Archive of ‘PLP’ category

DI regionals!

As I woke up at 7am on Saturday, march 2nd, the only thing I could think of was DI. The night before my group had worked tirelessly to finish our pinball machine; with painting, making costumes and finalizing everything, I wished we had more time. But all these lessons I’ve learned through regionals will benefit me in provincials. 

Let’s begin from the start. My group consisted of Jackson, Jack, Jasper, Ailie, Matteo and me, which created our team name J.J.J.A.M.M. At the beginning of DI we signed a contract, basically to promise to be nice to eachother. I do think our team worked well together with communication and creativity. There were exceptions though in which at certain times we got stressed. For the future I wish to be more patient and understanding and well as using my time to benefit others mode and relieve the stress of DI. 

Overall for this project/ presentation we had to make a working pinball machine and a story that included it in some way.

 Our group collaborated our on main idea which won us 2nd place in regionals. Our presentation was great, our acting was emotional and our costumes worked well, the one part we left out of were the acutal rules of the pinball. We unfortunately didn’t even make one round so we got zero points for rounds. For next time we’d like to improve on actually getting credits for the pinball rounds and how to rework if we fail. 

My contribution was I was a designer. Our group worked collaboratively but we also had jobs, some focused on building and others did designing. 

Overall I think I learned a lot of new things, as well as things I’ll use in the future. For example, I’ve learned new skills on how to use building tools properly especially the drill; and also somewhat skills like time management. This became crucial at the very end before regionals where we were in a big time crunch. But we did accomplish a lot in those 24 hours before presenting. 

These are our “donuts” that we made as a team choice element. Lesson learned donuts are really hard to make. Thankfully I went through this struggle with some of my team members. 

As you can see at the bottom right is our pinball machine. You may be able to tell, or not but our choice was to make it Star Wars themed. We decorated it and made it not look too heinous. In the end we were very proud of our finished product and how it came together. Obviously there’s room for improvement which we will present at provincials. 

Limb by limb, scene by scene…

As I tore apart multiple stuffies, their arms legs and torso and resewed them together. I had created a monster, a monster named Todd. 

1. Making our Frankie stuffie

My frankiestuffie is named Todd. I created him from octopus, flamingo and bear. But I wasn’t always sure of his design. I had a vision and an ambition to make something weird and different. As I grabbed random stuffies of the shelves of superstore I got already see him being born.

Throughout this part of the project I learned how to sew and use my creativity. I’ve given Todd personality, characteristics and so much more. He’s a humourous guy but later faces challenges when it comes to making a story. 

2. Making a story

We started with gathering information about how to portray our story. With our driving question “how do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience.” Through our story we can use verbal communication, animated actions, clear plot, hints and so much more to interact with our audiences understanding. 

3. Creating a film

Now we implement our story into film. In these past few weeks we learned how to use different apps that have been provided to us to create our film. I decided to use keynote and iMovie to deliver my story. I animated within keynote using their tools, including animation, media, voice recordings and more. A big part of these process was creating a storyboard. 

This is my story board:

My teachers told the class that every animated movie has to start with a storyboard, it helps with the animated process. Giving slides, frames and details to fortell the final product. 

4. Final product 

This is my final film. It is based in the White House and it’s a mystery film surrounding the idea for unfair government and economy. The rest is for you to find out:

Overall this entire project has taught me skills within apps that I will later use in the future when needed. There were multiple successes and also failures, like when I couldn’t import might movie properly so it was just a random project in keynote and I thought I had nothing left for me. Another failure was editing, this killed me. The timing to link everything together took many tires and plenty of time. The success though was the finished project and the stuffy. I loved how both turned out together. As well as it showed me ways on how to communicate efficiently to my audience whether it’s in animated or art form. I enjoyed this project especially creating the stuffy and then making an entire story for my character. 

Bye bye

 

 

How did peoples portrayals affect Louis Riel?

Welcome back,

For the past three weeks we’ve been learning about Louis Riel and his story. I’ve spent numerous hours focusing on this man and his controversial life he lived. In the end my only question is, how long will peoples portrayals of us affect us? Do we ever grow out of it like Louis Riel did, even after many many years.

Throughout this learning we’ve not only learned all about Louis but also how to write. Due to covid and other conflicts our writing was sloppy and not our grade level. So teachers took action to improve it and with harsh criticism and numerous hours of learning proper spelling, paragraph placements and more. I think my writing has definitely improved, atleast I hope, and with the countless times my work was sent back I pray it got better. 

Let’s look through my multi paragraph which explains the controversy between Louis Riel’s actions and his portrayals. As well as you can see the “improved writing.”

Louis Riel's controversial actions during the 19th century left a long lasting impact on the way Canadian society perceived him. Throughout history Louis Riel has been called many things. A Métis leader and hero, as well as traitor and rebel, but what caused these portrayals? Two main examples that show his controversial actions are: the Heritage minute made in 1991 and his statues made in the 1990’s. Both events had negative backlash. The representations mentioned help control the narrative in regarding that Louis Riel’s image whether he was alive or dead was controlled by others. For how long though? In the end how has the portrayal of him changed over time?
In 1991 Historica Canada created a 60 second short film to give us an insight on Louis Riels last moments of life. The film captured Louis’s thoughts. During those moments he was reflecting on his controversial actions. Why he stood up for Métis culture and disrupted the Canadian goverment’s plans to silence them. Throughout the film he’s asking God to forgive him and to forgive those who will soon take his life due to his actions. One is led to believe that until very end Louis Riel lived a selfless life. In the background of the video you can hear two sides. One is the settlers and one is the Métis, while the settlers degraded him for all he was, the Métis, the people who he stood up for, thanked him. Looking back on this in 2024 we wouldn’t have done that to someone like him because times have changed as well as the portrayals of him and people’s opinions. Overtime, Louis Riels image has changed with the world, and for the better. We now reflect and celebrate his actions for the Métis and we view him as a hero for it.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjgz7O474OEAxWsAjQIHcJ0Dx4QwqsBegQIDBAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D0fLnJp-Rjow&usg=AOvVaw0DXBQeQYxt4QOqDkzhODXw&opi=89978449

Even a metal statue that represented Louis Riel was controversial. Lemay and Gaboury, Miguel Joyal and John Nugent were all artists who captured Louis Riel’s essense in a statue form. However, they caused a lot of controversy in 1990 with the display of these sculptures. Some people saw these statues as a symbol of heroism, and others saw them as a tease, as a provocation, because they believed he was a traitor to the Canadian government. They even went too far in vandalizing them, forcing them to relocate the controversial statues. Then later to replace some with more improved versions. This just shows that his statues served as a reminder of the difficult and complicated nature of history and the diverse perspectives that shaped public memory and commemoration. These statues stand now as the glorifying actions of a hero, perceived as harmful to Canada in the past. In the end, the portrayals of Louis Riel have shifted from being seen as a traitor and rebel to being recognized as an important figure in Canadian history and as a symbol of Indigenous rights and resistance.

 

Overall I actually had a ton of fun learning about Louis Riel because still in society we struggle with our image and peoples opinions, but the world has also grown. Even though he was controversial he still stood up for his culture, which to me over those weeks he became my person of inspiration. Also is there ever a powerful or famous person who never was atleast a bit disturbed. Even the most beautiful art pieces were made by artists who even cut off their own ear, or a bit of it at least.

We not only learned about Louis but also we were able to expand our learning in a more proficient manner. This project taught me a lot about how important writing, grammar, sentence  structure, words, quotations and more. All this skills will benefit me and I’m able to use them in future projects, especially for next semester. 

Bye bye and thanks for reading

 

Winter exhibition again…

If I could describe PLP in one word it would be ambitious, and especially when winter exhibtion comes around it really shows. 

For this winter exhibition our learning started around the beginning of November. They explained the project to us and it was crazy. We would have to build a working Rube Goldberg machine, (a machine that is overly complicated in which works with chain reactions to accomplish a simple task). We had to build one but there’s a catch, every connection of the machine had to present a metaphor from revolution. 

My revolution was the French Revolution, the one with Napoleon. Beforehand we spent time getting to know our revolutions personally and to show our learning and understand we made inforgraphics. This is mine:

This information was transferred into our machine in which I created and built with my group including James, Neko, Alva, Kaia, Gino, Kainono and Liam. Our idea was to have 7 different connections that each of us built and personalized and in the end attach them together. This seemed simple to us until we started building.

The process of building was so long and tedious, some days were good and some days were absouloutly terrible like one day when someone destroyed our guillotine. It took a long time to get it fixed and to even get it working. As exhibition night came closer and closer, stress and anxiety skyrocketed. But there were some highlights like the day we got to spraypaint everything, it was really fun until it got on my hands and wouldn’t come off. There were definetely challenges but it all worked out in the end, kind off.

Exhibition night was stressful but once it was over I was so glad, not just because it was over but because it happened. We built a machine that maybe worked once but we still built it and including we had made documentary to go with it to show the revolution and process of building. Looking back on everything I liked this project because it was lots of hands on learning and creativity which is the reason I joined PLP. 

These of the videos that were made:

Timept.1

Timepiece.2

To answer the driving questions “How do ideas drive change?” Without ideas nothing would’ve been created, ideas are the building blocks for our world. It can be the start of a new machine, or law, or shift how we live. They can make someone’s life harder or easier, they spark new ways of thinking and doing. Ideas can be big or small but either way they shift the world in some way, better or for worse.

That’s all but thank you for reading,

Bye bye

Making movies is not for me.

Movies are fun, movies are exciting, movies have many important components that go into making them such as high quality cameras, top notch actors, inticing storyline, but what if a group of teenagers had to make a thriller, with phone quality, no Hollywood actors and a storyline that had to fit into 2 mintues. Henceforth a two minute thriller. 

This might have seen easy and many people have probably made movies as kids with their friends to show to their parents, but this was not the case. We spent days of learning, anazylizing evey detail on multiple short films such as “Laundry,” “Blackhole, “Tuck me in,” and more. We learned many skills that helped for our finsihed product such as angles, continuity, sound, emotion, plot, character dynamics, storyline, cliffhangers, foreshadowing, and much more. 

Every class we paid close attention and by the end we correlated all this information into a productm which is my two minute thriller. I worked in a gorup with Lila, Syd and Alex. We worked as a gorup and collaborated especially when we were faced with challenges. 

The big challenge was we wanted to film our thriller in a pool. I’ll remind you that it is winter right now. The issue was the entire story was based in the pool, but it was too cold to be in for more than a couple minutes. We attempted to film but we realized this idea didn’t work at all, so we regrouped and found a different solution.

So we made an entire new movie. In the end we got an extension because our work before was not something we felt proud of handing in. We made time, a storyline and setting and we got to work, focusing hard and finishing our movie in an entire weekend. This was definetely a learning experiance and for next time I would make sure our ambitions match a bit more with reality.

This is my movie if you’d like to check it out:

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Buildings bonds?

No phones, lots physical activity, growing as a group, the sound of it felt weird like a dream which is exactly how this trip felt. Without physical documentation such as photos on my phone, what do I remember, what did I learn?

Throughout this trip we were accompanied by a learning group called Pinnacle. We had sessions with them daily and during these we became comfortable with our class, the people we spend time with almost everyday, hours on end, yet we still acted like strangers. These sessions included personal reflecting on our private journals to learn about ourselves, group activites where we got to know one another like sharing our goals and lastly bigger groups where we did inticing activites such as trust falls. Each one of these helped us or at least me grow as a person and understand our driving question which is “How do the choices we make set our future path?” This is your life and the choices you make can better your life or worsen it. How do you want to be in the future, think about that before you make a hard desicion.

A quote that really stuck with me is “it’s everyone’s first time living.” Everyone goes through their own struggles, which we learned in a very emotional activity we did one night called Crossing the Line, it showed us how different yet connected we are. For me this activity was hard due to the leader of Pinnacle Johno asking us some tough and personal questions. This actvity showed me to be more gentle with everyone because if I have hard times, they can have them too, and or don’t bother negatively if someone is happy because everyone needs a break of their own. 

Besides the learning portion of this trip we also had a ton of fun! We went rock climbing and archery, as well as we did high and low ropes. My friend Syd and I did the high ropes together and we had to put a lot of trust in eachother as we crossed this rickety bridge together. In the end we made it across but we did fall, but we fell together so we were fine, more than fine we were laughing. 

Overall I learned to better analyze situations and how to deal with them with hard decision making, and lastly I learned to be more open and to think creatively in my own way. Because everyone’s thoughts can help contribute solutions. Now we’re at the very end and personally after this trip I wish I didn’t leave, but my own special goal I would like to be transferred is “I would like to be more confident for myself and for others, and speak up for those who can’t or fear it.”

Science + Math = What?

“Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known,” this changed my brain chemistry because if I think how hard science is to learn, what about the person who created it, the people who added all their new findings and knowledge without having any blueprints to follow. New things are being found everyday so eventually couldn’t I find something new, like a new element?

For this unit we learned about the Periodic Table and you may think it already looks complicated but it gets way worse, there’s math involved. From learning how to represent an element in drawing form such as the Lewis diagram or the Bore diagram, to how different elements combine into compounds. The periodic table is interesting because we can see every element on our iPads easily and at the same time their make up our ipad and everything else in the world. 

We haven’t finished our project which is a painting we will create of our element of choice, but we have done all the learning and reaserch for it. I chose fluorine as my element and I was really able to dig deep into the history of it, which brings me to our driving question “What impacts do elements and compounds have on history and modern day society? Fluorine changed our society, it harmed us and benefited us. To show all the work I’ve done I made a poster about fluorine which you can see below:

The process of learning everything was enjoyable and steady which gave me the oppurtunity to really take charge of my work without feeling overwhelmed. Even though we haven’t finsihed yet I loved making this poster of fluorine and I can’t wait to paint!

Bye bye!

A day in my dads life!

What I learn from this experiance is that my dads job is complicated. He works as a manager at Volkswagon, and I thought he just bossed people around but I was very wrong. It involves having a lot of patience when handling work and challenges with either your coworkers, boss and customers. As well as it involves a lot of paperwork to ensure the customer is happy and safe when getting a new car or a repair, but as it turns out some customers are rude becasue they either have too much time or too much money, or both. 

That was my experiance and I learned that my dads job is not for me, but congrats to him. But to show my learning I made a video. I held interviews with some of my dads coworkers to get an understanding of the different jobs that take place to satisfy a customer, I asked many questions, took photos and went back home to edit and bring this video to life. 

I’m going to apply what I learned into my everyday life (school life), which means to be more patient and understanding with people because in the end their just trying to communicate in their own way. 

Alberta through my eyes

As I’m climbing up a mountain I can feel all the pressure building in my legs, I feel as if I take one more step I’ll fall all the way down but then I look up.

Welcome back, if you’ve already read my maker post you’d know that we went on a adventuress trip to Alberta. If you haven’t then heres a link to it: https://www.blog44.ca/mikar/2023/10/13/a-trip-though-moving-images/ In that post I reflected on everything we did on the maker aspect of the trip, which were the numerous amount of videos we created.

For the humanities part, our question was “how has the geogrpahy of the west shaped who we are?” And to answer this we created a filed study journal! We blogged, took note and reflected on every place we visited. From Lake Louis, to the Columbia Icefield and all the way back home (which was a long and heinous drive). 

Our book is made up of our own personal answers to the trip, answers to questions and our views on each place. At the start I didn’t like doing the book at all and it freaked me out but once I got the hang of it, it became very easy, so for advice: dont stress about your assignment, the point for the trip is to enjoy the trip.

Overall out of all the things I learned, one thing stuck and it was the word sonder. It’s means realizing that others have lives has vivid as yours. In Alberta while talking to people I really took that word into account as I heard amazing stories like some guys son was a skiing archer. That amazed me. 

But if you’d like to learn about my trip more than the crazy stores I was told then click here:

Thank you for reading and bye bye!

A trip though moving images!

As we rode away in the cold early morning, I wasn’t at all expecting how much work was to be done.

This is my first blog post for grade 9 and nothing feels different at all. But time to talk about my class trip to Alberta. We had two projects one for maker and one for humanities, click here to see the one for humanities: https://www.blog44.ca/mikar/2023/10/17/alberta-through-my-eyes/ This reflection is all about the videos we made either in Alberta or at home. Anyone can say filming is easy but this project was about gathering evidence to answer the driving quesiton, “how might I use the moving image to tell a story?” We made four videos in total, the at home video, Tik Tok, silent and investigative video. Through the process of making each of this videos I learn a different skill every time, which in the end helped me create the best version of my product as well as I can take these skills towards future projects. 

The first video I made was my at home video. I feel I actually got to learn a lot about myself even thought I was making this for other people, I got to learn what I really valued, my hobbies and how I was able to capture these moments. The process of making this video was mixed, I didn’t have a solid plan, more like a vision I wanted to create. I wanted to include cinematic shots of myself aswell as editing tricks but as the due date for this assignment it all came crashing down, but I wanted it to be how I enviosned it. I wanted it to show me. 

In the final stages of editing it all worked out. I was able to take a vision and create it into reality for myself and others to experiance. I was able t capture momnets of myself and turn them into a story about who I am, my values and what inspires me. 

The second video was the silent video and it was a gorup project. My group members were Lucas and Hunter and we filmed at the Three Valley Gap ghost town. We explored together, finding spots where we can film and built our story from there. There was a bit of pre planning such as making a story spine but the rest was us adapting, bouncing off eachothers ideas and collaborating. We spent a fair share of time looking at the rail cars and hanging out in them, they were really cool! Our story we wanted to film was about a robbery but many times we didn’t have either a prop or the angel was weird, but we had to improvise. Another thing was we couldn’t talk in our film, we had to act it all out and looking back on it was quite funny (especially when we had to film running scenes). But whenever there was an issue we improvised and worked as a group to solve it, like when we didn’t have cash so we leafs. In this project I learn about camera angles and how essential they are to tell a story. For example we had to capture our scene but also include background details in our shot so they could tell where we are, such as essentially we had to capture that we were in a bank that was being robbed. Next time I would like to capture more scenes so the duration of the vidoe is longer as well as more close up shots so you can feel the emotion through the expression of the person so it tells the story also though feeling. 

The third video I made was the Tik Tok. This project was very independent in the way that there were barely any instrucitons you were suppose to follow, so in the end peoples videos looked very different which was nice. While filming I learned all about angles and for my vidoe everything had to be filmed in portrait mode. I didn’t actually have a plan at all or a vision, it turned out to be very spur of the moment and then after the trip I compile it. If I were to do this project again I would have made a plan for filing and gathered different ideas for videos in case some turned out to be fails. I did enjoy making it though becasue in my vidoe you can see all the places we went to which were amazing but then as well you can see the reality aftermath of the trip. Overall I liked this video project but if your ever going to do it too, pre plan it’ll save you so much time. 

Last but not least is our investigative video. This video was a way to tie into our humanities project, a way to show our findings and evidence relating to our thesis, to in the end answer our driving quesiton “How has the Geography of the West shaped who we are?” During the making of this project I learned very valuable skills such as how to conduct as interview which was a key point of evidence to support my thesis. I learned how to approach people, ask if they’d like to be interviewed for a school project, their consent to be filmed, and lastly ask and phrase my questions so the interviewee understood and could respond accordingly. The idea of interviewing people seemed weird to me, I have no problem talking to strangers but suddenly when it involved a school project it freaked me out. After seeing all my friends do it, it seemed easy but in the end what really helped me is that when am I ever going to see this person again. So in the end I also learned to become more comfortable interviewing people and their answers really benefited me, as I gained more knowledge and evidence to prove my thesis. 

Overall all the skills I learned while making these videos are essential to make and create a sotry using the moving image. Having a proper plan and ideas can smooth out the process of filming and creating the story, so theres so conflict or dispute in the end. Angles, close ups, positions, body language help show depth, emotion and feeling when telling your story and give your audience a proper understanding. Lastly all of these videos were made to in some way to tell a story about me and who I am as a person. 

Bye bye!

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