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Leave a comment Posted on Exhibition, Humanities, Maker

An Average Post About School

A Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Framework À La Hierarchy Of Needs - eLearning Industry

School has its issues. Everywhere you look, there is an imperfect school system. So does a perfect school system exist? I don’t think so, but we can get pretty close. In the modern world, kids are on their phones all the time right? Clearly we like our phones, so why not incorporate it into our schools? Here at Seycove, we do a pretty good job utilizing these tools to keep curiosity fresh and work a little more enjoyable. This is what I presented at our Spring Exhibition this year. We were tasked with analyzing our current school system, and coming up with ways to improve the system with the objective of creating more engaged and informed citizens.

Questions Stock Photos, Royalty Free Questions Images | Depositphotos
What is technologically enhanced learning?

Technology-enhanced learning refers to the use of technology, such as digital tools, physical technology and online platforms, to enhance teaching and learning experiences by allowing students to learn in a way that is more of their own. It encompasses various resources like online courses, educational apps, and interactive whiteboards that aim to improve learning outcomes and develop crucial digital skills.

What are the benefits of technologically enhanced learning?

Technologically enhanced learning benefits Canadian schools by increasing engagement, personalizing education, providing access to vast resources, fostering global connections, and developing essential digital literacy and 21st-century skills, ultimately empowering students to thrive in a technology-driven world.

 

My project is not only focused on technology, but also providing new, hands on learning environments for learners. This is similar to the field studies we do in PLP, but the idea was for them to be far more frequent and local. The main idea with this is to engage students by providing new environments, where a student will be invited to be aware of their surroundings and be engaged in the situation.

What are the benefits of experiential learning?

Experiential learning offers the benefits of active engagement, practical application, and personalized experiences, fostering deeper understanding, skill development, and increased motivation. By providing hands-on, immersive experiences, it enhances memory retention, critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and the ability to transfer knowledge to real-world contexts, ultimately leading to a more meaningful and effective learning journey.

The biggest part that I, someone who has experienced technology in this way can confidently say that access to things like the internet in the classroom is an incredible tool for enabling curiosity. The other big part for me, is that I don’t have to use my awful handwriting, instead, I get to type, which is also faster.

No matter who you are, you probably have a phone or a tablet or maybe a laptop that you enjoy using for different purposes. That enjoyment does transfer to school or work to some degree, and this causes people to be more engaged in the activities that they take part in.

How does this all create more informed and engaged citizens?

I’m glad you asked. The way that you engage with society and gather information heavily depends on if you have the motivation or reason to do so. Someone who is determined to learn in school, is far more likely to have the drive to contribute to society later on. This also applies to curiosity. The current system does not foster creativity, as characterized by Logan in his project, School Kills Curiosity. Having technology that students are familiar with, and are more than willing to use helps boost engagement.

“Children often struggle to stay on task or interested, particularly if it is not interactive. One of the main benefits of technology is that it can make even the most mundane school tasks more engaging, which will help your students to stay focused. This is particularly poignant when we consider the earlier point of just how comfortable and normalized technology has become for young kids nowadays.” (Emma Cullen What is technology enhanced learning?)

Students who develop 21st century skills and are engaged in their community and school while growing up develop more sophisticated skills and thought processes, resulting in citizens who are naturally more active in society, whether it be as voters, or just developing humanity in one way or another.

Anyway, I think its time I give a little info about the exhibition now that you have an idea about what my project focuses on.

The Metaverse Is on the Way: Here's What You Need to Know - CNET

My project for the exhibition was a short Virtual Reality experience that I created using Unreal Engine. the idea of the experience was to give visitors a short insight into the experiences of many students who end up unengaged in class, with the experience designed to be bland, dreary, and have aspects of “zoning out”.

This is a screenshot of the Unreal editor showing the first scene that I wanted to show people at the exhibition. This scene is of an empty classroom, to show that the student is off in their own headspace, and there is white noise in the background to reinforce this fact within the visitor. The lights of the scene are rather prison like, showing the students attitude towards school.

The next scene worked while I was creating it, but unfortunately there were some fatal migraine-inducing visual bugs when running it off of the headset, so I had to cut it out of the exhibition product, but I still spent a couple of hours on it so I’m showing it here.

This is a frame you could see while wearing the VR set. This environment is designed to be a nice forest area where you can relax with the birds chirping in the background. This is a representation of a more engaging environment a student might find themselves in if this program was implemented.

I had two iPads on the desk next to me displaying articles pertaining to my project as well, the first being the aforementioned “What is technology enhanced learning?“, and the second being “The benefits of learning outside the classroom“. These articles were there to mostly serve as props for my spiel, but I pointed them out while talking so that the visitors could read more if they wanted to (this includes you, reader).

Overall, I think that the exhibition went over pretty well. I developed a pitch early on with my pre-established knowledge, and people clearly thought that my pitch was pretty good, because I came second place in the somewhat convoluted vote at the end. All in all, I think that creating this product and research was a test of my skills and perseverance, (especially the random errors while trying to import and export my project) and was a somewhat enjoyable experience trying to learn something new while under a tight time constraint!!!!

Thanks for reading this far,

Keenan

Leave a comment Posted on Field Study, Humanities, Maker, Stories of Hope

An Average Post About Stories of Hope

In a world often fraught with challenges and uncertainties, stories of hope shine as beacons of light, reminding us of the incredible resilience and strength of the human spirit. They serve as powerful reminders that, even in the face of adversity, we have the capacity to overcome, grow, and create positive change.

Today, we embark on a journey of inspiration as we delve into remarkable tales of hope and reflect on the valuable lessons they impart. Furthermore, I am thrilled to present a video that I have personally crafted, taking you on a transformative story of hope that aims to ignite the flickering flame within each viewer. So, let’s dive into these stories, embrace the power of hope, and discover the hidden potential that lies within us all.

After watching my video, consider the story of hope that you went on while watching the video. Throughout the video, did you ever feel disappointed or disheartened? Did you feel sad at all? Did you have hope that the video would get better? These questions, if yes, are the essence of a story of hope.

The four key words for this project were:

Adversity

Resilience

Hope

Survival

After examining the definitions, did you experience any of those, whether it be from watching my video, or from previous experiences in your life? Do you feel you grew from that experience? If you did, you likely experienced all four of those things. They’re kind of like a package deal.

What lessons and inspiration can we draw from the stories of individuals that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity?

The growth that one experiences after overcoming adversity is one of the greatest contributors to humanity’s greatest achievements. Could the civil rights act have been created without the lack of civil rights to begin with? Could we have reached space so fast without the space race? Could we have movements and organizations coming together to prevent climate change if there was none?

No. No we could not. But what separates a story of hope from a story of tragedy? The answer is growth, and in turn, survival. While the definition of survival might just be:

“the state of continuing to live or exist, often despite difficulty or danger”                                                                                                                                                                                     – Oxford Dictionary

You might simply look at that and think,  “I’m surviving, continuing to live and exist”. But I think that true survival requires adversity and resilience. This means that in order to truly “survive” you must first be faced with difficult circumstances, and then flourish upon overcoming them. This is seen in my video above, as well as (hopefully) within yourself after watching it.

This is am image that I took of the “Survivor Tree”, a tree which holds it’s own special story of hope, on our visit to the Oklahoma city bombing memorial.

Throughout this project, and especially our trip to the US, we saw many examples of people who saw the light at the end of the tunnel and reached past it even after emerging, taking lessons from each one. The lesson which I thought was most important, is that we can never give up. No matter where the determination comes from, there is always a positive to be had, even in the face of the darkest darks, and the lowest lows. The lessons that we learned and saw should, and will be carried with us for the rest of our lives, moving our fulcrum of adversity further to the side.

 

Thank you.

Leave a comment Posted on Exhibition, Humanities, Maker, POL

An Average Post About mPOL 2023

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.

In this year’s mPOL, I want to shift focus. In the past couple years, my POLs were mainly focused on my struggle with procrastination, but lately I feel like I have the habits and strength to overcome the struggles that I put myself through. This year, I want to focus on something that I feel really helped me from the first couple years of PLP. This being specific feedback on each assignments. My goal for the second half of the year is to improve the quality of my work by making a habit of asking for feedback from my teachers or peers when I feel that I need a little something for my work to be up to standard.

 

While preparing for this mPOL, I reviewed my learning plan to see what I had in mind for improvement at the start of the year, and I could see quickly that it needed to change. While reviewing the learning plan from the start of this year, I found that it wasn’t very focused on anything. The main thing that i felt needed to be stated, was that I think that I no longer need to keep my focus on procrastination. It may sometimes still be a problem for me, but I think that I’m ready to focus on new things. While revising my learning plan, I decided that much of my work could use revisions, just like the learning plan. But the problem here is that hindsight is always in 20/20 right? That’s just me looking back much later and using knowledge that was gained far later than when the work was done to begin with. So what’s the solution?
Feedback.

Feedback is something that can be very helpful and can point out what’s missing in your knowledge or work, allowing you to correct it before it becomes a bigger problem. In the last 2 years of PLP, I’ve felt a distinct lack of this very thing, and have decided that this is the best and most efficient way to improve the quality of my learning and work.

A great example of when I could have used some feedback from others was during the winter exhibition. This is because, as stated in my blog post about the topic, I felt that there were many things that I needed to consider while translating my idea into play form that I did not. The main issue I found with my presentation was that the audience might have a hard time understanding what the specifics of the scene meant, as there were minimal props and my play was not long enough to establish these things. If I had consulted someone else with my ideas, I think that we may have came up with a way to make my section of the play much more comprehensive to the audience.

I think that this solution is applicable to almost every single assignment that we do, and that sometimes there will be feedback given to me, but I think that having more than that is important to me reaching my full potential as a learner.

This post started with my chosen solution, not the only one, and I want to recognize that asking for feedback is not the only way that I can increase the quality of my work. Other methods for increasing my work’s quality is to simply use the tools that are given to me. One of the tools that is given to us as students is the rubric for an assignment. A good mark isn’t the only thing that determines the quality of work, but it helps quite a bit. But this brings me to why I chose the solution I did. I felt that throughout my thinking the best solution to help me grow as a person and a learner is to make use of the people around me and ask for feedback when I feel it may benefit me or my work.

The final way that I would like to build on my habits and learning this year is by asking more questions. In my science related classes, I find that I haven no problem asking for clarification or help when I don’t understand something. I think this is because of the way I think, but it works out great for me in those classes. I want to bring that skill into my life in other regards and be able to ask for help and such in any situation.

 

Thank you for coming to my mPOL.

Leave a comment Posted on Field Study, Loon Lake, Maker

An average post about Loon Lake

Hello and welcome to a blog post about our PLP class’ first field study since grade 8. This field study was about Loon Lake. Loon Lake is a retreat centre located in Maple Ridge, and operated by UBC, that focuses on corporate retreats or overnight school trips. Our class went there for a 4 day field study to try and get us out of the classroom and into a new gear of learning. Retreats are important because they can be like a large shift in your working habits, by putting you somewhere new, doing something new, you begin to develop new habits and can generally gain a new perspective on your personal and work life.

Throughout the trip we did numerous activities. These included: a birds of prey performance, a visit to the extreme air park, canoeing, rock climbing, high ropes, archery, some heated game nights, and some great food.

During the trip we were asked to think about a goal that could be feasibly completed by the end of the trip. My goal was “Build strategy(s)/a plan that can help me find what I want to work towards the future goal of gaining as much life experience and knowledge as possible while making myself more determined to learn in the process.” I thought of this goal because I wanted to use the field study as an opportunity, and start of new habits that will help me make sure that what I decide to do after I graduate high school is influenced by as much knowledge and experience as possible. I wanted to do this because at my current stage in life I only have a rough idea of what I have in mind for the future, and I want to be sure of my future by graduation.

Over the course of the trip, everyone in the class made progress on their goal, including me. Although there wasn’t as much there that was brand new to me, (I’ve done quite a bit of outdoor activity in my spare time) I still felt that I was building new habits towards my goal. As part of goal was to try and see the future an activity can bring, as opposed to the possibly monotonous present of the activity, I was trying to see what kind of future each thing could bring me to that I experienced, and throughout the learning about being “ready”, (for being a pretty simple term it really is quite complicated) I think that I demonstrated this by engaging myself and thinking of personal examples where the learning that was being conducted could be executed.

All in all, I think that I completed my goal for the time at loon lake and made great progress toward my larger goal throughout, and after the trip. Thanks for reading,

Keenan

Leave a comment Posted on Destination Imagination, Maker

An average post about D.I. 2022

Hello and welcome to this most recent blog post. This time, I will be talking about my experience with Destination Imagination. Firstly, a short explanation as to what the heck a “Destination Imagination” is. Destination Imagination is a challenge based competition that has teams compete against each other on different levels. The levels are: Regionals, Provincials, and Globals. Because there are so many teams competing for a spot at the global finals there are usually multiple tournaments before the global finals. But this year, the regionals were cancelled and teams were sent straight into the provincials. There are multiple challenges that a team can compete in which you can find on the Destination Imagination official website. My team was called “Yes”, and we competed in the scientific challenge.

This is our team photo, taken right before our challenge took place.

My team consisted of (from left to right): Nya, Julien, Ryan, Nathan, Me, and Liam.

Our challenge centred around a mysterious object and a microworld. You may be asking “what in the world is a microworld?” And we did too. A microworld isn’t really a scientific term. What the challenge meant by a microworld is basically just a world, but microscopic. The challenge was to create a story that centred around a character going into a microworld and finding a mysterious object, which the character(s) would find the use/purpose of later on in the story. Our performance was given points for many different aspects. These would be our story, our microworld scenery (the background depiction of the world from a microscopic creature’s point of view), the mysterious object, our lighting effect (which was used to reveal or enhance the mysterious object), and our team choice elements.

You can find our solution to the challenge here, with a recording of the performance.

Here’s a description of our solution. Our main story focuses on a group of scientists who and currently studying a bacteria called Vibrio Vulnificus, which is a flesh eating bacteria found in coastal waters during hot months. The scientists’ objective is to find a “cure” for this bacteria, but little did they know it would come to them in the weirdest way possible. The scientists are studying the bacteria when one of them sees a button in the lab they’ve never noticed before, so naturally, curiosity overwhelmed the scientist and she pushed the big red button. The characters realize that they have been somehow transported into the sample that they were studying, and become cautious that the bacteria must be somewhere in there with them. Lo and behold, the bacteria begins to attack them shortly after they found a mysterious Y shaped object while searching around. Panicking, the scientists try to think of something they can do to stop this bacteria, and weaponize the object they have found. It easily kills the bacteria, and the scientists make note that the object could be an antibody, specifically for Vibrio Vulnificus, and get back to trying to leave the sample before another bacteria arrives. They find the button, which appeared to have shrunk with them into the microworld, and decide to press it again, brining them back to the normal world, but this time, with a handheld antibody, the key to the completion of their mission.

The most important part of creating a solution for a challenge like this, at least from my experience, is communication. What I mean by that is that if you want an exceptional solution, you NEED to get everyone’s opinion on each aspect of the solution you are creating, and you need to have everyone’s thoughts on the table. Our performance could have been better, that’s a given, because no matter what it is, it can always be better, but I believe that our skills and construction of the solution was good. The thing we lacked in was exactly what I just mentioned. Communication. During the time we had to create a solution for this challenge, it was often difficult to get a hold of team members. While we were in class, we did well at organizing meetups and such, but when we didn’t “have to” our group was not very active in trying to organize solutions. On my end, I believe that I could most definitely do better. If I tried to communicate like I sometimes did, I would just kind of wait for a response, but the action that I should take is encouraging communication or presenting a solution the next time I came face to face with my group.

Here is the participation award, given to us along with some cool pins.

Our team came 2nd in the main challenge, and took first place in the instant challenge (which I’m not allowed to talk about). These rankings were ones that our team was pretty proud of, with only a little bitterness for being 20 points short of first. Overall, I’m glad that we were forced to participate in this dreaded event, because despite the negative outlook most people took out of it, I think we all experienced at least a little valuable learning from each of our challenges.

Thank you for reading to the end of my D.I. reflection, and I hope you got something out of it,

Later!

Leave a comment Posted on Exhibition, Humanities, Maker

An Average Post About a Winter Exhibition

Hello, and welcome back to my blog, today we’re going to talk about our most recent event, the PLP Winter Exhibition. This event was pretty big because we were finally able to host it inside again. Unfortunately there was no food or drinks though.

The driving question this time was “How can we create a public memory of past wrongs so they are not repeated today?” This question mentions a “public memory” which refers to the circulation of recollections of members of a certain community as defined by Matthew Houdek and Kendall R. Phillips. In our case, the public memory is a memorial, which would refer to a place or structure created to commemorate or remember a significant event. During this project, we learned about 3 different events in Vancouver’s history where some form of discrimination occurred.

The first being the Komagata Maru, and event in history where the Canadian government issued a law called the Continuous journey act causing all sorts of trouble with a certain ship in Vancouver’s port.

The specifics on the event of the Komagata Maru can be found here, in my post about it.

The second event we learned about was the Chinese Oppression in BC. We focused most from the construction of the railways to the Second World War.

And last but certainly not least was the Japanese internment in BC during WWII. This was the topic of my groups project for the exhibition.

For each of these different events we went on a field trip to various areas to get first hand experience in memorials and culture of the affected groups. This way of learning really helped me personally because it gave me a personal connection to each of the events that not only helped me remember some information on each one, but also helped me understand what made a successful memorial because I could take on the role as spectator. For example I found the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen gardens where you went to new areas often to be an much more enjoyable experience than the first half of the Nikkei Cultural centre where it was almost exclusively writing on the wall.

The Winter Exhibition. Oh boy. This was an experience. Now the way I’m talking about it might make it sound terrible, but it really wasn’t all that bad. We had the room arranged so each group got a 6th of the room’s space. We had a corner halfway through the visitors journey. During the exhibition I noticed that our text based way of explaining our project only worked for a handful of people.

Our project was on the Japanese internment during WWII, we decided to make a statue that reflected a shadow onto a large wall at night, signifying the large part of life the Japanese Canadian parents had to keep in the shadows, hidden from their children so they could live a happy life.

This was the statue we made. It doesn’t specifically depict anything, except for a hard working Japanese Canadian. To my group it looked like a farmer or a soldier but it could look like something completely different to you. But the thing they most all have in common is that they work hard and push through tough times.

Earlier I mentioned that out text based descriptions didn’t really work for most people. This is probably because they weren’t interested or they figured it wasn’t important. We tried to circumvent this problem during the exhibition with some improv changes to our pitch where we would tell the visitor that the may not have to read the first 2 paragraphs because we were placed after the other Japanese Internment group. We explained it by saying the other group likely other already explained the content. This is the kind of place we needed to use our teamwork skills. This is because not only did we have to make changes midway through our exhibition we also needed to make sure everyone knew what they were going to say. Another part of the teamwork part we didn’t do too well was communicating outside of school. We were using an iMessage group chat to message each other about the project but most of the time it went unused and we failed to communicate some extra ideas that may have made the final cut.

 

Now this exhibition may have seemed pretty laid back so far, but the was a vote going on between each team from each event. Now in my group I don’t think we were too concerned with the votes, and I think it was better that way. But the results of the voting were clearly biased, but when the votes were counted we found that probably about 60% of the ballots all voted for the first option from each category. This is probably something like what this article is talking about. Now I can still hold my pride high and say that we would have won it if not for the poorly designed ballots I think that we could have presented our project a lot better. I think the biggest culprit of our democratic failure was our large amounts of text. If we had spent some more time refining the paragraphs and making them look slightly less intimidating then filled in the blanks ourselves when the visitor asked a question we could have had many more votes.

 

If I were to pitch this to a city hall or propose it as a real monument I would most likely not change much about our pitch. I’m proud of the way we explained the metaphoric value of the shadow and the interpretations of the mysterious figure at the same time and think it might even have a chance of being a real thing. But I don’t think thats going to happen. I have better things to do with my life like binging series upon series on Netflix.

To give credit where credit is due, this was my group, unfortunately I didn’t come up with this whole thing myself, and I owe it to my team members: Sophia, Josh, and last (and maybe least? Just kidding) Nate.

Finally, we come full circle and I get to answer the driving question. “How can we create a public memory of past wrongs so they are not repeated today?” And I think that the best answer I can give to that is to choose the right event for the job. You will always want to take something local, or something the people you need or want to affect will all associate with. It gives them the kind of sense that they have experienced it or if they have a distant relative that experienced the event they will care more or be more interested in general.

 

Thanks for coming along with me on my extra long rant today, peace

Keenan

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities, Maker

An Average Post About the Komagata Maru

Hello, and welcome to my first post on our newest project, “Ology of Apology”. This project focuses on the Canadian Government’s injustices towards minorities. This post will focus on a more specific event though. The Komagata Maru.

The Story

Passengers of the Komagata Maru
Image: City of Vancouver Archives/James Luke Quiney fonds/AM1584-: CVA 7-127

The Komagata Maru is a story of injustice, and a story of bravery, testing the limits of the law. The story starts in Hong Kong, where a wealthy Sikh man name Gurdit Singh came into possession of a boat named the Komagata Maru. 150 Punjabi passengers boarded the ship in Hong Kong, all Punjabis. But this wasn’t enough yet. The ship travelled through Japan and picked up 226 more passengers.

Passengers aboard the Komagata Maru
Image: James Luke Quiney fonds/City of Vancouver Archives/AM 15984-:CVA 7-122.

The ship then began its 2 month journey into Canadian waters. Although Gurdit Singh and the passengers were aware that Canada had been turning away south Asian immigrants for almost 5 years, they thought that being British subjects would be enough to be allowed admittance. This was not the case. Only 20 passengers (and a few special cases) were allowed onto solid ground due to the fact that they were returning residents and could prove it. The other 350 some passengers were kept on the boat for 2 months with food or water supply all while the local police were harassing them hoping to get them to leave by their own volition.

People coming to watch the conflict between the law and the Komagata Maru
Image: City of Vancouver Archives/James Luke Quiney fonds/AM1584-:CVA 7-129.

The Punjabi people on land did their best to get food and water to the ship while raising money to bring the issue to court. They raised an incredible sum of money and hired lawyers to take the case to court. The court later ruled that the ship had broken the continuous journey act and the ship began its journey back to India. The ship stopped in Japan where approximately 20 passengers got off of the ship. The ship then arrived in the port of Budge Budge in India, where some distrusting police members got into a scuffle with the passengers resulting in the death of 20 passengers.

This is a brick that was used to fight against the police officials trying to force the Komagata Maru to leave

Source: Museum of Vancouver

The Apology

in 2008, Stephen Harper made a public apology to around 8,000 people in a local event in Surrey, BC. The Sikh community thought that this apology was half hearted and demanded it be said on the floor of the House of Commons, which didn’t happen until 2016, when Justin Trudeau made the decision to apologize in the House of Commons as the Punjabi community asked.

This is the stage where Justin Trudeau gave his formal apology

Recent events such as residential schools are getting the same sort of apology in an attempt to make things write and move forward as a society. These sorts of apologies are important because they allow the general public to be educated or just acknowledge the events and it shows the remorse and responsibility the government is taking on because of it. It also allows the community affected to observe this and forgive.

The Conclusion

This event isn’t just some random thing from history class. This event is even significant to our lives today! This is because of the effect that it had on the way it has functioned as an example for discrimination and how we have pushed against systemic racism evident by the great variety of people now living in Canada. But overall, I think the most important part of this whole story to remember are the people that took the journey knowing it may not work out, eventually leading to the society we live in today.

 

Thanks for reading this post on the Komagata Maru, and I hope you look out for my next posts on the other racial injustices in Canada!

Signing off.

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities, Maker

An Average Post About WWI

Hello, and welcome back to my blog. Today I will be telling you about my learning in our most recent project, The Great War Exhibit. This project was focused around an artifact that we chose at the start of the project. I chose trench art, for the simple reason of not knowing what’s it was at the time. Little did i know, it was pretty amazing.

Trench art was and still is important. Trench art is made, and has been made in wars all over the world. This includes the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and both World Wars (and hopefully not a third one). Trench art is important because of what it represents, and what it does for the people that make it. First of all, trench warfare was brutal (you can play a game to learn more here). There was no clean water (you would have had to boil it to make it drinkable), no way to clean your lice infested clothing, and a lot of terrifying experiences. The soldiers would spend most of their day waiting for the next attack from the enemy or awaiting new orders. This lead to the soldiers spending large amounts of time in their terrible living conditions, doing basically nothing. Soldiers began to get creative. There were many pastimes in the trenches, and one of the more pronounced ones was trench art. Trench art symbolizes the drive and spirit of the soldiers and what they were so determined to get through.

This is the example the Canadian War Museum gave us as an artifact.

Trench art came in many forms, and they ranged from boxes with punched in writing on it, to beautiful designs such as the one on the artillery casing seen above.

At the start of the project we also researched a soldier from the Canadian archives. My soldier’s name was Edward McFeely whose information can be found here. We looked through our soldier’s information and crafted a story with as much truth to it as possible. For this we had to figure out where they fought, how and if they died, and many other personal facts. This was a very challenging assignment especially because we had to read so much old cursive. This story was supposed to help Canadians understand the historical significance of our soldier and artifact.

Here is the final product of my story. The video!

 

This video demonstrates the competencies “establish historical significance” and “using resources” because of the extensive research done into the purpose, meaning, symbolism, and achievements of the soldier and artifact used to create the video. I think that the importance of that ties into the driving question for the project, “How might we use artifacts and film to show the significance of WWI”. I think that the answer to the driving question is the same as the examples of the competencies mentioned earlier. This is because the video itself is the answer to he question. We can use artifacts and film to show the significance of WWI by creating an informative video that shows the experiences soldiers had in the trenches and explaining why they mattered.

The next example I would like to share with you is the mini-museum that we hosted as a class in our school library.

This is a picture of me at my station with the trench art!

A short version of this event was streamed and recorded on instagram, which can be viewed here on the Seycove Secondary instagram page. This was a big event, where classes from the school would come through our exhibit and learn about each of our artifacts. This gave us a great opportunity to share what we had learned up until that point in the project. The competency “global collaborator” was a big part of this event because of how we had to take the perspective of someone who knew nothing and explain the artifact fro the ground up. During my presentation, I gave a very similar explanation to the one I put at the top of the post.

Overall, I think that his project was a huge success, and helped us better understand WWI and the parts of it that aren’t easily accessible.

I hope that you enjoyed reading through this post about my learning.

Thanks for stopping by!

Keenan

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An Average Post About Revolutions

Hello, and welcome back to my blog. This post will contain all that I have learned from our most recent project in this chaotic year, “Storm the Barricades!”. I hope you enjoy this post, and be sure to check out my teammates blogs as they are covering their perspective on this project (check them out here Ryder, Sophia, and Jakub.

This is the man himself, Crane Brinton.

This project was based off of the theory of revolution by Crane Brinton. His theory was, in short, that a revolution is like a disease with a high fever. Similarly to our bodies after a fever, we return to a state very similar to what our body looked like before. Brinton theorized that revolutions were the same, and not only that, but that revolutions had a formula to them. It went like this, an economic crisis, political weakness, intellectual opposition, and or class antagonism will be the lead causes of the revolution. These causes lead to the “Phase 2” of the revolution. This means the beginning of the end. Here, the economy will crash and burn, the people will start to take action into their own hands, and begin leading movements against the current regime. The old regime is overthrown, and the new one, ruled by moderates, will emerge. This is normally short lived though, because the radical people begin to take control of the country, which can even lead to wars. This is called the reign of terror. It is called this because the radicals normally rule thought force and fear. As the reign of terror burns to the end of its wick, the moderates once again attain control, and the rough and bumpy road to recovery begins. As this happens, nationalism arises, and for a short while, the people are hotheaded and may start wars to prove that they are the most powerful country. Soon after though, the revolution ends very close to where it began, only changing the society enough to realize that something had happened.

Anyway, enough about the theory of revolution, and onto the reflection. In this project we learned a lot about video skills and the ability to tell a story through film. In my opinion, this was one of the hardest projects we have been given yet. And I think that even though our group didn’t do perfect, this was our FAIL (First Attempt In Learning), and I think that opportunity makes way for even more learning. In the duration of this project we made a lot of mistakes and a lot of corrections, but to make it that much better the second time, you need to realize what really went wrong the first time. For example, in my groups video, the audio’s volume seems to fluctuate which is an issue regarding not watching it back enough ourselves, this could simply be solved by posing as a viewer and watching it back to see what keep you engaged and what puts you off. Another issue we faced was with the pace of the video, we didn’t think about it much until the final product, but our video was just too slow paced and not super interested to someone who for example, just clicked on the video because it looked interesting.

(Yes I know the beginning is a little funky)

Now onto assessing the competencies.

Creative Communicator: This competency is based on your ability to communicate your thoughts and messages through a creative means. I think that in our final product, we showed this competency by using a variety of tools to create the video that had our full message.

Establishing Historical Significance: This competency is about, well, establishing historical significance. This competency was showed in our project when we made our video. During this time, we had to decide what to include and what not to. To create an educating video we had to choose the most important events relevant to what we were trying to say with our message.

Analyze Cause and Consequence: Here, we take a look at the domino effect of sorts. I call it this because the cause of something creates the consequence which might subsequently become the cause for another event and so on and so forth. I think that I showed this in an individual assignment called “an outstanding paragraph” this is because we analyzed the causes and consequences of actions and problems during the French Revolution.

Designing Texts: This competency assesses how you planned and executed your video while considering the purpose, audience, and the message of the film. I think that we definitely could have improved on this in many ways, but the main one being the audience. While making the film we didn’t consider how much the audience would want to keep watching.

Discussing, Listening, and Speaking: This competency looks at how you shared your opinion in a respectful and constructive way within your group. At the beginning of our project, my group members kept coming up with a bunch of ideas that could never realistically be demonstrated with the time and materials that we had. I recognized it and did my best to get the group to think of the “how” side of things when pitching an idea. I think this demonstrates this competency because of the constructive manner that I showed when putting my group back on track.

Thanks so much for reading this far and I hope you’ll stick around for the next project!

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An average post about a weird exhibition

So far, 2020 has been a train wreck. And we need to keep on moving despite that, and this was one of things that came from that.

Spring Exhibition 2020

This exhibition was different, there’s no question there. And for a while, there was no ideas for how to make the exhibition happen. Then, we started using Zoom for online classes and began learning all the great features it has. Anyway, onto the explanation of my groups project/s

When we were told that the exhibition would be held on zoom, we were all confused. But we didn’t have to worry too much, because our amazing teachers were there for us! They had a plan set up and if we got stuck on something they gave us some ideas to kick start our brains.

Anyway we were given a choice of the 14 UN’s sustainability goals. Although my group was focused on water (goals 6 and 14) my project was more about goal 12. Goal 12 was about responsible consumption.

My project idea was a more sustainable shower head to reduce water waste. My product was designed for most people around the world who I’ve in areas with accessible fresh water who want to be more sustainable with no extra effort on their part. Just put on the shower head and your saving water!

Here’s a rough idea of what the product would look like.

Our preparations for the exhibition were all over the place. We were struggling at the beginning for inspiration then we thought of some small ideas for the presentation of our projects and they just kept rolling out. We decided on having a short quiz in which we would ask questions regarding the specific problems we were addressing with our products. But before that, we needed an introduction, and what better way to start off a presentation about water than swimming onto camera! We had an intro to the problems with the sustainability goals our group worked on and an outro saying some things you can do to help the issues yourself.

 

I hope that you reading this will take steps in the future or already are taking steps to prevent ocean pollution, water waste, and sanitization issues around the world. Until next year!

Keenan