Shore to The Core was my most recent project in my PLP class. This project was very local to me because it was all about Canada and specifically Deep Cove, this project focused mainly on the start of Deep Cove. For this project I focused on the housing economy which is a big part of Vancouver today being one of the most expensive places to live on the planet. 

now what was the point of this project. In this project we had to write a essay about our topic for a company called MONOVA which would publish our essays on there website. This is a cool experience because I have never really had something that I have written on a website as big as MONOVA’s. Here is what my essay for MONOVA looks like. 

But now lets get to answering the driving question which is “what makes something historically significant?” I believe that in order for something to be historically significant, it has to effect people at the time and in the future and cannot be ignored when looking at somethings history. 

Loon lake learning advance has made me a better me, let me explain. On this learning advance we got to be the best person that we could be by making goals on how to improve ourselves. My goal was based around how I let my mind get in the way or things that I want to do. I will give you an example. When I was at the learning advance I was wanting to do the ropes course and I saw it as an opportunity to face my biggest fear which is heights. I haven’t always had this fear, I used to climb trees a lot and I used to rock climb all the time. I dont know why I developed the fear but I haven’t been able to overcome it. When I was at the ropes course I was climbing up to get onto the pole so I could start the course, but then before I got to the top I looked down and psyched myself out and wasn’t able to do the course. I have done this a lot where I am determined to do something and then I start to psyche myself out. So because of this my goal was to stop allowing my thoughts get in the way of something that I want to do. Here is my goal written as a S.M.A.R.T. Goal. 

This trip wasn’t just goals though, we also got to do some fun activities like rock climbing, canoeing, archery and the previously mentioned ropes course. Out of all these 4 activities I enjoyed archery the most. This is because I have done archery in the past and used to practice all the time and had a lot of fun doing to again, after so many years of not doing it. But even though I enjoyed archery it wasn’t the best part of the trip for me. The best part of this learning advance, for me it was the meal times, but not just for the food which was really good but for the conversations that I had with other people. Usually I get nervous when talking to people I usually dont talk to, but at loon lake I faced one of my fears and I talked to a lot more people at these times. I feel like I made connections with more people, and that I made more friends.

Overall this trip for me was a huge amount of fun and a good learning experience that I have used to make a better me and to continue to be a better person. 

Hello 

Today I will be talking about the most recent project in my PLP Humanities called “Hidden Chapters of History”, which was all about World War II. In this project we learned about all the different events from the rise of the nazi party, all the way to the nuking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We learned about the War itself and the battles and the political war at the same time. To give a brief recap of what happened, Nazi Germany took over Austria and then derailed a Japanese train and then blamed it on China, Italy sided with Germany and then Japan did as well and Russia allied with Germany. On the allied side it was Britain France America and Canada. Eventually Russia switched sides and then so did Italy after the death of Mussolini. America joined the war after Japan attacked pearl harbour. Eventually the Americans after island hopping in the South Pacific eventually got close enough to nuke Japan twice and after the second bomb Japan surrendered. Hitler had no allies so they were overwhelmed and lost the war. 

At the start of the project we had to read a book that was about World War II. The book I chose to read was Maus by Art Spiegelman. The book focused mainly on the concentration camps and the POW camps during the war. Which I thought was interesting because usually you dont really talk about the POW camps during the war, and mainly focus on the war itself and the battles that were fought in it. I think that this book really helped me understand a lot more about the topics that were a little less known and helped me extend my understanding of WWII. 

In this project we got to make a podcast episode about a specific topic and then combine all the topics together to make 1 podcast with 23 episodes. The topic that I made my podcast on was the firearms during the war. I really liked doing this topic and it was quite enjoyable to do the script for the podcast because I didn’t have to use any sources other than my knowledge when writing it. I found it fun to test my knowledge to see just how much a knew from the topic. Obviously at some point i did research the topic but that was years ago from a few books my dad read to me when I was younger. 

So now I will answer the driving question for this project which was “How might we use stories to understand the causes and consequences of World War II?” I believe that using the stories that we studied with Camp X and in the book Maus we can understand different perspectives of the war and see what kind of consequences happen for different people. 

Hello! 

Today I will be talking about the most recent project which was about Romeo and Juliet. This project was not just some simple straight forward Romeo and Juliet project because we didn’t perform some play in front of a live audience. But this was a more interesting project because we got to put our own twist on the original play. But in order to make our own version of Romeo and Juliet we had to first know the story of Romeo and Juliet. But again our teacher made this interesting because after each act of the play we watched the act in a different version of Romeo and Juliet. I found it fun to see all the different ways writers were able to make new versions of a story using the same outline. 

The next part to this project was to make an actual spin off version of Romeo and Juliet, and each group that we were assigned to would make a different act my group got act 2. then we would watch videos in order to see the outcome. So me and my group of three other people (Amy S, Erin B, and Ryan U). Got started making our script and video. 

The first thing that we had to do was brainstorm ideas for what the spinoff would keep of the original and what we would add. We decided on making it about 2 people in school one of them is a posh girl with good grades, and the other is a trouble maker kid with not so good grades with we thought was a good way of showing contrast in characters.

The second thing that we did was make a story board of all the different scenes that were in the act. This part is to make sure that we know what we are shooting so that we dont have to just wing the entire video. This is what it looked like:

Then the next part which was the most exciting part was actually filming the video which went pretty well with all the different lighting that we used and the different camera angles and moods to each scene, it was pretty good. 

Overall I think me and my group did a pretty good job of making this short film. I feel like I was able to contribute ideas and solve problems throughout filming and making this video, for example when we had to do the prom scene we thought that we should have some different lights to make it look like it was an actual party or a disco, my group thought we couldn’t do the lighting effects of the prom so it would be good to just use filters in editing, but I remembered that when we used filters the last time I made a video it kind of just took the viewer out of the video they were watching. So instead of making the video look a little more home made I had the idea to use the monitors from the computers in the room we shot the scene in to shine different colours on the actors and the backdrop which in the end made the effect and the scene of them being in a party really worked. 

All in all in all I think that the project went really well. I believe that when my group put our mind to making the video we did a really good job and the results were good, please go check out some of the posts my teammates made by clicking on there names in the post. As always thanks for reading!

Hi!

Today I will be making this blog about the kamagata maru incident back in 1914. This is a well known incident that occurred and you most likely have heard of it, but to summarize there was a law in Canada that made it so that you had to travel to Canada in 1 continuous journey from point A (South Asia) to point B (Canada). This was basically to stop immigration and was an early example of systemic racism in the 1900’s. The Kamagata Maru knew this when they departed but instead of following that rule they wanted to test it and in the end protest it. In the end it was a 3 month journey to canada and then a tree month wait in the ports without getting access into Canada. After a six month period from leaving for Canada, the ship was lead out of the place they were anchored by the Canadian military in July and made to return back to Budge-Budge, India where 19 of the people on board were killed by gunshots when getting off the ship and more people were put into prison.

The importance of the apology is a formal acknowledgment by the promise of BC that we did not live up to our ideals. As reflected in motion of apology “the house deeply regrets that the passengers, who sought refuge in our country and our province, were turned away without benefit of the fair and impartial treatment befitting a society where people of all cultures are welcomed and accepted.” And this resulted in tragedy for s lot of people. 

The legacy is some of the policies that Harper put in place to help support immigrants and by formally acknowledging the tragedy it opens up the opportunity for remembrance such as this Kamagata Maru the opportunity for the legacy to live on in other forms such as the remembrance museum website. 

The Kamagata Maru incident has been remembered through the website there is plaque in coal harbour and the Kamagata Maru museum at the Khalsa Diwan Society.

in conclusion the kamagata maru incident has and will help us learn from our mistakes with systemic racism so we can move forward with equal opportunities for everyone despite your background, skin colour, gender or religion.

Hello!

This blog post is a reflection on the most recent project in PLP and the first project of grade 10. If you’ve been following along with my previous posts, then you know we have been working on a political party to run in the Canadian election. My group included Johnathan, Jordan and Keenan. We named our party the Hippopotamus Party of Canada and we based our campaign on the housing crisis in Canada. The housing cost in Canada has spiked to its highest point and it is harder than ever to get a home in populated places such as Vancouver and Toronto.

For those of you who haven’t seen the previous posts, or for those who want to watch it again, here is our campaign.

I really enjoyed making this video, especially the coming up with ideas part. the whole goal of our video was to be as professional as possible without actually being professional hence the shorts and a suit top. it was really funny to come up with crazy ideas with my friends for what we could do with our video. while we couldn’t put in all the ideas we chose some of the best ones to use on our video. Overall I would say that with only an hour and a half of filming and an hour and a half of editing we did a pretty good job with making a fun video about a new Canadian political party.

I think we could have improved on managing our time more wisely. while we did complete the video and we did do a good job of it, I think that managing our time better would have led to us having more shots that weren’t rushed so we could have better quality.

in working through the creation of our political party we realized that a lot of parties don’t actually pay attention to the bigger issues and instead focus on the ones that will get them elected. the only way to change this is if we the people demand that our political parties put forward larger scale and longer term detailed plans on how they will address larger issues that have a bigger impact on the day to day life of Canadians over the longer term. It is easy to use buzz words and hot button issues to convince people to vote for you, but as we learned earlier in the year and I discussed in my post ‘Politics In Canada’,  politicians say a lot of things that they will never follow through on and do. Only when the people demand real solutions instead of fancy words, and hold our politicians accountable to follow through on promises will things really change.

Hello!

Today I have a blog about a new political party for Canada made with a few of my peers: Keenan, Johnathan and Jordan.

The party we made was named the Hippopotamus Party of Canada. In our party we decided to pick a few issues that we saw in Canada’s current government, this way we could pick something we felt that needed our attention most and focus there. The main issue was the economy, the backbone of any country or nation. The next step was to go smaller as we needed one specific part of our economy that was heading in the wrong direction. Me and my group came to a consensus that this key issue was our housing crisis. The housing cost in Canada is at an all time high, with the cost of living being one of the highest in the world, ranking 21st highest cost of living  out of  110 countries worldwide. So me and my team decided this was our biggest issue and we started getting ideas for how we could lower the housing price. After we were done our brainstorming it was time to share our idea with all of you, which is found in our press release at the top of this post.

I think my team did well, with coming up with ideas for what Canada as a nation is lacking and what we can do to fix our problems. I think that my team could have improved with having more of a organized press release. I think my strengths throughout this press release were with my communication of ideas to my team and my ability to expand on others ideas.