Let’s give some out of control children some lasers and see how that goes

Hello and welcome or welcome back to my blog!

Today I am going to be talking about our most recent Scimatics project: Laser Laws!

For this project, we were asked to build a laser display that had a right triangle in it. We learned about how light works, different types of light, how to use the Pythagorean theorem and so much more. 

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mPOL 2021/2022 semester 1

Hello and welcome or welcome back to my blog!

Todays post is going to be for my mPOL. mPOL stands for mid year presentation of learning. You basically present your learning to a teacher and your parents. This post will be me going through and reflecting on my learning. I am going to be covering maker, scimatics and humanities. I will tell you what I think I did well at, and what I didn’t do well at. 

“You don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey

Before we start our presentation, we must take the POL declaration. 

“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.”

This semester, there were some things that I was good at, and some things that I definitely could have done better. Here are some examples from each subject.

HUMANITIES

Humanities. A mix of both social studies and English. This semester, we had to do 3 different projects. They were: Medium is the Message, The outsiders, and Working with Words. Medium is the Message was our first project. We were taught about advertising techniques, how advertisements are created and more. We even had to make an advertisement for a real business in our community! This project was fun but also a little stressful. This was because the stress of having to send our final advertisment to the owner of the business was looming over our heads while we tried to finish our group ad. I think we could have worked on our teamwork skills a little bit better, but table 3 mafia still stands to be one of the best groups that I have worked with! If you want to lean more about this project, click here. 

This was my personal add that I made for the business.

The outsiders was our second project. I liked this one a bit more, because I had sort of gotten used to PLP. We had to read the book The Outsiders, and create things like a tableaux, a movie poster, and a movie trailer for the outsiders in 2021! This project was a little bit easier for me, because a lot of this project was done in a group with people that I was used to, and so we would just laugh and joke around, and it was never really that aquard. I wasnt ever really stressed during this project, because we had a lot of time to get things done. The only stressful part was probably when we had to present our tableaux at the winter exhibition. This was stressful because we had to set up all of our stuff in 3 hours. We had to make an American flag last minute, remember scripts, and so much more. Although it was stressful, it thought me how to stay calm under pressure, and I wouldn’t take back that experience. This project helped me with my communication skills, because I had to talk to an audience before we presented our tableaux. It also taught me what the exhibitions are like, and how to make rescissions on the fly. If you would like to hear more about this project, click here.

here is my group and I after the exhibition.

Working with words was the most recent humanities project. I really struggled with this project. I didn’t finish some of my poems on time, and I am still struggling with finishing my poetry book. This project was also fun though. We got to play around with different types of poems, and we also got a new group to work with every class. This meant that we got to talk with different people every single time. On the last day of the project, we got into groups and randomly selected the type of poem that our group had to make. We had 20 minutes. Then we combined with another group, and then created one big great poem. We presented those poems and some self portrait poems that some people volunteered to read. 

Throughout the semester, I think my ability to turn in my work in on time went from ok to good, then to me still struggling now to turn things in.

SCIMATICS

Scimatics is a mix of science and math. This semester, we had to complete three projects. They were: Fractions of your time, Tectonic Chances and Laser Laws. Fractions of your time was the first project. This was when we were still getting the hang of being in PLP, and using our iPads. This project was fairly easy, with not a lot of stressful parts. We were asked to create a numbers document that had multiple columns. In those columns, we had different activities listed, and the days if the week. The activities had things like: ipad time for school, youtube, swimming, tiktok and more. We were also asked to create pie charts that compared one activity to another.  This project was a good introduction to scimatics for me, because we did some math, but then we also learned how to use notability, numbers, and this also helped with learning how to navigate basecamp and Showbie. If you would like to learn more about this project, click here.

The second project was tectonic chances. We had to create a board game that involved probability. Before this project, I didn’t realize that probability is literally everywhere. Rolling a dice? Probability. Pulling a card from a deck of cards? Probability. Spinning a spinner? Probability. It is literally everywhere! We also had to do a lot of work in the textbook to learn about plate tectonics and how they are formed, how they move and more. This part was a little bit of a struggle for me because I am not a fan of the building knowledge section of the project, because I don’t like just doing workbooks, I like creating things. Since I didnt have much motivation to finish the workbooks, I handed them in late but at least I got the work done. I was very on task most of the time during this project because my partner Sydney and I tried to get it done quickly while still making our project look good. If you would like to read more about this project, click here.

here is my finished board game.

The last project of the semester was Laser Laws. This was probably the project that I did the worst in. At the start, when we were doing the science part of the building knowledge, I didn’t do the first package, then did most of the other ones. Then, when we got to the math building knowledge, I did about half of what I was supposed to do in total. The main part of the project was building the laser display. At the start, when we were making the shape, some group members were not doing work, and only 3 people ended up doing all of the calculations. When we got to building the actual laser display, more people pitched in and helped. This part was the most fun, because we were creating things, and our project was the only with a roof on it. I think that it looked really cool. I think that I should try to complete all of my scimatics work on time, and contribute more to the project. If you want to learn more about this project, click here. 

Here is a photo of the finished laser display.

MAKER

For this semester, we did 3 projects. They were: Becoming a PLP Learner, constructing creative communication, and the geek out blogging challenge. Becoming a PLP learner was a project all about us. We learned to use a ton of apps on our iPads, along with making various things like a memoji with a laptop that had stickers, a user manual, and a physical representation of how we worked in a team. We also did a thing called the BLJ or big life journal. The user manual was written in 3rd person, and it included information about us. How to contact us, What we do outside of school, and what to do for specific situations. The physical representation had to be made out of specific things from a specific bucket. We also had a limit. Example – one index card, one plastic bag, 3 pipe cleaners, 10cm of tape. Mine was a campfire. During this project, I turned in my work on time most of the time, but sometimes I would forget. If you want to learn more about this project, click here.

Here is my finished laptop memoji.

My final laptop memoji.

Constructing creative communication was our second project. We were split into two groups, Carr and Herzog, and did 5 classes with that group (I was in Carr). Then the Carr group switched with the Herzog group, and Herzog became Carr. Carr was the drawing group. We learned a lot of different techniques, and even met graphic designer Chloe Divine. While with Carr, I found that I got homework for Carr done fairly easily, because I really like drawing, even if I am terrible at it. I find that it is something that I can do to distract me when I am really bored. Herzog was the photography group. We learned a ton of different techniques to take awesome photos. We also learned how to use the app Snapseed to edit our photos. I found that it was more difficult to get homework done for the Herzog group. I still don’t fully know why, but it might be that I didn’t like photography as much, or I just wasn’t very motivated. One thing that this project did teach me was all of the different Things that you can do with your Apple Pencil and your camera. This project also taught me how to use multiple different apps, and unlock some new skills. If you would like to learn more about this project, click here.

Here is my favourite photo that I took from the Herzog group.

Geek out blog challenge and Destination Imagination were the last project that we did for maker in the 2021/22 school year. We were asked to write four blog posts on a topic of our choice. This was supposed to be something that we were passionate about, and for me the that topic was crochet. This was a fairly easy for me because I was writing about something that I loved. You may be wondering what Destination Imagination or DI is. It is a competition where groups of up to seven people come up with a challenge solution. While working on our geek out challenge, we were also brainstorming ideas for our challenge solution. I can’t say much, but we really needed to be more productive during the time we were given to plan for DI, because we don’t have much more class time to work on it, and we still have to do so, so much more. I think that this should be a wake up call to my group, because we need to work on better communication skills, and we really need to plan more meetings, even if not all members are present. 

Throughout this semester, one thing that became clear to me was that I really need to work on my focus skills, and I need to work on motivating myself to get things done on time. I think that having a schedule would be helpful for this. I also think that I need to work on communicating my ideas to my group members, and I think that my whole group needs to work on communication more with each other, so we can get things done efficiently and effectively. 

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading, and I will see you in the next post!

Byeee

-Keira

Crochet Q+A

Hello and welcome or welcome back to my blog!
Today I am going to be answering some commonly asked questions I get about crochet. Some of these are questions that my friends have asked me, and some are questions that I think people might have.

How did you start crocheting?

I started crocheting by watching a two hour youtube video. This was the only video that I watched, and although it taught me quite a few techniques, I think that I should have also found a video that thought me how to do some other basic stitches.

How long does it take you to make things?

This depends on what you are crocheting and how big or small it is. The quickest thing I have made that actually looked good was around 20 minutes. Other projects can take an hour, a day, a week, or a month. Once again, it all depends on what you are crocheting and the size.

Can you bring your crochet hook on an airplane?

Believe it or not, you actually can! I tested this when I went to Edmonton over winter break. Whenever I go through airport security, something always happens, from the random check to accidentally putting a bottle of conditioner in my carry on. I was nervous that they wouldn’t let me through with it (the crochet hook), so I put it in my toiletries bag so that they could see it.

What do you need to start crocheting?

All you need is a ball of yarn or wool, a crochet hook, scissors, and something to teach you, weather it is a person or a youtube video. To make sure your crochet hook it the right size, check the ball of wool or yarn, and there should be a little image with a crochet hook, and a number. On the packaging of crochet hooks, it says the size.

That’s all for now!
Thanks for reading!
bye!

 

 

 

Crochet Bees and Me Complaining.

Hello and welcome or welcome back.

Today I am going to be talking about crochet bees. You heard me right crochet bees. I will also be sharing why it can be EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO TAKE PHOTOS OF CROCHET THINGS!!!
aaaaaaaaaanyways, enjoy this post!

First off I am going to be talking about bees. these were the very first things that I made. They have improved so much that you can see a visible difference with each bee. they are fairly simple. Three different colours, two safety eyes, a yarn needle, a crochet hook, scissors, and around 30 minutes. That’s all. they are so simple to make, yet they are great gifts for people.

You can make this very simple project a little more complicated by switching up the colours. I personally like to experiment with different colour combinations and sizes. I have made bees that range from the size of a large amazon alexa to ones that can fit in your palm (yes I just compared crochet bees to an amazon Alexa. it was the only thing I could think of that was around the same size). There are soo many options for colours when it comes to yarn. the things you crochet dont have to match real life. A few examples that I can give you are:
-Blue and black stripes with white wings,
-All blue with black wings,
-Multi coloured (I used a multi coloured yarn) with black wings
-And I have made multiple Pansexual bees (pink, yellow and blue) for a few of my friends and I.

Now we get to the part where I complain about how hard it is to take photograps of crochet things. The problem is that I dont have a good spot to take pictues with a blank background, so most of the time, I have to put the bees on the floor and take photos like that. Anyways, enough of my complaining. Here are some crochet bees.

The first photo was of all the bees that I had made about a month ago, and the second was a pansexual bee.

 

that is all for now
thanks for reading!
bye.

 

The Best and Worst of Crocheting

Hello and welcome or welcome back to my blog.

today we have the second post in the geek out challenge. Today I am going to be talking about the top three best and worst things about crocheting. Please note that these are all based off of my own experience. More experienced crocheters may have different opinions.

The top three best things about crochet:

1. It is something that can keep you busy.

Crochet is one of those things that can keep you busy during long car rides, plane trips and more. (You can actually bring a crochet hook in your carry on) you can just simply focus on crocheting, but if I’m doing a longer project, I will watch YouTube or watch a movie. (A few good ones that I have seen are:

Encanto

Shang Chi and The Legend Of The Ten Rings

Captain Marvel

and Avengers Age Of Ultron.

2. You can make all sorts of things.

from clothing to animals, the possibilities are endless (Well you do have some limitations). I have made things like hats, blankets, bees and more.

3. You cam make things for yourself, other people, or even sell things.

crochet things make great gifts. You cam make someone something based on their preferred colours to make it more personalized, make their favourite animal, or even a new hat. You can also sell things. I sell the bees that I make for around $10 to my mom’s friends, and make some profit from it.

The top three worst things about crocheting:

1. Your fingers get tired easily.

When you are crocheting for long periods of time without taking regular breaks, your fingers get tired really easily. You need to take regular breaks to massage your fingers. Get some food or water. Use the washroom. These can all be excuses to get a break. It doesn’t matter if it takes you a while. Everybody moves at their own pace.

2. Loosing things.

From Yarn Needles to your initial crochet hook, unless you are really neat and organized, you are going to loose your crochet supplies from time to time. When you do, it can be really frustrating, just leave it for a bit, and then you will find it when you least expect it.

3. Prices

Some supplies can be really expensive. Depending on the yarn or wool, it can cost you $3-15 per ball of yarn or wool. Also when you loose things or something wears down. Then you have to buy new things, and they can be very expensive/

The Outsiders, worldview, tableaus and that exhibition.


Outsiders summative learning post.

Hello and welcome back. Today we have another reflection, this time for Humanities! This project was more high stakes because at The end, we were going to present our finished project at the winter exhibition. During this project we did many things including: reading the book “The Outsiders” by S.E Hinton, playing many acting games, learning about worldview, making movie posters, and creating and presenting our tableau. You may have many questions like “how does The Outsiders tie into this all?” Or what is a tableau? Well, you will find out.

On the very first class that we had, we learned what a tableau was, were introduced to worldview, and we started reading the outsiders. A tableau is a still image or pose that represents a scene. It is like people were acting out a scene but time suddenly freezes. The definition of a worldview from google is:

We had to make a mindnote of our worldview. Worldviews include 7 different aspects. Society, time, beliefs, geography, values, economy and knowledge. 

Here is my finished worldview MindNode. You dont have to read it, but i am going to put it here anyways. I had trouble with some of the sections, as you can see. They are obviously the ones where there are few words.

Throughout the first few weeks we read the book the outsiders. I must say, at the start, I didnt like this book, and thought that it would just be another boring book that we had to read for school, but this book was so great! In class Mr. C would read us a chapter of the book, then we had to read a chapter on our own time. Then the next classWe would come up with discussion questions, and then we had discussions with out groups. We also worked on a character deck and our plot diagram. Then we got more into the tableaus and acting. We started plotting out our tableau’s, deciding who was going to be who, and what costumes we needed (i am so =unorganized that I didn’t have my costume for The dress rehearsal). We also made movie posters on our own, then we made a final movie poster for the outsiders starring us. We also made movie trailers for the outsiders in 2021. We had to make a different plot, different locations and more. Here it is. PC=GOD presents The Outsiders, a war between consoles. 

IMG_1841

Our movie poster had an interesting process to making it. We went down to a local park and took our photo on the fence of a dog park. It took many tries. Then we had to edit it on our own so that our group had different options, but only 3 people really tried to make a good movie poster. I will admit to being one of the ones who did not try their hardest. Here is our movie poster, along with the photo if us on the fence that we edited into the final poster, nad a funny attempt at getting the photo in which Callum looks hilarious (sorry callum)

After the span of this project we had to present our final tableaus at the PLP winter exhibition. This is an exhibition for all of PLP to present our learning to the parents. That night, we musta have preformed our tableau more than 20 times. We had to say and preform the same thing all night. We did get to have pizza though :). 

Here is a collection of photos from the exhibition night.

I would like to thank the following people:

Mr. C

Ms. Maxwell

Daniel

Callum

Mackenzie

Susan

Thank you to my teachers for making these first few months in high school fun and exciting. 

And thank you to my group members. This whole tableau wouldn’t have been possible without you guys. You guys make me laugh a ton, and were very fun to work with these past few weeks.

That’s all I have for now.

Thanks for reading!

Bye:)

Let’s unleash some children into the world to take photos, and let some children use sharp drawing tools

Hello and welcome back.

For today we have another maker post! Recently we have been doing a two part Mini project type thing. We were split into two groups, Carr and Hertzog, (i will explain those later) and did 5 classes, then we have to switch groups. (Carr becomes Hertzog, and Hertzog becomes Carr). During these few classes with Carr I have really learned a lot about sketching and drawing!

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Tectonic chances

Hello there.

This is my first post for scimatics, so we will see how this goes.

For this project, we had to make a board game about plate tectonics, that uses probability to determine outcomes. For the element of probability, we had to include something like pulling a card, rolling a dice, spinning a spinner etc. Our driving question was « how are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? » Throughout this project I have really learned quite a bit on the creation of board games, and about how mathematical and thematic events are used in game design. I never really thought about the creation of board games, just played them, but now I know what goes into making a good board game.

One of the first things we did was create a mind note about plate tectonics. At the start, we didnt know what they were, what the heck they did, and what they had to do with earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and mountains. As this project went on, we learned more and more, and kept building knowledge. After we had completed our board games, we went back, and answered our questions. The first questions are the ones we asked at the start of the project. The answer are the second or third branch.

Core competencies

Evaluating: demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence. For this competency I was extending. I had 10 key science concepts, and the explanations of why they were there. Our game pieces also represented tectonic concepts because our cards had questions and things that relate to tectonic plates, our game board had visual zones representing earthquakes volcanos and tsunamis, and our game pieces also had things like the earth, waves, a map, and a volcano. 

Questioning and predicting: demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest

In this competency I was accomplished. I think that I could have been extending, but at times, I was a bit distracted, and wasn’t getting work done. I think that if I had used the focus modes on my ipad more, it would have stopped the messages from popping up, and I would have gotten less distracted. I think that I also showed quite a large interest with this topic, because I find it very interesting.

Understanding and solving: Dovelop, demonstrate and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving. 

For this competency, I was extending. I think that I did a good job of adding an element of probability into my game. When I say element of probability, I mean pulling a card, spinning a spinner, rolling a dice etc. In our game, I added an element of probability by making players pull a card for the chance, natural disaster, special and trivia cards. I also made it so that the players had to roll a die. I also added the probability of landing on certain spaces, and pulling different cards

This is our final game rules, and photos of our game and peices.

although thorough out this post I only referred to myself, I would like to give a huge that you to my partner Sydney. She did a ton on this project, bringing good ideas to the table, and thinking of creative solutions. Click here to check out her blog!

once again a big thank you to Sydney.

thanks for reading 🙂

-keira