people, have shown us that war is a strong developing force for humanity; even though war is a terrible thing in and of itself.

Thank you.

 

This is a video that I found that focusses on nuclear energy

This project has shown us the best and the worst that human beings are capable of, both of which being very significant to the development of the very society that we, and many others live in today. Can you imagine a world where we haven’t advanced nuclear science past the nuclear bomb? what does it look like? I find it very difficult to do so because I know how much of my life relies on the products of nuclear science. Nuclear science has revolutionized our world.