MazerTag Reflection

Hello,

Today I will be reflecting on one of my last school projects this year. This project was for a class that I have called Scimatics that is a mix between math and science. The project was based on Star Wars since our Winter Exhibition this year had a Star Wars theme.

For this project we had to study lasers and the pythagorean theorem, which is a math equation that is used for finding the side length of a triangle. These are some of the equations that you could use (a2=b2=c2 or b2-c2=a2 or a2-c2=b2). We explored different things with light, like the angle that light comes into a mirror, and then the angle that it comes out.

Here is my mind map from this unit.

We then had to apply these principles to our Exhibition project.  For this project, our task was that we were going to have to make a vehicle from Star Wars and we had to incorporate a right angle triangle into the design using lasers. We were then put into a group of 3 people, and my group was Erin and Indira and myself.  For our vehicle we chose to do an AT-AT  which is an Imperial walker. You can see the walker in Episode 5, The Empire Strikes Back, in the Battle of Hoth.

Janson_G / Pixabay

And here is our AT AT during the building stage:

 

We painted it grey and had dry ice making a vapour cloud around the base so you could see the lasers. Unfortunately in all of the busyness of setting up the Exhibition, I forgot to take a picture of it that night.

In completing our project, there were several core curricular competencies that we had to meet. Here’s how I met them:

Big Idea: I was able to present my learning of the pythagorean theorem and show off what our team built on the Exhibition day, even though we had some hiccups with stabilizing our AT-AT. We were able to overcome this and present something that we were proud of in the end.
Communicating and Representing: I was able to make a right angle triangle with 2 mirrors and a laser. I was able to calculate the length of the third side from the first two sides made by the laser by using the pythagorean theorem.
Applying and Innovating: My team and I were able to make the At At Walker and make a right angle triangle around it. We were all able to contribute our work equally and effectively in setting up our room with bringing decorations and helping others to fix and set things up.
Questioning and Predicting: I was able to work on my project effectively even with some issues stabilizing the legs, and some distractions from my iPad and my friends.

I was very happy with how our project turned out. One thing I want to improve on is my ability to focus on my work and avoid distractions so I can more effectively use my class time to make my project to the best of my abilities.

SBC Reflection

Hello again!

Today I will talk about the student blogging challenge. The student blogging challenge in my opinion was a challenge and a lot of work. It piled on top of my already busy life and it took a lot of time to do all of the challenges. Despite all of the work involved, I think that it was informative and a pleasant experience with other commenters. It was really exciting to see all the people who actually took the time to read my post and comment on it and I would like to thank you all for that. It was a really big part of what kept me motivated to do the challenge. It was also really cool to see all the different countries people came from using the flag counter. This challenge was a really big confidence booster to see all the support from good people. I did not want to even start blogging because I didn’t just want to throw myself out on the internet and then allow people to say what they want about me. So I think that the challenge gave me the confidence I needed to keep blogging.

One of the tasks this week was to say if I was going to continue blogging and the answer is I will. I will mainly have to do it for school projects because it is usually something that you have to do at the end of a project. I don’t think it will be something I want to do it for fun because I don’t think that writing something about what is happening is really my kind of thing. I would rather do a video blog and want to start a YouTube channel where I will post daily vlogs. That is different because I don’t really have to write something, I just have to talk.

All in all I think that the student blogging challenge was a positive experience but it just wasn’t my thing, so I would probably not want to do it again. But I would like to thank everyone who visited my blog. It means a lot that people actually came to read my blog from around the world. Bye


SBC Week 7

Hello!

Today I was tasked to make a blog post about the holidays for the student blogging challenge. The two things I will be talking about or I will be making a poem about the holidays and I will share what holidays I celebrate 

Holiday Haiku

Santa is coming

Presents under the tree

Little kids jump with glee

The next thing I will be talking about is what holidays I celebrate and how I celebrate them. I will start with my favourite Holiday, Christmas! Christmas isn’t my favourite holiday because you get presents well not just because you get presents.I like Christmas because I was born and raised in a Christian family and we always go to church on Christmas Eve to learn and praise Jesus. I also like Christmas because you can get presents and you can have the rest your list and even if you don’t it’s always a surprise what you get under the tree. I also really like to see the looks on peoples faces when they open their presents. It makes me feel good inside if I was giving it and to see the look on the persons face who gave them the present. Usually at Christmas time me and my family start out by Opening our stockings And then using the stuff in our stockings. Then we have breakfast which is usually cinnamon buns. Then we open the presents under the tree one at a time. Then we have some time to play around with our presents and then we go to our grandparents house. My grandparents and my family usually talk for a while and we all have a snack and give them there presents, then we have dinner, and then see what presents are under the tree. All in all Christmas is a great time of year everybody is happy and smiling and everything has a discount. The one thing I don’t like is all the traffic

my second favourite holiday is Easter I like it because I can take items from my older brother and then I get to laugh as I watch him try to find the thing I hid. It allows. Me to get back at him for all the things that he does that are mean. It is usually fun to watch him look for stuff when I am always the one trying to find things that he took from me and then lost, like my earbuds. All in all Easter is great, it allows me to get back at my brother and I really like those egg chocolates that come out at that time of year.

That concludes my blog post for this week hopefully you have a wonderful Christmas the one thing that I am looking forward to is hopefully getting some parts for a PC that I am building for a discount. Tell me in the comments what Christmas presents you are wishing for thanks for listening.

Power of a Pencil ✏️

Hello!

Today I am going to be reflecting and sharing my art that I have completed over this unit 

“The Power of a Pencil”. In this unit our task was that with our IPads and Apple Pencils we would look at different drawing techniques in sketches pro to create different effects. In this unit the driving question was “How can we use our Pencils to Enhance our learning?”

Throughout this project we were able to use a book in iBooks that shows some cool techniques. I will show the book in my slide show at the end

The first assignment that we had was we had to make our name in a creative way I will show you what I made in the end slideshow.

The second task that we were assigned was we had to make a self portrait of ourself. I made this by taking a picture of myself as the first layer and then turning the opacity down. Then I had to trace myself and my different features and then I had to make the skin colour by blending different colours together and then I added some shadows. The picture will be in the end slideshow.

the third drawing that we had to make was a fruit bowl. I really liked this one because I thought it was fun to do the shading and experiment with real life objects. What I found that was tough was to make the colours get darker and get lighter. We made this by taking a picture of the fruit bowl with a light source to bring out the lights and with the lights turned off to bring out the darks.

The 4th and final drawing that we did was make a logo. We first had to fill out a sheet with information like what we were selling and the main colours of the business. I found it fun to make up my own company and then give it a logo. For my company I chose to go with a skateboarding company. I called it skate bird because I thought that it was clever since it was similar to skate board and the catch phrase was if a bird brain can do it you can.

all in all I thought that the project was really fun and was a class to look foreword to. It helped me a lot with drawing with an Apple Pencil and an IPad. If I were to do this project again I wouldn’t change anything I felt that I was proud of my work and that I had learned what I needed to learn.

Here is my slideshow containing all my art work over this unit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 6 – Emoji’s

Hello

This week is all about emojis the tasks I will be completing are: a story prompt, emoji math and emoji guessing game.

Story: The Panda Who Was Afraid of Pizza

Once open a time there was a panda named parry. Parry is a panda but not an ordinary panda. Parry is a panda who is afraid of pizza. Well he’s not exactly afraid of pizza, he mainly just gets very upset when there is pizza. But before I tell you why let me just give you a little bit of parry’s backstory. Parry was born in a zoo in China, and From a very young age he was auctioned off to the public because there was no where for parry to stay he was adopted by a man named George. George was very loving and kind to Parry. But at night George would go to the casino to play card games like blackjack and Texas hold ’em. He was really good and often brung Parry with him as a good luck charm. One night when George was playing a game of blackjack as usual, he was winning, he had won almost $300,000 that game. And he was pretty much making everyone lose tons of money. So the house realized this and said that there was going to be pizza on them for everybody. Pizza was George and Parry’s favourite food, so they obviously took a piece. Little did they know that the pizza they gave George was poisoned and that was so they could rob all the money that he had won back so when they tried to do this immediately George realized that the pizza was poisoned but it was to late George had already taken a bite. They both went home immediately and the casino didn’t have a chance to rob them. But there was a problem George was very ill and he had been for weeks, so now Parry has to sneak into the grocery store to get food because there is no animals allowed. now Parry is very sad because there is. a pizza place right next to the grocery store and it just reminds him of the hole incident every time so some of the time he doesn’t even get anything to eat because he is so sad when he sees it. today Parry thought of a really good idea he should sneak in and then get medicine instead of food. Parry’s plan was simple he would wait for someone to get the right medicine and then he would snatch it. So he waited and waited and just when he was about to give up someone got the right medicine but the person who got it looked familiar he was the person who gave them the pizza in the first place so Parry wanted some revenge as well. Parry snatched the medicine and then ran the man chased him then pulled out something that looked like playing cards but they had spikes on them and he tried to throw them at Perry and missed multiple times then. Out of no where Parry caught one decided to throw it back it hit the man square in the chest but it had only knocked him back but when the man tried to grab another card parry jumped into him pushing him off the bridge that they were fighting on and he fell into the shark infested water never to be seen again. Parry rushed back to the place George was staying and read the instructions for the medicine you had to put the medicine in food so parry decided that the only thing to do was to get pizza the pizza place was closer than the grocery store and it would be quicker he rushed to the pizza place grabbed a slice and went he fed the medicine to George George was ok and was no longer sick it was pizza that helped save him and now Parry would love it again. The End.

That was my story and now I will make an emoji guessing game I will use emojis to try to hint at the title of a movie and you will have to guess it in the comments feel free to also tell me which of these movies are your favourites.

1.🕷👨‍🦰              🏡
2.🦕🦖🌎
3.🐧🐧🐧🐧🐙
4.⭐️⚔️
5.🦸‍♂️🦸‍♀️♾⚔️

The next thing that I will do is emoji math I will be making an equation and you will have to solve it

🌕+🌕=🌒
🌒+🌒+🌕=🌓
🌓+🌓=🌖
🌓x🌒+🌖=🌑
🌖-🌓x🌒=?

Leave your answer in the comments

The Media is the Message Reflection

One of the projects we started before our Oregon trip was about the power of media. Our driving question was “How does what we hear, read, and see influence us?” We started out by reading the novel, The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch . In the novel the main character, Myles, was influenced highly by the media after getting a lot of media attention for discovering a giant squid on a beach in Oregon. In the novel he learns the importance of keeping the media and their influence out of his real life. 

We then went on to look at different advertising techniques and analyzed which ones were the most persuasive. One of the most persuasive techniques was called “a sense of roots”. In this type of advertisement the advertiser tries to make you feel connected to the past or family and friends in a positive way. “Love object” is where the advertiser makes the audience feel the need to love someone or something, hopefully their product if they have done a good job. The technique I think is the best is called “reassurance of worth”. This technique makes the audience feel that they have worth and are important. We looked at different types of mediums and tried to identify these different techniques. 

Mediums are the different presentations of the advertising message. They can include internet advertisements, video and TV advertisements, print ads, and billboards. The text is the media product, or the thing that the advertiser is trying to sell to the audience. We learned about the media triangle, which is the connection between the text (product), the audience, and the production (presentation of the product). The triangle shows all of the key elements that are taken into consideration when making an advertisement. For example looking at what ways the text tells a story, who is the intended target audience and why does the text appeal to the audience, and how is the text distributed or sold to the public. This is an image of the media triangle.

After examining advertising and figuring out what makes a good text, it was time to try our hand at making our own. To begin with, we were put into groups and got to choose a Deep Cove Business to try to create an advertisement for. We had to call the business and pitch our plan to create a print advertisement for them first. Our first business wasn’t interested, but we were really lucky that our second business accepted our pitch and it is a really cool business, Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak. One of their employees had been a PLP student so maybe that helped. We visited the store and interviewed one of their employees to find out more information about the company to make an effective ad that suits them and their style, as well as what focus they wanted their ad to have. In our interview we found out that they wanted to make the public more aware that they have activities in all seasons, not just summer. They wanted to make their audience, visitors to Deep Cove, aware of their fall and winter activities. Each person in our group then created a print advertisement. Here is a slide show of my 1st 2nd and 3rd drafts.

  • 1st draft
  • 2nd draft
  • 3rd draft

 

I liked the dates and schedule, the use of their logo, and the images (which were from their website). I used their images for the ad because they were really good pictures and because I don’t kayak, it would have been hard to get good images taking the pictures myself. I think I could have improved on how much empty space was in the ad.

 

 

Next we used what we learned to create an advertisement for a business that we were going to visit on our Oregon trip. This time the groups were assigned a business, but we still had to conduct an interview. Our group was assigned Clark’s Restaurant. We got to interview one of the owners, which gave us a chance to get a really good idea of what they wanted their audience to know about the restaurant. It is really important to them that they are a family owned restaurant. The restaurant was started by lumberjacks as a place to eat when they were logging. The restaurant changed hands a lot until the current owners bought it, and several members of the family work in the restaurant.

It is a family restaurant not just because of the family that works there, but also because their regular customers are like family. In fact, they have such a close relationship with their regular customers that if they haven’t seen someone for a couple of weeks, they will go to their house to check on them to make sure they are OK. They take a lot of pride in the family recipes as well. Their recipe for their homemade ice cream is the original recipe from the beginning of the restaurant. They are also famous for their burgers, which is why I used the burger image in my ad. This is a slide show of my 1st 2nd and 3rd draft of my ad.

  • Draft 1
  • Draft 2
  • Draft 3

The first draft I made had an orange background and the print was too small. On my next version, I changed the background colour to match the green on their website and made the text about the family owned and run restaurant larger. I wanted to add the wagon wheel icon that they use on their website as well, but I made a mistake in how I added them. I should have copied the icon right from the website, but instead I used the wagon wheel icon that was native to the app I used to create the ad. I really liked the picture I used, and the information I included about the history of the restaurant. I could have improved on making the logo stand out more, and using their wagon wheel icon.  

 

Our Group in Front of Clark’s Restaurant

I found this unit really helped me view advertising differently. When I was little I fell for the advertising techniques really quickly and always begged my parents for the latest cool toy I saw on TV. Thankfully, my parents were more aware of the effects of advertising techniques than I was and didn’t buy me most of the things I asked for. As I got older, I always viewed ads as really annoying and advertisers just wanting to get their products viewed. I would get irritated when ads would interfere with games I was playing on my device. Now I understand how much work, thought, and analysis goes in to creating all kinds of advertising. I think it also helps when I feel like I did when I was little and am feeling convinced that I really need to buy something I see in an ad. I can take a step back and analyze what technique the advertiser is using, have an appreciation for how well they have done their job, and not beg my parents to buy it for me.  

Competencies

Creating and extending shared understandings:

Historical perspectives:

Text comprehension and appreciation strategies:

Literary identification and analysis:

Week 5 – Music

Hi,

This week we are focusing on music. This is a fun one for me because I play the electric bass guitar. A electric bass is similar to an electric guitar in that it is a guitar and it is amplified. The most common bass has only 4 strings though, E-A-D-G. These strings are the same as the four lowest strings on a guitar, but they are an octave lower. There are some basses with 5, 6, 10 or 12 strings. The bass has a distinctive sound and is used in music in many different ways. It can be used to set the tone of a song, like funk (think 1970’s music), or to set the rhythm and imitate the percussion (drums) in a song, or as the main sound in a song (think Seven Nation Army by White Stripe). Because most people who play guitar want to play the traditional electric guitar, there are fewer bass guitar players. The good thing about this is you are in high demand as a bass player. My bass is a Washburn bass. I have added a photo of it below.

 

So to add a little bit of fun, I am going to give you some clues below and I would like you to try to guess the band and the song with a strong bass line I am talking about. Put your guess in the comments section.

  1. The bass line starts the song
  2. The band started in 1970 but their music is still popular today
  3. The original lead singer is dead
  4. The band name is royal
  5. The song name could also make diamonds
  6. It is also given by peers

I am going to end with another audience participation request. In the comments, after you have guessed which song and band I am describing above, answer these questions about your opinion about the bass.

Would you rather:

  1. Listen to electric bass or acoustic bass?
  2. Classic music with bass or popular music with bass?
  3. Give it Away – Red Hot Child Peppers or Another One Bites the Dust – Queen

 

4. I Want you Back – Jackson 5 or Billie Jean – Michael Jackson

5. Queen or AC/DC

Thanks for participating in my blog this week and I hope you learned something about the bass.

Student Blogging Challenge Week 4: Free Choice

Hi again!

This week we were allowed to do a free choice for our blog post so I will be talking about one of my favourite hobbies, butterfly knife flipping. It is one of my favourite hobbies because it improves my hand-eye coordination, it is a great fidget, and it makes a cool party trick. The types of tricks you can come up with are endless.

I really like doing tricks with my hands. I started out just using fidgets to help me focus with my ADHD. Then I realized that I have pretty good hand-eye coordination. I got interested in magic and started doing card tricks and coin tricks. After I got really good with these things, I moved on to the Rubic’s cube.

I discovered butterfly knives when I saw my dad doing twirls with a knife sharpener that is designed like a butterfly knife. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is a blade or blade substitute with two “wings” connected by a single joint at one end. I asked my dad where he learned how to do the twirls and he told me about butterfly knives. I went on YouTube to look up videos of course, and I was hooked. My dad ordered me a practice knife, which has a dull blade so you can’t cut yourself when you are doing tricks. They also had ones that had a comb, a fork, a spoon, and even a pen or pencil.

Learning how to do tricks with a butterfly knife is fun, it improves your hand-eye coordination, and it looks cool. It is my latest and favourite fidget style hobby right now and I have lots of tricks and moves I am working on. Butterfly knives and novelty items are easy to find online and not very expensive so it is a good hobby if you like to work with your hands. I have included a video below of me doing a trick so you can see how it works.

 

Going Coastal

 

In the Performance Learning Program (PLP) we do a lot of learning outside of the walls of the school. This type of learning allows us to connect what we are doing to the real world, and is a lot more interesting, especially for people like me with ADHD. Most of the time our learning outside of the school building, called field studies, are just short trips or a day spent somewhere of interest. But once a year, we do an extended multi-day trip. For the Grade 8’s, that trip is to the Oregon Coast.

After crossing the border, we went to the Astoria Column which is 125 feet tall and decorated with pictures. The pictures loop around the column to tell a story and look like a ribbon with images wrapping up the column. In the gift shop you can buy wooden planes to fly off the top, but we brought our own. It was super windy that day and most of the planes didn’t go far, they just stared spinning. We continued down the coast as far as Yaquina Head, staying in Yurts for all but the last night.

One of the fun activities were going zip lining at High Life Adventures, which was fun and scary at the same time for me. This is how I demonstrated thinking about thinking. I knew what my fears were and I cheered other people on who did something that they didn’t expect they could do, like hanging limp in your harness.

We spent two days in the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center. At OSU I demonstrated questioning and posing problems  quite clearly when me and my team were racing crabs. Our task was that we had to have some sort of question about how fast the crabs would be ours was are crabs with all their limbs faster that crabs that are missing limbs. Our thinking for this one was maybe crabs with all their limbs have more weight making them slower or maybe crabs with more legs have more pushing power with more appendages, it turned out that the crabs with fewer legs were more shy to run if they didn’t have to.

Also at OSU we were able to make underwater ROVs. This was fun because we got to work in a group and then drive the ROV in a pool afterwards.  I demonstrated thinking interdependently during this project because I worked well with my group sharing ideas and listening to ideas from others. Our ROV worked out great in the end and we were all proud of the work that we put in to make such a cool machine. I learned a lot from working with my team because they shared ideas that I never would have thought of.

Next up on the trip were doing a quest at Yaquina Head, touring the Tilamook Cheese Factory, and visiting the Northwest Trek Wildlife Park.

The quest at Yaquina Head was one of my favourite activities because our group worked really well together to figure out the clues after a bumpy start. And the view at the end was amazing! In the first quest that we did I learned how to manage my impulsivity. When my team and I were trying to figure out where we needed to go instead of thinking things through, we decided to just jump right into the clues and we were running all over the place trying to figure out where all the clues were. As a result, we ended up missing a bunch of clues. I learned that instead of just jumping into something I should at least know what I need to do. I feel that me and my team were persistent the whole time, working through problems when we got stuck. We never got off task and we were the first team back. Even when my team was having trouble finding the actual geo cash at the end we didn’t give up and we eventually found it.

Yaquina Head Quest View

True to reputation, the food on the trip was awesome! From the flaming (literally) dishes at Nisa’s Thai Restaurant, to the arcade and entertainment at John’s Incredible Pizza, to my personal favourite, the Pig and the Pancake. The Pig and the Pancake was most people’s favourite. No one went hungry on this trip!

Over the trip, I was able to get to know a lot more of my classmates, and know a lot more about each of my classmates. Sharing yurts and long bus rides gives you plenty of time to talk to each other. You also get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Before we left I didn’t think I had much to learn about my fellow PLPers, but by the end of the trip I realized that I was wrong about that and I feel a lot closer to the people in my class. I think that is the second reason for the field studies.

I’m going to end my post with my Oregon Book and a photo gallery of some of my favourite things from going coastal.

  • Astoria Column
  • Depot Bay

 

Scimatics Tectonics Book Reflection

Hi again! Today I will be sharing my reflection on the tectonic plates project. In this project we had to create a book with 10 key concepts based on the topic, this book we had to share with grade 4-5 students.This project was fun for a number of reasons. My favourite was the fact that we could use Minecraft to help us create the images we used. I used Minecraft to help me create videos to help explain the different key concepts.

During this project I demonstrated 4 key concepts including: Evaluating, Questioning and Predicting, Big Idea, and Applying and Innovating.

I’m going to start by explaining the Big Idea of tectonic plates. Tectonic plates cover the earth and have cracks in them called plate boundaries that allow the plates to move. There are 3 types of movement: divergent which is the 2 plates separating, convergent which is the 2 plates colliding, and transverse which is 2 plates rubbing against each other. Each of these motions creates earthquakes that come in all different sizes ranging from ones that you can”t even feel to ones that will bring down buildings. Some earthquakes can even form tsunamis which are giant tidal waves that are able to bring down buildings. Mountain ranges and volcanoes are also formed by these movements.

We then had to make a book explaining tectonic plates to Grade 4/5 students. This is where I met the rest of the curricular competencies. I had to use evaluating, predicting, and questioning to figure out how to explain this concept to the Grade 4/5s. So we had to think about how we could write the book in such a way that they would be able to understand how the big idea of plate tectonics worked. We also had to predict what might intrigue them so their attention wouldn’t wander. On top of that, we had to put all of this into a book. So I decided that I should have a main character that they would like and that would help them understand. I chose to do a creature that lives underground since this book is about plate tectonics that are in the earth and under water. I decided to use my favourite burrower, the burrowing owl. I named him Benny because Benny the Burrowing Owl had a nice ring to it, and it would be easier to remember for them.

I used applying and innovating to create the book itself. I decided that the book needed to have pictures, but I was having trouble trying to draw the burrowing owl. Then our teacher said that we could use Minecraft to create the pictures. So I decided that this was the route that I wanted to take. I was also able to use something in the game called red stone which is like using machinery, and it helped me to explain certain movements since I was quite good at it. I’m quite happy with how these mini videos turned out in the book.

We then took a walk down to Cove Cliff Elementary to read our books. When we were done with reading the book, the grade 4/5s gave us feedback. The kid I was partnered with really liked that it took place in Minecraft, and he was able to understand the concepts of the book. I would say that was successful applying and innovating!

Here is the mind map we made for this unit showing our learning.

 

And here is me reading the book