Hello

today I will be telling you about a competition that I participated in a few weeks ago called DI. Di is a tournament were you compete in your age level and against other people who are doing the same challenge as you. Me and my group of 5 were competing in the scientific challenge. In this challenge we had to make a story that involved a outsider species and a habitat, my group and I decided that we wanted to put a proboscis monkey in the BC forest. Below I will put pictures of both.

In this challenge we also had to have a technical element, my group decided that we were going to make a hydrolic arm that would knock over the trees to show how the habitat changed while the monkeys were in the habitat.

in the challenge we also had to have 2 team choice elements which are 2 things that our team gets to make. The only thing is that these 2 elements can’t be required by the challenge. So my team decided to play the ukulele and Raymond (check out his blog) made 2 songs that we played as the challenge went on too set the mood of the story.

another element that we had to have was a habitat morph. this is some way that the habitat changed when the monkeys were in the BC forest. our habitat morph was we made the trees fall down because the monkeys killed the trees by removing the leaves and cutting up the roots. so they became brittle and easily fall over. then we had to have a spices morph. we decided that the monkeys would grow claws too fend off some of the forests predictors and to rip up the leaves easier. the other morph that we had was that the monkeys grew more fur, this was because the monkeys were used to a warmer environment and since BC is very cold they had to grow more fur to keep warm.

If you would like to read the rules of the challenge by the people who made them then go to the DI website that i have linked. now I will start to talk about what happened at the tournament, at the tournament we first had to do our challenge I think that it went quite well. Other than the trees falling over too soon it was quite good since we could pull it off really well and since it was only the regional tournament we know exactly what to do if that happens at the provincials. here are my team mates blogs Raymond, Julien, Ryder and Nate. if you want to watch my teams video of us competing the that will be below.

I think that we did a OK job at regional but I think that we can do better in provincials. the things that me and my team are going to change are the following. I think that we should make the claws in our performance black not white, it would help since it makes more sense to have it that way. I also think that we should show the monkeys ripping up the roots of the trees and not just say that it happened. in addition I think that we should make the claw arm more simplified so that since the claw arm wasn’t one of the main focus points. I think that we should also make the trees have more leaves so that they look more tree like. I think that if we make these changes that we can have a way better presentation.

now I will reflect on the curricular competency

Research and Understanding:

I feel that I showed this competency when I was trying to figure out how the monkeys could morph. I put myself in the monkeys shoes and tried to think of what I would want to change to make me fit into the environment. I also thought to myself what would I do to the environment so that we could see the change of the habitat. I also had to put myself in the shoes of the apraisers and the audience to see how we could get the most points possible.

thank you for reading have a wonderful day!

 

 

 

Hello!

Today I will be reflecting on the most recent project that I have had in my humanities class. In this project we started out by sharing how our worldview has changed from elementary school to high school then we made a mind map about our worldview changing from elementary school too high school. The different categories of change are: geography, time, beliefs, society, values, economy and knowledge. The next thing that we did was we wrote some lyrics using a template from the song its the end of the world as we know it click the link to watch the original video. These are the lyrics and the mind map that I made

 

The next thing that we did was learn about the renaissance. We started by learning about the different “history makers” of the renaissance time period such as artists like Leonardo and Donatello, and scientists like Francis Bacon and Galileo and how they impacted the renaissance.

The next thing that we did was sing our songs. My song was not my best work since I had a few voice cracks and I am not good at singing in general but I did try my best. Below is the song that I made.

 

 

Then I had to write a song with a group of 3, the other 2 people are Ryder and Randy (check out there blogs by clicking on there names) we made this song by combining our lyrics together to make 1 song and then we sung our parts of the song below are the lyrics the purple words are ryders lyrics the yellow words are Randy’s lyrics and the blue words are my lyrics

 

 

 

This is the song that I made with my group here are the 2 others blogs, Randy and Ryder.

 

 

The next thing that we had to do was write a paragraph or 2 about an image that represents the scientific method here is the page that I wrote.

 

Now I will reflect on the coricular competency’s

Create: What literacy skills am I using to write, speak, and represent in the texts I create?

I used a few different skills for this competency as looking back at the videos and photos from the past when I am talking about the past such as in the song I had to look back at pictures to remember what happened that changed my worldview. I also looked up different words that make my writing more interesting to read and when writing my song I looked up words that would rhyme so that my song would flow better.

Cause and Consequences: Who or what influenced events to occur and what were the consequences of those events.

To answer this I am going to add my Mind Node mind map that answers the question “who or what has challenged your world view in the transition from elementary school to high school.”

I have come out of elementary school and gone into high school feeling more accomplished as a learner. I feel more confident with taking on the new challenges that PLP has to offer.

Hello!

This is a post were I will be reflecting on my most recent humanities project. This project was based mainly on the Middle Ages, which I already knew a little bit about but it was fun to know more so I enjoyed this project.

We started out by reading a book, the book of the lion this book is about a character named Edmund, and a few of his friends that participate in the crusades, each week we had to read 14 chapters of the book we did this for 3 weeks since the book was only 42 chapters. Each week we had a role sheet to do which is to show how we can connect the book to today and on Monday we would share this with our reading group. There was 3 different roles for this so each person could do each role once the 3 roles were artful artist were you had to draw a picture from the book that you think is an important part there was sumerizor where you summarize each chapter of the book that you read that week and the last one is connector where you connect events from the book to other books movies yourself or to the world today I will try not to spoil it too much so I will give you a warning the 3 pictures have spoilers so if you want to read the book then dont look at these.

I did not really like this book. it was hard to read and understand, it jumped all over the place at the end of each chapter and the book had way too many un necessary words. It was also not that interesting since it was very predictable it also used a bunch of slang from that period of time so some of the words I had to look up to be able to get what the author was trying to say.

The next thing that we had to do for this project was a group project. we were out into pairs of 2 and then we had to come up with 2 different examples of change and continuity between life today and in the middle ages my partner in crime was Ryder check out his blog he will also be doing a blog post on this project. so for the project our examples of change and continuity were change: sports in the middle ages and continuity: environmental concerns. For my portion of the project I did the sports as an example of change and he did the environmental concerns. this project was really fun to do since I love learning about the middle ages so it was a cool project to do in this project we had to make a keynote that we had to present to the class the requirements for the keynote were that we had to have only pictures and that there was a maximum of 3 words per page so we had to explain everything that we learned in this project out loud to our class. my keynote will be below right here as a video.

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Core competencies:

Comprehend:

I showed this competency when I was researching and I looked for good sources of information I also demonstrated this when I was reading the book of the lion when I was doing the role sheets and reading some of the chapters a second time I would always highlight all the most important parts of the chapters like when we meat a new character.

Identify continuity and change:

I showed this when I was doing my project I showed this by identifying all of the differences and similarities between today and in the Middle Ages I showed it as well in my research that I did for this project.

In the end I really liked this projects since it was all about the Middle Ages so it was really fun to work on. It was also really fun to work with Ryder he was really chilled out, and when we were presenting to the class it was really fun since he was really calm and it made me calmer so I was able to finish presenting without all the stress.

 

 

Hello!

Today I will be sharing my mid year presentation of learning or mPOL. The focus of my mPOL is to have an opportunity to improve as a learner and be able to reflect back on some of the projects from the beginning of the year to see what I can improve in my performance. At the beginning of the year I found I was often struggling with keeping up with all the different assignments. We tracked these using the apps Showbie and Basecamp which outlined everything I was supposed to be learning.

Now that I have gotten used to the apps and the process of checking-in with the Milestones which highlight step-by-step progress, and I find that by checking assignments everyday,  I have started to be much more proficient with doing these things. I now find the apps really help me to stay on track.  As a bonus, they are always available for reference whenever I am stuck on something which helps me to keep going.

One example of forgetting assignments that I needed to complete was with the Student Blogging Challenge. I found it really hard to keep up with all the due dates as I wasn’t checking the due dates as often as I should have in Basecamp and when I did,  I often could not find the exact details of the assignment that I was looking for. For the first few weeks I did not know where to hand-in my work, so I missed the due dates.

I also never got a spot to be public in the Google form, so I was not able to have anybody else look at my blog. Whenever I got stuck, instead of looking in Basecamp I would just look at other people’s blogs and then tried to see what they were doing differently than me.  When I saw that everybody else was getting tons of people to look at their blog and there were even views from people in Australia and yet I wasn’t even getting a single person to look at my blog it was really upsetting. It actually made me un-motivated to continue with the Student Blogging Challenge. Eventually, I went to my mom who had helped my brother do the Student Blogging Challenge and she asked me if I looked in Basecamp for the instructions. I said, “no” and then she said that I had to look in Basecamp for the details.

I felt like such an idiot for not thinking about that! She showed me exactly where to look, then I started to get people to come visit my blog. I finally felt good about it. I started handing things in correctly online which allowed people from around the world to read what I had spent so much time producing. It was really satisfying when people took the time to comment and ask questions about what I wrote. I felt so good when I looked at my notifications one morning and saw that I had gotten my first visitor. I immediately showed my mom and she said, “I told you that you needed to look in Basecamp.” That was when I really took it to heart that I could just look in Basecamp if I was ever stuck on the instructions for something.

Another thing that I struggled with was the project entitled: The Media is the Message. This was the very first project and being totally new to both High School and PLP, I didn’t quite know what to expect. When we read out what we were going to learn, I admit,  I started to tune out since I was thinking about my future, and if high school was going to be fun, and if PLP was the right thing to join since the workload started immediately in the first few days.  So I definitely didn’t get much out of that start. Then when it was time to do some work.  I feel I started out ok and with good intentions, but as the work started to build up with all the different assignments: the Big Life Journal for Maker, Fractions of your Time for Scimatics, and Media is the Message for Humanities; it was really hard to decide what I needed to do and when.

Some of my assignments where easy and I thought that I could do them in like an hour or so, but boy was I wrong! It took a much longer time to do some of the assignments and others only  took around 30 minutes. I was a little confused on how to plan as there was such a big difference in the time required to do different assignments. I started to cram in multiple assignments on the last day that we had to complete them. Whenever I got feedback, I would just put it aside and then work on finishing the next project. Soon the work was too much to keep up with this work practice. I handed many things in late but whenever I got feedback and was expected to revise things, I forgot about them as it felt so overwhelming.  I didn’t listen to the feedback to make my work better.  I believe my primary problem was that I didn’t ask for help when I got behind.

It was also hard for me to make decisions on simple things with designing the ads for Media is the Message. As a result an assignment that should have taken around an hour would take me two or three hours. Here is the blog post that I produced for the project Media is the Message.

I have had a lot of ups-and-downs in PLP. Something that I believe demonstrates this was the Oregon field study. I really struggled in Oregon. Some of the time I really remember what I learned, other times it is a bit of a blur. One of my key issues was that I forgot to take my ADHD medications. These are critical for my ability to focus. It can be nearly impossible for me to focus on one thing without them, so a trip with so much going on was understandably extra challenging. I know I was very inconsistent with my focus.

It was hard to complete parts of assigned activities such as zip-lining. I literally wasn’t in the right mindset. When there was a zip-line that was high up, I didn’t think that the ropes would hold me. I have always been afraid of heights, so this made my thoughts go mad! All I was thinking about was all the things that could go wrong!  I had thoughts about the rope snapping or my harness unbuckling, etc. so I didn’t think that I could do them so I didn’t.  It really bothers me to this day, I still feel bad about it as I know that my own brain stopped me from doing something that would have been really fun. This was a very strong reminder to me that I have to program alarms into my devices so I don’t ever forget to take my medication. I need to take responsibility for being my best and giving myself the tools to do it.

During the Oregon trip, we had to write a book about our experiences. We had plenty of time over the trip and we had a few days after so I thought that I could just do it at home quick and easy. Then I remembered that we had to write a blog post about the trip as well and embed our book into it. When I handed in the blog post, I was asked to revise it and so I did a whole new blog post. Here is the link to the Oregon blog post if you would like to know more.

On the other hand, some of the things that I did well over Oregon was getting to know much more about my class peers. This was really important as so much of PLP involves group projects. Now when I have group projects with any of them, I am able to relate to them in one way or another from our shared experience.

One project I think I did really well on was my Blue Sky Star Wars project because I was really engaged. I had a great deal of fun with my research. I have always been a really big Star Wars fan.  I did well because I was becoming comfortable using Basecamp and Showbie so I was really able to use that to my advantage. I was always able stay on top of things. I had a plan in place for exactly how much I needed to do each day.  I was also having fun with making a full set of Mandalorian armour for my project which makes it even easier to complete.  If you would like to know more that project, here is my blog post about the Star Wars Exhibition

So overall, I think I had a bit of a rough start. I have learned a great deal about how I can use the available tools to make it easier to manage. Looking back, I think I’m in a very different place mentally and am much more comfortable with the program, asking for help and knowing how I work best. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the year.

Thank you for listening to my mPOL blog post!