Category: Humanities 🗺

Was the Haitian Revolution effective or ineffective..? Well that’s what I’m here to find out. This project was all about revolutions, more specifically the Haitian, French, Russian, and American revolutions. The original end result of this project was supposed to be a live court trial with two opposing sides arguing about one of the revolutions mentioned above, but it did not end like that…

Let’s start from the beginning of the project; the first thing we did was learn more about how revolutions are structured. We had experienced our own revolution in Nation X, but there are many ways a revolution can be triggered, for example, by an economic crisis, weak or incompetent rulers, government corruption, the sense of being wronged and more.

In class we talked about the Crane Briton theory, and this theory compares revolutions with disease or sickness, like a fever, in that a revolution starts with an ‘incubation’ stage which is when symptoms start to show. And then like a fever, it gets progressively worse (moderate/crisis stage) until your body wins the fight and it goes back down (recovery stage). Also, many can agree nobody wants a fever to start with. To demonstrate our understanding we were asked to create our own representation of Crane Briton’s theory.

Then we got to the point when each person officially picked their revolution to represent in court. If you couldn’t tell by the opening sentence I was chosen to do the Haitian revolution. This is a bit of a sensitive revolution because it is about enslaved people. Keira, Daniel, Sofia, Gwen and Blondie were also picked alongside me. Mr. Harris kindly left links to primary source documents full of information about the Haitian Revolution. Then we put what we thought was the most important information into the graphic organizer. I am proud of mine but I still think I could have made the information on it a bit more detailed and had stronger points. But I did my best with what I could understand.

After that we got to know if we were going to fight for whether the revolution was ineffective or effective for the mock court trial. My group was assigned to fight for the ineffective point of view. Together we gathered evidence that we collected in our affidavit. We had to craft arguments that showed why the Haitian Revolution didn’t improve the circumstances for the people of Haiti 🇭🇹. To be honest I feel like I could have helped gather more information and tried to dive deeper into the research. Whenever I looked for information it had already been used and that made me feel discouraged and at a loss of what to do. Upon reflection, I agree with my friend Gwen, in that I think some of our arguments were just repeated in different ways.

At this point in the project things started changing. Recently, we had a substitute because Mr. Harris went on a short break to take care of his wife and newborn baby. The substitute was fine at directing the class but many things were happening. The exhibition for Avatar was soon, and we wanted to have a live mock court trial with an audience for this project which would require a lot of set up. Since everything was happening so soon, we had a lot of work to do, which was even harder without our real teacher. So, as a class we had to adapt, and with the help of Mrs. Maxwell, we decided we would create a video of us presenting our evidence about why the revolution was effective or non-effective. Our inspiration was the TV show, Court Cam, and you can check out the video we watched here: https://youtu.be/IkMAZYkwwtI.

After the affidavit was finished, we started creating the script for our video. When that was done we went to the vortex to film our video. It only took a few takes and we were done faster than I thought. I got the lucky role of being the editor of the video since I didn’t want actually be in it. In the end this was our mock court trial video: https://youtu.be/xrQrhkiJDPc

Originally, we had two pieces of evidence and a witness for our evidence that we presented at court; however, our witness’s argument could potentially sound like it was promoting slavery which is not what we wanted and slavery is something that should never be promoted. So we immediately did some edits. When I was quickly trying to edit using  Capcut, it was being very glitchy, so it was very hard to cut some parts out and add text. As I watch the video now I can see so many flaws (eg. the subtitles didn’t get added in and the start of the witness being called to stand did not get cropped out). I know they are not too noticeable, but I feel as if I let my team down because I was the editor. Note to self: double-check your work every-time. 

The driving question for this project was “How did revolutions bring down empires and change societies around the world?” Simply put, revolutions surface in the face of a crisis. They involve organized movements that may involve aggressive actions to gain and overthrow the government. The point of revolting is to create change when it feels like the government is being unfair. Britannica states that “Revolutions can sweep away the old order. Unlike coups and rebellions, revolutions can cause radical changes in the institutions of government and bring about basic changes in society as a whole.” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/collective-violence/Coups-rebellions-and-revolutions) When people have a sense of being wronged and feel like their needs aren’t being met they want a change in the government. Revolutions can start as a result of a change in people’s beliefs and values, or they can end with a change of values and beliefs. Suffice it to say, we wouldn’t be where we are today without revolutions.

“As the dust settled slowly the bodies came into view… all marked with bright pink sticky notes saying death.”

09/24/1786

Hello, I am Kira, A peasant at the bottom of Nation X, at least for now I am. My fellow peasants and I have been forced to write 100 words of how our life is going with the pencils we sharpened. There is trash everywhere and we have to pick it up as for we are the trash collectors cleaning up the garbage wealthier groups have left.  

Our nation has 4 groups, group A, group B, group C and group D. Group A is where I am, we are the peasants who slave away. Group B own the store that sells the food and goods. Group C is the law enforcement that runs the jail. Finally we have group D the kings and queen they rule over us all and decide what happens to us all. 

I am quite new to this society I’m not really sure what’s going on.. but we have got the news for today.

I’m not aloud to talk to groups C and D without them acknowledging us first I also can’t even walk in their territory. This makes me scared to talk to anyone as for I don’t want to go to jail. The day is almost over but I want to buy something from the store. There is lemonade and various goods like Smarties and other things. Yet I don’t think I’m going to able to I only have a dollar as my pay. 

It is almost curfew I must go, I am not sure I will sleep though as for I have heard freedom will come. Good bye diary. 

09/25/1786

My group has told me to not go along with our tasks which I find is a bit dangerous. We are rebelling against our king and the law I wonder what will happen. I do like not having to write 100 words about my life and having to pick up germy trash. 

We got the paper for the day again and I’m a bit shocked. Nation x is out of cash because groups C and D have been ruthless and haven’t thought of all the cash they are spending. Group A and B now have to pay 1$ for tax now.. and all I get as my pay is 1$! Somehow I was stolen from yesterday so I am still very very poor. 

I’m going to attach the news paper again so you can read more.

Not much is going on today no one is really caring that we haven’t done our tasks. My friend blondie said she heard that group C and D wanted to meet with us and wonder what for..

I’m getting a bit sleepy I will update you, diary, about what tomorrow brings. 

09/26/1786 

Today was very chaotic, I am not feeling my best.. this world is coming down on me. Blondie, Keira and I sent a note to group D asking if we could have the right to walk around freely. Thankfully they thought about it and now we are allowed to walk around nation x wherever we want!

Even though The king agreed to let us wander anywhere we want he is really getting on my nerves. In the papers there is always a paragraph about how amazing he is (he’s such a ninnyhammer). Speaking of the papers here is todays:

Everything is becoming more pricey, luckily we have been given 2 dollars a day instead of one. I know it doesn’t sound like much but it makes me feel better having a bit more money in my pocket. (Not that I can buy anything though the food prices keep being raised!). I am worried about what the stores going to end up having. 

Also, we are still not doing our task and not many people have noticed which is a bit funky to me.

One of my fellow citizens tried to over run the jail by stealing the sign and making it just a lonely building. He succeed for a few minutes till he was caught.. then put to jail. The jail doesn’t do much because group C always forgets to keep an eye on it so people just escape. I’ve never been put in jail and I don’t plan to be. 

Oh my I forgot to say the most important thing I heard all day.. I was going on a little walk around the store and I heard:  “the sewer system is busted and waste has started to pile up. Some members of our community have begun to get sick.” I am very nervous for tomorrow I don’t know how much longer I will last. Goodbye diary see you tomorrow. 

09/27/1786

I can’t bear this any longer, this is my last diary entry before I pick my fate. I have been sold to group B, the only difference from my old group is that I don’t have to sit on the ground anymore.  I don’t do anything here in group B the store has ran out of goods and the only things that are being sold are the weapons group D holds within their territory.  

I keep hearing whispers among the different groups. Everyone is going to circle around group D and attack. I am worried this isn’t going to end well. Throughout the whispers I also hear that Group D has the cure to the disease that has been spreading like crazy. Oh yea.. I had the disease and was but into isolation. Luckily the queen gave me the cure and I am now healthy. 

In the news article I read that Nation Y is making moves towards us. I am not sure what that means but that will not effect me for much longer. Dear diary, today I am going to end my life. My companion Keira and I are going in seek of a weapon to un-alive ourselves, wish us luck. Oh and if you want here is the last news article I will read well I’m still here.

We did it! Keira and I asked the jail guard to stab us and after a little convincing they obliged. It feels strange to be dead but now I don’t have to worry about my responsibilities in the society; not that I did them though. 

Things are getting heated, I think everyone is going to swarm group D soon. The king and queen have left leaving only one member of group D left to fend for themselves. I am writing this as it happens before my eyes. They are surging forwards now.. it is very graphic. I think someone bonked a persons shoulder.. how violent. 

As the dust settled slowly the bodies came into view… all marked with bright pink sticky notes saying  death. Im glad I died instead of being trampled on in that fight;  Nation X has fallen apart it is now Nation Y. My eye caught a glimpse of this paper its a bit blood stained and it is the last news that the king sent out. Even with the disease killing people the king still talks about how great he is, oh well.

 Almost everyone has died and I think I want to explore the world as a ghost now. I also want some lemonade because I never got any before I died. Goodbye for real diary and thank you for being here I hope one day someone will read you and hear about my life in Nation X. 

✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

Wow that was kind of difficult to write but also very fun. I forgot a little bit of how the days went so it took me a while to remember. What you just ready was the diary of my life in a simulation we had for humanities! This was just the start of our project so stay tuned for my next blog post for humanities. (Spoiler its about revolutions). 

I wasn’t able to take many photos but here are some! 

Thank you for reading bye bye ❤️

Hellooooo, and welcome to my blog post! Second one for the year, and first for Humanities!

About 5 weeks ago, half of the grade 9s went on a trip to Alberta! (the other half went at a different time). We went to many different places like the Sundre Museum, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Cave and Basin, The Last Spike and more! It was a great adventure and I enjoyed it all (the food was yummy too). 

Even though the trip was super fun and a great experience it was still school, so of course we had to have an end project. Throughout the trip we gathered information to answer the driving question: How has the geography of the West shaped who we are? All the information and knowledge we received went into the multi touch e-book we had to create!

We also learned about the 5 themes of geography which are movement, human environment interaction, regions, place, and location. We had to create a comic on Comic Life 3 to show the definition of these 5 themes.

(I go more into depth in the book so stay tuned)

Circling back to the driving question, we were put into groups based on what we thought shaped the west the most. So, in class we brainstormed 3 things that make up the West. The ideas were history, diversity, and economy. Then, we each had to pick a concept that we thought we could best answer the driving question with. I thought the best concept was economy and my reflections would be the strongest if I talked about the economy of the West in them.

All the people who chose economy were put into a group to compose an overall answer to the driving question. The final answer we came up with, as a group, was:

The geography of the West has shaped us by allowing us to have a thriving economy with multiple industries that have helped us settle and develop. 

For those wanting more detail about the places we explored and to understand the interrelationship between geography and economy. I think it is time to show my book…. drumrolllll 

🥁

🥁

🥁

Tada! I think my favourite page is probably the page showing Susan, Blondie and myself wearing our hard hats that we got from the Sundre Museum as a souvenir. Those hats looked so funky and I loved that they were handmade by the older gentleman who owned the museum. They were also a reasonable price at just $5.00! (I bet I helped the economy with those 5$).

The page I think that demonstrates my strongest reflection, is probably the Last Spike page because I was most confident with my personal connection. It made me call up my grandfather and ask him questions about his experience coming to Canada as an immigrant. I learned some surprising things, like my grandmother worked in a manufacturing company when she first arrived! My curiosity was definitely peaked with this page.

The page I found the most challenging was the Sundre museum and the Pioneer Village because I don’t really remember much about so writing about it hurt my brain. I realized after the fact I didn’t take good notes, and only had a few photos. As a result, I left this page for the absolute last and to help my understanding I had to spend the most time, out of all pages, researching on this place. There may or may not have been a few tears in the process. I also greatly struggled with the personal connection; however, I was happy when I suddenly had a picture of Cougar Annie in my head. Re-reading about her helped deepen my understanding of the Pioneer days and I really like that she is a strong independent woman!

Then, after hopefully all of us completed the book we had a mini exhibition on Wednesday to show them to our parents! We had 3 different rooms for the 3 different concept and to refresh your memory they were: economy, diversity and history. If you didn’t guess it yet we were put into the room with the rest of the people who chose economy. We themed the room to be about money and we all dressed in business attire (Daniel even printed out business cards).

Here are some photos of the room!  

I think Gwen and I did a good job presenting and we looked pretty spiffy if I do say so myself.

It wasn’t just the books we were showing at the exhibition, we also had to create a video that would play on loop well the people walked around the rooms looking at our books. Again, they were based on the 3 topics but there was also an intro video and 2 fun videos! I got the luck of creating the fun video 2 with Jupiter, Keaton, Evangline, Kadin, Makai, and Magnus. We decided to make ours about the goofy things PLP 9 did on the trip.

Everyone had separate roles when we had to create the video, and Evangline and I had the highly important role of being the final editors! We were the ones who put all the photos and videos together and edit them all to become one amazing video. We had a lot of fun and everyone seemed to like it. Here is the final video Fun group 2 created!

In the end I always am going to reflect and I am going to focusing on the competency of.. questioning!

Questioning: I can share ideas, ask questions, and research information from a variety of sources. 

During the trip I tried to ask questions to the tour guides and experts, and if I could do it again I would have asked more. Again, my Sundre experience cemented this I only asked one question, which didn’t give me much! What I am proud of is the extra research that I did because I feel like I was able to understand more of the places and make my answers stronger. Thanks to my mom I am feeling more confident that I can reach the goal I put in my learning plan, which was: 

“I would like to work on my stamina and perseverance when researching for resources. I tend to give up on researching if it doesn’t give me an immediate answer. So I will try to dig deeper into websites and not just skim through.”

I am still struggling because I get overwhelmed with a bunch of different sources that are all telling me good information. So I need to find a way to organize the info I get so it does not just swirl in my head and keep me stalled for hours upon time.

For some places, I did not really know how I could personally connect to the place. For example, the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump took me a little bit to think of how I could connect to it personally. Thankfully, we have awesome and encouraging teachers, I asked the teacher and was told I could write how I felt when I was there! I talked a lot with my peers and we all showed each other our ideas and talked about how we could bring in different aspects of a place. Also, we sent each other pictures of the views, trips and experiences on the trip when someone didn’t have them. I appreciate not only my teachers but my peer community. Lots of good conversation and learning can happen with just us sharing our stories.

Thank you for reading! I hope you learned something about the West<3

New Beginnings (that’s the name of our project) was all about discovering New France. The point of this project was to understand the importance of the past and make connections too it; the driving question was “What did the establishment of New France mean for all the people involved?”. 

This projects end result was originally going to be an ad for a certain accept of New France. So we started off creating an ad for our school. We looked back on our skills we learned during the Medium is the message project. 

Soon after that we watched a video about New France and the fur trade. We had to take notes during the duration of watching the video! When taking notes we had the choice to use the note taking template or do it on a separate document. I chose to do mine both ways:

Since our final product was going to be a visual we had to have an image go out into the forest near school and take photos. We used our photography skills we learned at the start of the year. For example, birds eye, bugs eye, and having foreground, background and mid ground. 

My favourite photos I took on the walk where:

After we grew our knowledge on the topic we moved on to picking a part of New France to focus on. As you know we were going to create an ad for New France for our end wrap up of learning. But that got changed, we ended up having to create 2 visuals about a singular topic of New France. We had a variety of topics to chose from like;

• The fur trade & the economy
• Indigenous alliances
• Filles du roi
• The construction of New France
• Cour de bois
• Surviving New France
• Missionaries & the role of the Church
• Seigneuries & land ownership

I ended up choosing the Missionaries and the roll of the church. I knew I could have had a easier time choosing something like “Filles du roi” but I decided to challenge myself. 

To ease our way into our chosen topic we did some researching. When researching about our topic it also strengthened our note taking and researching by abilities. 

As you know we now had our topic, so using our knowledge we collected about our topic and we had images of the forest we made our first draft of our New France visual.

I created my visual on keynote! I was super duper rushed when creating the first draft and it look very bad. I can’t say anything good about it really:

The next class I got help from my peers and just updated it myself to make it better. Again, I did it on keynote (that you Blondie and Charlie R for the tagline) :

It’s still not perfect, but it is wayyyyyyy better then my first one 😭.

We had a fun activity which was doing a fur trade simulation. We separated our class into two separate rooms with 4 different groups in each room. Each group represented a trading company or group of aboriginal people. I don’t fully remember but I think I was a member of the North West Company (they where the ones trading to get the furs). The other people in my group where Daniel, Naomi, And Callum. 

We were instructed to go over or for other groups to come over to our “posts” to trade. We set prices for our goods like shoes, weapons, resources, and food like things. The NWC and HBC would trade their goods for the beaver pelts. My group struggled trading with Ruby, we had a battle about shoes. Near the end we ended up selling everything for like 5 beaver pelts. We obviously did amazing and definitely didn’t give up. Overall it was a fun experience and I enjoyed learning that way. We had to write what we thought trade was like between aboriginal people and the NWC and HBC based of the knowledge we had and the knowledge we just acquired.

At this time we were nearing the end of the project, so I had created more drafts for visuals, but this time it was two visuals, not one. The reason we had to create two images was to show the different aspects of our chosen topic. For the missionaries I showed the missionaries spreading religion and then I showed the result of the missionaries being highly successful in spreading region.

We then put the two images into a platform called flourish! On flourish we were able to use a template where we can make an image hide behind another and then appear when we move the slider. I tested it out on my flower:

Then, I got even more feedback on my images from my friend Hannah/Blondie. This was too add colour, make the crosses wood, and Mr  Harris said to make my teepees different and sent me some images to base them off of!

I took charge with that feedback and ended up with these two final images:

Here is an explanation of my images and their symbols…

“Visual 1 is too show the missionaries trying to convert the aboriginal people. I tried to use the following symbols/things to represent that.

I had the missionaries silhouette to represent the missionaries who went to aboriginal people villages to teach them about religion. I had a cross to represent religion and Christianity that the Europeans revolved around. Lastly I had the aboriginal peoples tepees to represent them. They where the people the missionaries where trying to convert and teach their religion too. 

Visual 2 is showing the missionaries being successful in doing so, and how I showed that was by using similar symbols as the first. 

The materials and tools are there to show that they built churches in the aboriginal peoples villages. From the materials came the church that is showcased on the image to again show the churches built up in the villages in an attempt to spread religion that way. The orange people are to show the converted people holding crosses to represent they have been converted to religion. 

The two images are showing the start of trying to convert people and then being successful in spreading religion around.”

As you know we had to put them into flourish and here it is completed:

Im happy with my final result but the text is still a little bit off from where it is supposed to be to match up.

After learning about the establishment of New France I feel like I better understand all the different aspects of it. I think it depends on the person and your rank of power to see how New France treats you. For the aboriginal people, many of them died because of being exposed to diseases; and for the Europeans many of them fought for power and also died. Yet the trading between groups brought new resources to different places. Also, many people thrived off the money and power they got from selling beaver pelts, but the beavers slowly went extinct. New France has many pros and cons just like everything. 

Thanks for reading!

The latest project the Grade 8s had to do in Humanities was a project called, “The Renaissance: A Change Engine”. The driving question was, “What significant developments emerged from the past and how have they impacted us today?”. The final overall products for this unit were a triptych and a paragraph about historical events from the renaissance.

How we started off was by doing a renaissance role play, where the class was split in half, and there were 4 different roles we might be given. There were the serfs, knights, lords and then monarch. The simulation role-play was to show and help us learn about the roles and responsibilities of the different classes during the renaissance time period. 

My friend Hannah and I got the luck of becoming the “mighty” serfs who got bound to the land.  We sat on the ground which showed that we were the lowest class, while the lords and knights sat on chairs. Our role was to serve everyone above us and we demonstrated this when we had to give away 3 out of 4 of our food tokens to the lord that ruled over us. The challenges we experienced were that serfs from the land beside us stole from our lord which made him want to take all our food tokens.   

When doing this role-play I thought about what class system we have today in Canada. Nowadays, some would say we don’t have a class system and we are an “open society” where others say there is an implied hierarchy. Currently, there are around 4 classes: upper, middle, working, and lower. Sociologists describe our class system being based on social inequality, for example, wealth and resources are unequally distributed which leads to different layers in our system. The following excerpt from William Little’s open textbook, “Introduction to Sociology-1st Canadian Edition,” gives a better explanation:

“Sociologists use the term social inequality to describe the unequal distribution of valued resources, rewards, and positions in a society. Key to the concept is the notion of social differentiation. Social characteristics — differences, identities, and roles — are used to differentiate people and divide them into different categories, which have implications for social inequality. Social differentiation by itself does not necessarily imply a division of individuals into a hierarchy of rank, privilege, and power. However, when a social category like class, occupation, gender, or race puts people in a position in which they can claim a greater share of resources or services, then social differentiation becomes the basis of social inequality.” (https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology2ndedition/chapter/chapter-9-social-inequality-in-canada/)

Personally, even though I like the idea of it being ‘classless’ I wonder if it’s just natural for us to be split into different groups?

Our second assignment we did was the Iron Chef Protocol, where we were split into teams and then using a shared keynote we worked fast to create a presentation. The reason it was called Iron Chef Protocol was because just like in the TV show, Iron Chef there is a secret ingredient involved. For our task we had to find information to solve the secret “ingredient”. Each team member was given a topic to read up on, which were (1) the Italian city-states, (2) The Silk Road, (3) The Crusades and (4) The Black Death. We had to edit a slide that looked like this:

I was given the Italian city-states. Unfortunately, my slide got deleted and things got compromised so we didn’t present very well and I was unable to solve it at the time. My secret ingredient was to figure out which important figure from history was born in Genoa. I did some research later on, afterwards, and I believe the person was Christopher Columbus. He is known for his exploration of America.

Finally, we came to the point in the term where we got to go on our first outdoor trip and we hopped on over to Loon Lake! And while it was fun there was still more learning to be had. At Loon Lake we learned more about SuperimposeX to help us strengthen our layering and masking skills. I tried to mask my friend Gwen and I coming out from a tree over the lake:

Later on we learned more about blending and layering (at school this time), we had some choices between masking Beyoncé and a microphone and Cristiano Ronaldo and the World Cup. I chose to do Beyoncé but I used a ring instead because of her song “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”:

(I think it could use more blending)

Mid-way through our Renaissance unit, we dove deep into the historical significance of a particular invention, the printing press and we presented our learning using the NAME chart. The NAME acronym means: Novelty, Applicability, Memory, and Effect. 

The printing press came out around 1436 and was designed by Johannesburg Gutenberg (info here) and it is amazing how significant and important this invention or “printing evolution” has been on society. The ability to mass produce communication and share knowledge more globally lead to important advances in all fields such as the arts, education, and science. I won’t go into great detail here about the changes because I would be here forever. Society definitely wouldn’t be functioning like it is today, if it weren’t for the printing press. The advances since this invention have lead to our current ways to communicate such as newspapers, magazines, and especially the digital world like the internet has helped us connect even faster and more efficiently. Although it was interesting to learn about how these changes were not always liked by everyone. For example, some people in political powerful positions feared if citizens gained knowledge they could challenge their ideas and maybe cause backlash. For more information on it’s impacts on communication please go to this article: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-herkimer-westerncivilization/chapter/the-printing-revolution/

Fast forward a little bit into our exploration and understanding of historical significance of events and inventions from the European Renaissance and we soon learned that glasses, also lead to great change. When asked to write our first paragraph, we had to vouch for why we chose a certain invention. The inventions you could have chosen from were glasses, human anatomy, the heliocentric theory, and the measurement of time and I wrote mine about glasses. As you will read in my paragraph below, I think glasses are historically significant because they have gone way farther then just helping people see what’s right in front of them. Like the printing press, the invention of glasses allowed people from all fields get access to better understanding of the world. For example, on a basic level glasses helped people have better sight in order to see their surroundings. However, I would say that the advances in the technology of the lens afterwards is what really created change. For instance, telescopes allowed astronomers to understand our universe and in turn helped us explore and create maps.

We then got into our second round of NAME charts when we had to create 4 name charts about 4 different categories of the renaissance which were: individuals, the arts, inventions, and societal changes. The ones I chose were Galileo Galilea, The Primavera, The Printing Press, and Cartography + Global Exploration. 

(those where the things we could choose from)

First, I started with Galileo, who had the theory that all planets revolve around the sun. No one accepted his idea at first but eventually in around 1633 they did. It has helped shape our knowledge of space. Scientists have been able to get the basic of modern physics and astronomy with the help Galileo’s inventions and discoveries. Also, as I mentioned above the invention of glasses and in turn the telescope and other lenses helped with exploration. Galileo then went on to create his own telescope after he studied lenses and after he heard about danish perspective glass, which helped him create his telescope. 

Here are all my completed NAME charts, I’m not going to go into detail for all of them because that would take forever:

Now we started to get a groove into the final projects, the triptych and our final paragraph.  

A triptych has 3 different sections/panels, and when creating ours we were instructed to put the 4 things we did in our NAME charts in a specific panel. The art and a figure from the renaissance went into the left one, and the societal change and invention went into the right one. For the middle panel, that’s where we put a representation of ourself in it as well with modern creations that are or relate to each of the old inventions.

Here is the reveal of my final triptych, the moment you all have definitely been waiting for… 

Tada:

When creating this, I discovered who Stephen Hawkings was and how he was similar to Galileo in that he has influenced society as well. Interestingly (and semi fun fact!), Stephen Hawking was born on the 300th death  anniversary of Galileo Galilei. They are both similar in that they both were interested in and have studied space, for example, Galileo found out about the moon’s craters while Stephen Hawking’s studied black holes. Both have helped us question and get a better understanding of our world.

Now we have the final paragraph, and I decided to do my on humanism. The reason I chose it was because when I was doing my NAME chart on the Primavera I got caught up in the research on the topic of humanism and it interested me. Before we started to write the actual paragraph we had to state 3 reasons why we wanted to, then we had a conversation with either Mrs Maxwell or Mr Harris (Cody Harris). Writing this paragraph was hard but what helped was writing down notes so I could organize all the information I was reading and understand the topic better. Here is the thing though, my notes were on real paper with an actual pen, crazy right? Sometimes old technology is better… After that, I was able to write this amazing paragraph:

Finally, my takeaway from all of this is that learning about the past is important so we can learn from history’s mistakes and/or evolve and continue to build on what we have learned. When looking back on the inventions from the renaissance I can now almost automatically see the connections between then and now and why we are where we are today. Knowing about the past makes us have appreciation for why things are the way they are and why certain people are significant and have pushed inventions and ideas forward. Now there is meaning for me behind names, for instance,  beforehand the name Galileo only reminded me of the song Bohemian Rhapsody… I also can appreciate education, I wonder how things like communication and education will continue to grow and evolve. What are our future significant historical events going to be and how will we go down in history?

PLP 8 and PLP 9 had the chance to go on our very first learning extent (or advance) that was over night for multiple days! It took place at Loon Lake Lodge, check the website out to learn more about it! Luckily the ride was only around an hour since it was located in maple ridge. During the advance we learned more about each other and strengthened the PLP community and worked on our teamwork. 

During the advance we created a E-book with photos, reflections and more!

Check my E-Book down below

Well at loon lake we took a photo walk at the start to get familiar with our surroundings, but people also took photos at their own leisure and to put it into the e-books. Here are some of the photos I took and some that my friends sent to me!Most of them are of me and my friends. 

I enjoyed this trip and I had no problem getting used to the beds and what not. One thing that through me off was sleeping. I got no sleep because of people waking me up, but otherwise it was a fun experience. My favourite thing was probably the battle archery, expect the masks we had to wear in case we got hit in it face smelt nasty. 

Throughout the learning advance I grew in different ways, having to learn in different environments tied in to me wanting to grow in not getting distracted. During this trip we (students) where expected to take pictures and document what was happening during the trip. When we had the break time it was hard for me to pull myself to get work done for the e-book. Slowly I got better at documenting media and writing short snippets of reflections for the book. 

One of the competencies I wanted to work on was communication, loon lake has definitely helped me improve with that. When I joined PLP I slowly made new friends, even though we were friends I didn’t know how to communicate with them that well. When we where at loon lake I learned more about my peers and got to see what they could do. Some of activities we did, like laser tag and battle archery, involved communicating with people in sometimes non- verbal ways (also playing silent ball). During archery my team and I thought of what we could do to help us win (we lost every time) even though it didn’t do anything to help us, it strengthened our skills in working in a team, and also laser tag. 

Something that could help me enjoy future field studies more is having a better sleep schedule. I would try to go to sleep but after the first 5 minutes I would give up because people would wake me up or someone would watch Tik Tok without headphones. I think I could have done a better job of trying to actually fall asleep instead of giving up and looking at my iPad. I should probably wear/bring earplugs next time… 

As you know (or I would hope so by the end of this post) we had to create an E-book about the trip, we had to do one for each day but sometimes I would miss something important, like taking a photo of the meal. Next time if we have a project like that to do throughout the trip I could read through what to do for each day clearly so I know what to do. Personally I think I held up quite well and enjoyed loon lake to the best I could.

I look forward to future trips, meeting and learning more about people and growing as a learner. But the next time I go on one I hope I dont get sick right after…  

Thank you for reading my blog, bye!

:･ﾟ✧If you couldn’t tell by the title of this blog I’ve done something involving poetry. This something was actually writing a bunch of poems (10?) that express our worldview in a way. We didn’t come into this project knowing nothing about worldview though. Check out the project where we learned about worldview here! The PLP 8 and PLP 9 both did the same project (separately), after writing all our poems we created a E-book and put them all together. Check out my completed E-book here:

The driving question was “How might I construct text that shows who I am right now?”. During this project I have realized that poetry can say a lot about a person, and it can also be about the world around us right now. When hearing everyone’s poems and writing my own I could tell some more about them. As I wrote poems about my worldview I feel like I learned more about how I feel when I was writing the found poem and the worldview poem. Creating poems is a good way to show how you feel and show what makes you who you are.

I’ve learned more about my worldview and I enjoyed picturing my worldview as a person. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy this project I have definitely learned more poetry terms,  besides learning the same things over and over again. Thanks for reading have a nice day. <3

As per usual I will start with the driving question of the project, “How can the outsiders teach us about worldview?” Before I explain the project here is a quick definition of worldview: A particular view or philosophy about life.

Back to the important stuff, first off we learned about the 7 aspects of world view, such as geography, time, beliefs, society, values, knowledge and economy. At first I never realized all the things that shape our worldview and how hard it is to break it (at least for me its hard).  After learning about worldview we had to write a paragraph about some of the aspects of our worldview and how they make you who you are. I wont add it here but this is the link if you would like to read it: My worldview

One of the hardest things was to create a worldview MindNode of all the aspects of worldview. We brainstormed ideas for each topic and put each different aspect on a a branch. For this I could have improved since I was very vague, I was redoing ideas to make them better but I never ended up finishing my revisions because of other projects. Here is my MindNode:

Of course this project would make no sense without reading the book, we were assigned to read 2 or 3ish chapters before the next class so we could all have talk about questions we have.

After finishing the book we put our knowledge of the characters into one “deck” of characters (some are left out) here is my completed deck if you would like to see: Outsiders Character Deck

Near the end of this my points got a little sloppy so I could improve on that. 

Almost done the things leading up to the end result of all our learning…!

Making the character deck of the people in the book we scratched the surface of each of them. For this assignment we had to use descriptive personality traits to describe one character from the book and then explain help shape their worldview. The person I got was… Dally!

Here is my completed anyalsis: 

Okay now is the time to explain what we ended our learning in (besides this totally amazing blog post). 

In a group we had to create a tableau of one of the main scenes in the book. Before I continue on here is what a Tableau is: a tableau is a group of people or motionless figures representing a scene (it mostly may be from history or a story). Basically no one can move for a small period of time and they stay in position representing a person (or object \_(^~^)_/).

Since you hopefully understand what a tableau is now I will keep on going along what we had to do. The people in my group were Julia, Ruby, Andrew, Francis and myself. We had to Create many things together like movie posters, movie trailers and of course our tableau (all about the outsiders). 

To make our final movie poster we each had to create another movie poster and then decide as a group who’s we would use. We ended up going along with mine but we edited some things to make it the best we could.

When starting the tableau we had to find out what scene we were to re-create. The scene my group got was the burning church scene. We had to brainstorm ideas on a tableau pitch form. Then we sketched our ideas (each sepreattly) for the tableau set as well. Then we brainstormed all together and created a plan. Then we practiced our tableau, in the scene we got some little kids are getting saved from a burning church and Ponyboy, Johnny and Dally are saving them. Ruby and I are kids, Julia is Dally, Andrew is Ponyboy and Francis is Johnny. Then after practing our scene we had to create props. 

Oh wait I forgot we had to do another tableau of our scene but modify it to 2021. What my group did after many discussions with our teachers is ditch the burning church and fire and make it a flood instead. So one again I was a little kid, Ruby, Julia, Francis and Andrew were people saving me from the flood to represent saving kids from a burning church. 

After practicing and deciding on props we got to go to the library were we presented our tableau’s. We took a look around and practiced a bit then took a photo of our surroundings. The group member who took the photo was ruby and we used mark up to sketch out where we would place everything and everyone. Here is our completed photo plan:

Finally we set up for the exhibition, my group had a lot to do but we got some help from other classmates which helped a lot. We created fire, a cross and a stained glass window for the church. Throughout the making of our set we documented it in pictures and a time lapse of us setting up sheets to create a more clean background.

This is a time lapse video of setting up

Somethings that we could’ve done better is have a cleaner script because when presenting it, it was messy and our second speaker, Julia, was sick so she couldn’t come. So Andrew our first speaker explaining the burning church had to quickly read over the second part explaining what the second scene about the floods meant (then had to say it in-front of 22 groups of people). So it definitely would have helped if our script was more precise.

To close up this blog post ill explain my answer to the driving question. Again the driving question is “How can the outsiders teach us about worldview?”. After finishing this project we should have been able to answer this question, it took me a little while to think of an answer but here is mine. I think the outsiders teaches us a lot about society since the story is all about the gap between poor and rich people. When looking at the world now I can still see what went on in the book happening currently (slightly different though). People still get bullied or put in bad situations because of their financial issues well the some (not all, most people are very nice) more fortunate people don’t acknowledge that. It shows us that even though we are all different we are all human (hopefully) and each should have our basic rights. Lastly you cant judge someone before hand since as shown when Johnny and Ponyboy run to help kids they are changed from dirty reckless kids to hero’s. That shows that everyone values different things and that can set us apart from what you may look like or stereotypes hold against you.

I think our group did a good job all in all since we had a couple last minute changes that made us have to alter our presentation and we all thought on our feet to make it the best we could.

Take a look at my group members blogs:

Ruby

Andrew

Julia 

Francis 

And the wonderful people not in our who helped make the set:

Dylan

Naomi

Caitlin

Keaton

Hayden

Kai

if there where anymore people I forgot but thanks :D.

This is our final ad my group made!

Check out my group members’ blogs:  Hayden, Caden, Naomi, Christian, and Keenan

The driving question for this project is, “How does what we hear, see, read and view influence the world around us?” Throughout this project we gathered information and other media to help us build knowledge about what techniques are used to attract people/target audience.

From this learning we were then expected to create an ad around what our assigned business wanted. 

I created many drafts before collaborating with my group and received lots of helpful critique from my peers. Throughout the journey I learned about how to finesse my skills and ideas to the best I could do! In the slideshow is the journey of all of my drafts.

The first of step of this project was understanding the task and discovering out our business. Fortunately, I was surprised to discover that my group’s business was Honey’s as I enjoy baking and I especially love doughnuts.

Once we had a FaceTime appointment set up, everyone had to brainstorm questions about what we should ask our business in the conference with them and present it to Mr Hepburn. For some reason I decided to volunteer to present one of the questions to him (I think I was delusional at the time because I am usually the shy one of the group). The reason we had to talk to Mr. Hepburn  is because he works in the advertising industry and has been doing it for many years. After, we had to create questions (more questions woowoo) our group would ask when talking to the business, keeping the feedback from Mr. Hepburn in mind. We also brainstormed ideas in our specific groups, specifically ideas about our ideas for first ad drafts! Then of course we had the meeting, in the meeting (FaceTime call) we found out what exactly Ashifa (Honeys Doughnuts Manager) wanted for their ad. 

Here is a photo of all of the ideas we made!

Then we started creating our first drafts! These are some of my group members first individual drafts!

Mine got cut off because it was the only landscape one so here it is!

After many long hours (maybe like 10 minutes) I was reunited with my first draft. Quite frankly it’s not very good as I didn’t add in all my ideas…. I completely ignored all of them and I went for a minimalist approach (as you can see because there is nothing there). I like the photo but there isn’t a lot to catch your eyes.

Slowly, we all progressed by getting peer critique from each other, and throughout the process we started connecting with each other more. As we went through this we learned more about the apps and how much our iPads can do as well as learning more about advertising. We learned about having the right ratio of visuals, 70, 20, 10 (70% is the picture?, 20% the text and 10% is the logo). We also learned about the KISS abbreviation, which mean Keep It Simple Stupid (I already knew it, haha), Mr. Hepburn told us to keep this in mind well creating our ads.

Then we ended up coming together as a group and creating our final ad to send to the business. We ended up choosing mine and fixed many things, and made sure to bring in everyone’s voice and input so it was a true team effort, before sending it off to Mr. Hepburn for more critique and knowledge. We ended up getting great feedback and I learned more things to not only help make the ad better but to help my photography skills. I improved many things in my ad throughout all of my drafts but here is my first and last draft close together, I think I’ve improved a lot. You can check out the final ad we sent at the top!  

Also, here is the link to Honey’s website: I am the link to the amazing website.

While we waited for our businesses to get back to us we created an advertisement journal with pictures of all of the ads around us. Personally, this project helped me connect to the driving question the best, since when I learned about all of the concepts of advertising like weasel words and things like logos and ethos, I noticed more of who ads were directed towards and how they attracted attention. Instead of me thinking, “That ad is ridiculous,” or “Why is that ad here I see it everywhere?” I now recognized the hard work that went into it and what they were trying to achieve. When it comes to my completed graph I think I could have done better but I never got out so I had to speed take photos when I eventually did. My Graph is right here in this blue writing.

Lastly, one other thing we did was our historical media analysis! The point of this was to pick a historical ad and analyze it. We did this and ended up having to create a document answering multiple important questions when creating an ad. Doing this I realized older ads are much more different then I thought. Most surprisingly they are sexist. For example, in cigarette ads they say it’s a good idea and won’t affect your health, Also, there are some pretty messed up ads like a pig chopping itself up into salami and some other weird ones. My friend cough cough Hannah cough picked a very interesting  one you can check it out on her blog, it’s highly disturbing (press this to go to her blog).

The ad I picked to analyze is actually a video for Pepsi. One of the things they did to attract attention is quite obvious, using Micheal Jackson. Here is the video link!! Micheal Jackson Pepsi Ad (not Coca Cola) . I don’t have a specific website because I knew about this ad before hand so I didn’t search anything up on a browser.

In conclusion I learned a lot more about advertising then I thought I would. I never really knew all the hard work that went into creating a simple photo. Now whenever I see an ad that appeals to me I don’t just wonder about the product, I also think about how long it took to create the ad. Also I never knew about all the fancy terms in advertising, like weasel words. Whenever I see a bounty ad I immediately think, “Those words are weasel words”, for example, Bounty is basically no different then any other brand for paper towels. Another thing I learned is the different terms for what ads try to evoke. Ethos, logos, and pathos, The one that appeals to me most is probably logos because I like having the facts down then reading reviews before buying a product. The reason ethos doesn’t make me want to buy something is because when it evokes emotion in me its usually not something I necessarily need, or it ends up being about crackers or shoes and then I think it’s ridiculous. I enjoyed this project a lot because I got to do photography and I really enjoy that and I got to connect with my group more!

Your at the end now 🙂

This is my slideshow for my ad drafts, I have Honey Doughnuts.