The winter exhibition is less than a month away, and we have a lot of work to do before then. This year, the grade 11s are competing in a debate tournament. I’m very excited to see how well my team (Izzy, Lila, Kaiono, Jack, and Parker) will do. But for now, I’m going to talk about how we’ve started this project, and my goals as we progress. 

To kick off this project, we started by watching the movie “The Great Debaters”. The movie, based on a true story, is about the debate team at a black college in 1935 Texas. The team faced challenges, not only from the pressure and expectations in the debates, but also from the racism and segregation of the time. While watching the movie, I noticed that the way the characters presented their cases was just as important as the arguments themselves. Watching this movie helped me understand how to adjust my volume and when to pause to show emotion. 

Throughout this project, I will learn how to gather evidence to support my ideas, use word choices and rhetorical language to craft my case, and become confident in speaking in front of an audience. Of those skills, public speaking is definitely the one that I have the most room to grow, since currently, that is a big area of struggle for me. I can increase my confidence by making sure I’m well prepared and know my material inside and out.

Well, I guess we’ll see if preparation truly does make all of the difference in debate. 

I had a great idea for this project. One I’d been saving for the right moment since last year. As it turns out, this was not the right moment. 

In this project, I originally had to make a companion piece to go with my video from the Manhattan Project². It could be anything I wanted. I could make a sculpture, a song, a puppet show, a picture, anything… except a video. If it has moving visuals on a screen, it’s off limits. We would go on to present our videos and companion pieces at a parent night. In my learning intensions blog post for this project, I was thinking about making a hockey broadcast parody. This is actually an idea I have been holding onto since my speech from the “Definitely Not The 51^st State” project in grade 10. 

The Original Plan:

Unfortunately, as this project progressed, the teachers started to realize that we wouldn’t make the deadline of the parent night, especially with the other assignments we were doing along the way in this project (Which I will explain in the next paragraph). We ended up cancelling the parent night, and pivoting the final piece of this project to be the pitch, instead of the companion piece itself. So, here’s my final pitch: 

The Other Assignments We Were Doing Along The Way In This Project:

Here I am, writing this post, already halfway in (I hope), and I’m realizing I haven’t talked about the topic of research for this project. If you looked enough at my pitch, or if you went back to my pre-project post, then these two sentences have been useless for you. If not, this project was about how fear drove the Cold War. One way that we learnt about fear in the Cold War was through a fictional story of a family and their neighbours surviving in a fallout shelter after Soviet forces dropped a bomb on New York City. This story is the book Fallout by Todd Strasser. 

While reading Fallout, I made three separate response journals, 1 for each section of the book. Then, at the end, I used them to make a synthesis reflection (aka essay) about one of the themes in the book. I chose to write mine about how scarcity of resources affects everyone’s decision making within the bunker. 

The Other Assignments We Were Doing Along The Way In This Project (Cont.):

Another way we learnt about fear in the Cold War was through research and Socratic Seminars. In these seminars, our class arranged ourselves into an inner and an outer circle, with the same amount of people in each, so everyone has a partner in the other circle. We were given a question, and the inner circle discussed and answered it while the outer circle kept track of their partner’s contributions, and gave them advice or ideas to talk about. I enjoyed listening to what my peers had to say, but I really struggled to get into the conversation. I like having time to prepare my thoughts and ideas, so since I only knew the topic when we started the seminar, I couldn’t prepare very much in advance. During the seminars, I got some ideas from what others were talking about, but by the time I had formulated my ideas, the conversation had already moved on. In total, over all 3 seminars, I only spoke twice.

Hopefully the right moment comes sooner or later to use my hockey broadcast idea, but for now, I’m gonna go learn how to debate!

Anthropology. Anthropology. Anthropology. Oh, hi! I didn’t see you there. I was just trying to drill the word “anthropology” into my brain because I keep forgetting it, and my new project in BCFP is about anthropology. Anthropology. Anthropology. Anthro- why are you still here? Oh, because you want to know more about my project about anthropology. And so would I actually. I currently don’t have very much more information on what we will be doing, so this post is about what I’ve learnt so far, and my goals for the rest of this project. Anthropology. Anthropology. Anthropology. Ok, fine. I’ll get into it. 

Even though I’ve studied different cultures in my last few years in PLP, I had never heard the word anthropology. So what does the dreaded word actually mean? Anthropology is “the study of human societies and cultures and their development”, using a variety of research methods, such as fieldwork, interviews and analyzing artifacts. 

Speaking of analyzing artifacts, in class today, we did a warm up activity to learn how to think like an anthropologist. We were given a picture of an object, and tried to guess what it was used for, and what it says about the society that made it. I had a curved spoon-like object with a small circular indent on the top (As shown below). I guessed that it could have been used in religious ceremonies, or as a tool for eating, drinking or digging. It turns out, it was a pumpkin scooper. I found that it’s very hard to come to any accurate conclusions about something with only one piece of information. This is a good example of why it’s important to have context and background information in order to understand what you’re observing.  

Image credit: Bright Side

Throughout this project, I want to learn how to look critically at the information I’m gathering to make sure I’m understanding it’s cultural context. When drawing conclusions and forming opinions about the information I am learning, I want to make sure I’m not just relying on my own biases or assumptions.   

Maybe after writing it 16 times (including the title and anthropologist once) in this post I’ll finally be able to remember the word “anthropology”. Oh, that’s another. 17 times now! But that’s not including the “anthropologist” in the brackets a few sentences ago, so that and the one earlier in this sentence bring us up to a grand total of 19 anthropologies! Oh wait, 20 now🤦‍♂️.

Previously…

In my last humanities project, I explored how the creation of the atomic bombs impacted WWII, and the future of nuclear energy. I learnt how development in nuclear fission technology led to the creation of an extremely powerful weapon that was used to end the war. I also learned that this same technology could be used for peaceful purposes to generate a clean source of energy. I concluded that whether this technology is used for destruction or creation depended on international cooperation. 

Currently…

This project is sort of a part 2 to that where I will explore how the expansion of nuclear science in the years following WWII led to the Cold War. Before starting this project all I knew about the Cold War was that it existed, and Russia was a part of it in some way. In the first 2 days of this project, I’ve already learnt about how the Cold War revolved around fear of the use of nuclear weapons between the two superpowers U.S. and USSR. Some of the topics I would like to learn more about are the nuclear arms race, the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the increased threat of nuclear weapons being used, and periods of international crisis and fear such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

Coming Up…

I have (almost) free range on where I bring this project. Not only do I get to choose my topic, but also the format of my final product. Throughout this project, I will work on strengthening my creativity skills by coming up with a unique way of presenting my learning. I already have a few ideas in mind for what my final product might be, like to explain rising tensions and the concept of MAD from the voice of a hockey commentator. 

I plan to keep these creative ideas in mind as I read and research these topics, so that I can start developing ideas earlier on in my learning process. I think taking this creative approach will keep me engaged in my learning because I’m interested in hockey, and I think it’s a good connection to the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union. 

Here’s my final video. Enjoy! 

(The way I started this post will make sense later.)

As you can tell, in this project, I made a short animated video about the Manhattan Project. I said short, right? Well this project was anything but! This was one of the longest projects I have ever done in PLP, lasting almost 1 and a half months. 

The first step was to research the Manhattan Project, and pick my topic. As you can see in my pre-project post, I didn’t know much about the Manhattan Project before this project.

As I researched, I became interested in the science behind the nuclear bombs. I decided to focus on the scientific advances during WWII that led to understanding nuclear fission. Because I was interested in the topic, the research was pretty easy. I learned about how nuclear science was initially used for war, but, in the years following WWII, became a clean energy source.

The next step for this project was to send an email to an expert who would give me feedback on my video later on. We did this so early in the project in hopes that we would be able to find more experts incase our original one wasn’t able to help. Unfortunately, even after I had reached out to 4 experts, I still didn’t have anyone who could give me feedback when my video was done.

Next, I had to make my video. First, I made a storyboard with rough descriptions of what I would show onscreen and what I would be saying. In the past, I have had trouble making storyboards, but, in my opinion, this one came together well. . . except for the fact that I changed my mind later on, and only ended up keeping half of my original plan, while adding a lot more elsewhere.

Finally, I was ready to make my animations. I was very excited for this part because I expected it would be quite fun, and not too hard. What I did not expect was how long it would take. I spent a full week animating, and recording voice-overs, and animating, and animating some more. . . until I thought I was done. Turns out, I was not. When I exported my animations to sync to my audio, all of the timings that I had spent so much time on changed. After another hour of retiming my clips, I was finally done, for real this time!

This is where I would normally say “Here’s my final video. Enjoy!”, but for this blog post I was supposed to put my video at the top, so instead, this is where I will say “Thanks for reading!”

Thanks for reading!

Summer is over, school is starting back up again, and, wait, I’m in grade 11? What? How? I still feel like I’m in grade 9 at most! Where did all the time go?

Anyway, we’re starting this school year of with a BANG! Literally. Our first project this year is about The Manhattan Project, a top-secret program during WWII that created two atomic bombs that the U.S. army used against Japan in August 1945. The final product of this project will be an animated video about a chosen topic related to the atomic bombs, but that is for the blog post at the end of this project which you can see here. This post, however, is about what I already know on this topic, and what I hope to learn along the way.

This is going to be a very long project, compared to normal, spanning 29 classes, and over a month, so there will be a lot of information to remember. Instead of trying to remember everything, I am creating a ‘second brain’ to remember it all for me, in a format called a Zettelkasten. A Zettelkasten is a note networking and filing system created by Niklas Luhmann, and it uses 3 types of notes: Fleeting notes, literature notes, and permanent notes. 

To keep track of the material I’m learning, I will write a fleeting note whenever I hear or see anything that catches my attention. It could be a couple words, or a sentence or two. As I research, read or watch anything, I will write a literature note to keep information from that source together. Of the types of note, literature notes usually contain the most information, and the least opinions. Every few days, I will go through my fleeting notes and literature notes, and turn them into permanent notes. Permanent notes are my opinions or thoughts on a topic, and should only be about 1 sentence long. Here is an example of the first literature note I made this year:

Before the start of this project, I knew very little about The Manhattan Project. I knew that it was a U.S. based project that involved creating bombs. In the last few days, I’ve already learned that it was between 1942 and 1945, and it produced 2 atomic bombs, called Little Boy and Fat Man, that were both used against Japan in August 1945. 

During this project, I hope to learn about some of the science behind how the bombs work, the outcome and consequences that came from dropping the bombs, the ethics behind using science in war, and why this project happened in the first place. In addition to materials I receive in class, I plan to research these topics through multiple sources online and on YouTube. I am looking forward to learning more about these scientific breakthroughs. 

This year, I’ve found that I am very good at writing. But that is only when I am interested in what I’m writing, have a strong opinion on the topic, and am therefore motivated to write. If I don’t have those 3 things, I am not very good at writing.

For example, in the Change Makers project, I chose to do my video about design elements in rollercoasters, which is certainly something that interests me. However, even after all of the research I did, I didn’t understand or know enough about the topic to form an opinion, and because of that, I really struggled to write my video’s script. I think one way I could’ve gotten a better understanding of Disney’s rollercoasters would’ve been to see the design process, or actually try designing or even building my own (scaled down) rollercoaster to tell a story, although, that may not have been possible with the time constraints of the project.

Another example is my speech for the Definitely not the 51st state project. I really struggled to decide on a topic for my speech. I was initially considering insulin and Medicare, hockey, or Jewish soldiers in WWII, but these topics were too big for me to fit into a 2 minute long speech. Then, I realized I could use my interest in flags, and write about Canada’s flag. That allowed me to use my creativity, and write a speech that I was proud of.

Another thing I think I did well this year was the winter exhibition. Along wth my resume and business card, my display had a lego tensegrity model, and a lego scale with candy and needle tips that I used for my interactive element. I really enjoyed designing and building my station because I was able to combine my interests, skills, and challenges to make a personal and coherent display. 

The goals that I set for myself at the start of this year were to work on my time management skills, add creative elements into my work, balance my time, and write down ideas even if they’re not the best. I’ve made progress on implementing creative elements and writing down ideas, but there’s certainly more work to be done for all of them. 

This year, I fell behind, and struggled to catch up because I got overwhelmed. Next year, I want to prevent myself from falling behind by creating strategies to procrastinate less, and start working earlier. 

Thank you for reading my presentation of learning. 

Today, I’m going to go over the goals that I set in my VMV at the start of the year, and see where I’ve made progress, and where I need to keep going. 

My learning intentions for this year were to write down ideas even if they’re not the best, to work on my time management, to ask for help, and to stay motivated by implementing creative aspects into my work. I want to hand in every assignment on time, while putting in maximal effort. I want to be able to work independently, and be responsible, motivated, creative, and engaged in my learning.

I included writing down ideas that aren’t the best in my VMV because in the past, I’d always try to find the perfect thing to write or say while doing an assignment. That led to me not writing anything because I couldn’t come up with something perfect, and it wasted my time meaning on the last day before that assignment is due, I’d be scrambling to come up with ideas, that I might’ve already discarded in the past while I was trying to find something perfect, and I’d end up with a rushed, low quality, or incomplete piece of work. 

This year, I’ve been trying to work on this, but it hasn’t gone super well. For example, I’m currently writing this mPOL at 10:57PM, the night before I present it to my parents and teacher, because I couldn’t come up with a perfect way to write it in the past week. A time when I did this well this year was in the recent Ology of Apology project, when I was writing my memorial explainer. When I went to start writing my explainer, the first thing I did was copy/paste my in class notes, my smart brevity note, and my memorial pitch into my document to work off of. And it worked! I was able to write my explainer without much trouble or stress. 

Another thing that I’ve been getting better at this year is maintaining focus, limiting distractions and being independent while working at home. For a long time, the only place with enough space for me to work at home was at the kitchen table, so there were lots of people and distractions around making it harder for me to make any progress on my work. So finally, this year, I got a desk to put in my room where I don’t have to worry about getting off topic. That’s made it way easier to stay on task and get work done. 

I find that I produce much better work when I am motivated, engaged, and interested in my work. That’s why I tend to do much better in classes like math, science, maker, woodworking, and band where I enjoy the material and learning, as opposed to classes like humanities and PGP, where I don’t connect very easily. I made a goal this year to connect to these assignments by adding my personality and creativity. I think I’ve been doing well on this goal this year. 

A specific example of when I added creativity into an assignment to make it easier for me is my winter exhibition blog post. I was proud of how I integrated the theme of balance throughout my post. I think that made it one of, if the best reflective post I’ve written in PLP. I was able to connect my hobbies, interests, sports, and medical condition together using 1 theme, and it came out very well. 

For the rest of this year, I want to continue to work on my time management, because that’s always been a challenge for me. Recently, I’ve started making priorities lists to try to help me organize and manage my time, but it hasn’t been super helpful. I plan to keep trying new strategies over the rest of the year, until I find something that works. 

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. 

I don’t want to repeat the same introduction for my winter exhibition blog post as last year, and since I can’t think of another one, this will have to do. 

This year, the PLP 10’s winter exhibition project was about marketing ourselves to potential future employers. Our driving question was “How might I present my passions, strengths, and learning to the world?” We answered the question by creating our own logos, business cards, and resumes. So let’s dive right in. 

The first step of this project was to design my own logo. I looked at some brand logos, and decided the simple, memorable ones were the best. I chose to make my logo a big “Q”, and I used some of my favourite colours to fill it in. I experimented with lots of different things I could put in the middle to represent me more, but ultimately, I decided to leave it empty to keep it simple. 

The next step was to make my business card. I started by writing my name and the necessary information that I needed, and choosing what font I would use, and where it would go. Then, I designed the background using colours from my logo. I initially put my logo on the top corner of my business card, but I decided to remove it because I wanted it on the back. Instead, I combined the diabetes logo and a ninja mask to fill the empty space on the front. I used a ninja mask to represent the activities I like to do. Before you ask, no I don’t do any sort of Martial Art or sneak around in black clothes, waiting to attack! I compete in the Canadian Ninja League (CNL), where I do obstacle courses that are similar to American Ninja Warrior. The diabetes logo obviously represents diabetes, because, if you didn’t already know, I have Type 1 diabetes.

While making my resume, I wanted to keep the aesthetic that I had from my business card and logo. I used the same colours, and style that I had used before, and I added my logo to the top.  I put my information under four main categories: Education, Extracurricular Activities, Skills, and Volunteering. There were lots of things that I’ve done that I forgot about, so looking back at what I had done while I was making my resume was really fun and interesting. 

To prepare for the winter exhibition, I planned out what I would have on my table, and what I would talk about with the visitors. I decided to theme my table around balancing my life. I chose this theme because a lot of things about me that I like doing, or have to do require a lot of balance in multiple different ways. For example, while competing in the CNL, there are always some obstacles that require balance in one way or another. Sometimes I have to cross a gap by rolling on a small pipe, or by running across small balance beams that are high above the ground.  

On my table at the winter exhibition, I had my resume, business cards, and my blog (This one! Right here! The one that you’re reading right now!), but I also had some things that I brought from home. I had a cool Lego tensegrity model, which is a gravity defying structure that uses tension and balance (There it is again) to hold it up. I chose to have this on my table because of it’s balance aspect, but also because I’m starting to look into potential jobs, and one of the career options I was considering is in some sort of engineering. I used the tensegrity model because it is a really cool engineering example, and I built it myself.

The other part of my winter exhibition table was an interactive element about diabetes. I built a Lego balance scale that could hold items on both sides. I also brought the needle tips that I use to inject insulin and a bunch of Rockets candy (Or Fizzers in the UK and Smarties in the USA and maybe also the rest of the world other than Canada? I’m not really sure. It’s these. ) that I use to boost my blood sugar levels if I go low. I got my visitors to try to guess how how to balance the scale by putting needle tips on one side and Rockets on the other. This represents how difficult it is for me to balance my actual blood sugar levels with the food I eat and the insulin I inject.

Another kind of balance in my life is mental balance. I have a lot of activities and things to do every day, so I have to find a way to balance it out. I need to make sure I finish all of my schoolwork, while also having time to go to my sports, practice playing music, spend time with friends and family, and save some time for myself. I definitely struggle with this because there’s just so many different things going on, and it’s very hard to balance it all out. 

I think having all these different kinds of balance in my life makes me a very well rounded person. It makes me able to react and adapt to quick changes and unexpected situations that life throws my way.

In my opinion, this was the best PLP exhibition that I have been a part of yet! In past years, I didn’t always have working, finished products that I was proud of, and I was very nervous when I was presenting my work. This year, I think all of the PLP 10s were ready and prepared and it went very smoothly. I was very confident in talking to the guests, and I am very proud of the work I was showing off. I can’t wait for some of my future exhibitions in PLP 10 and beyond!

Above is a quote from a high level Canadian government official in response to a question about how many Jewish people should be let into Canada after the end of World War II. 

We just finished another project in PLP 10. This one was about World War II, and it’s impact on the Canadian identity. Other elements in this project included an act of service, and a new note taking technique. This project was jam packed full of research, writing, formatting, and revising, so let’s hop straight in before I start to lose my marbles!

Let’s start with the note taking technique. As the name, Smart Brevity, suggests, this technique is meant to make your notes brief, simple and in order. There’s actually an entire book about Smart Brevity (That you can get here), and surprisingly enough for PLP, we actually didn’t read it. Smart Brevity has  four core elements. The muscular tease, the lede, the the context, and the option to go deeper. The muscular tease is usually a headline that uses six or less words. The lede is a memorable first sentence that includes the one big takeaway of the note. The context explains the facts, ideas, or thoughts using axioms. An axiom is a guiding phrase that provides structure for your notes. The go deeper section has more information that provides a greater understanding of the topic. There’s also a lot of specific, and strict formatting regulations that I had to follow. I tried making Smart Brevity notes during the learning that we were doing in class about WWII. Here’s my most successful Smart Brevity attempt:

The next portion of this project was our act of service. This is also where the final product of this project comes into play. Our class will gift a Canadian flag that will be flown at the Juno Beach Centre in France, along with a collection of our essays in a magazine style, that our teachers are calling a zine (pronounced “zeen”), to the local Lynn Valley Legion. Our zine will also be sent across the Atlantic to the Juno Beach Centre in France. To earn the money to buy the flag, each student had to do at least one hour of community service, and find a patron who would give us $10 for our work. 

When I was younger, over the summer, I would do classes at a local STEM camp called Zen Maker Labs, where I did activities like 3D printing, coding, and robotics. I thought it would be a great idea to volunteer in their kids classes. I did six hours of volunteering in the same classes I’d done when I was younger. It was a great experience, and it definitely helped me get more of an understanding of some types of jobs I can consider in the future. 

I asked my grandma if she would be my patron, because I knew that she has a family connection to WWII. She agreed, and gave me some more information and details that I didn’t know about her family, including that her father and uncle fought in the war.

Onto the zine! There were two big steps to making our zine. Step 1 was to write an essay with perfect MLA sourcing and formatting, and step 2 was to reformat it so that it fits into a zine. I decided to theme my essay around how Canadian’s opinions on minority groups, specifically Jewish people, changed due to the events that occurred during WWII. I came up with the thesis “The fight against the Holocaust influenced the Canadian identity because it promoted the value of equality among religions and cultures in Canada.” The next step was researching information on my topic. The research definitely took a while, but it wasn’t too hard, and I was able to find all of the information I needed. However, sourcing my work was a whole other story. It was very challenging to figure out the exact rules for formatting the in-text citations, as well as the works cited page. It took me multiple revisions and editions before I finally got it right. 

The process of writing my essay was also quite hard because I had struggles with summarizing and making my information fit within my paragraph topics. I also had some challenges because I wanted to include information about WWII in Europe, while also keeping my essay focussed on Canada. I initially had a paragraph with information about what Hitler wanted, why he wanted it, and what he did, but after a session of peer critique, I decided to replace it with a paragraph about Canada’s society in the 1930s leading up to the start of WWII. Below, are pictures of my essay to show the formatting that I spent hours perfecting through many revisions. 

Reformatting my essay into a zine was pretty easy, although I did need to make a few revisions and changes. To create the zine format, I had to make sure my essay and sources were exactly 2 or 3 pages. Not 2 and a half pages. Not 3 and a little bit. Not a tiny bit less than 2 pages. Exactly 2 or 3 pages. To do this, I didn’t change any of the content of my essay, but instead, I adjusted the size, changed the alignment, put it into columns, and added a quote and some pictures. One of the pictures I found was actually of my great grandfather who was a captain in the Canadian army in WWII.

I learn a lot about Canadian history and how Canada became a very multicultural society while doing research for this project. It was interesting to see the role economic and politics played in promoting the values of equality.

Thank you for reading this blog post. I hope you enjoyed reading about my progress through this project!

Have you ever tried to start a new habit? Or to stop a bad one? Did you succeed? The answer to that last question is most likely “no”. If so, don’t worry. It’s very hard to change your habits.

This year, instead of science, the PLP 10’s have a different class. That class is called PGP (Personal Growth Plan), but it’s basically a careers and self growth course. Anyway, we just finished our first ever PGP project. It was about habits, intentions, and success. 

One of the main focuses of this project was the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. In the book, Clear writes about personal experiences and uses examples ranging from the British Cycling team, to military analysts, to Coca Cola sales, aiming to help teach the reader how to change their habits. The book is spit into 4 sections. One for each of the four laws of behaviour change that Clear talked about in the book (Make it obvious, Make it attractive, Make it easy, Make it satisfying). The book definitely helped me think of some ideas on changing my own habits, and I’ll certainly use some of the strategies I read about. 

The first major assignment in this project was a Pop-Art image with symbols that represent me, and an intention statement. My intention statement was “My learning intentions for this year are to write down ideas even if they’re not the best, to work on my time management, and to balance my time doing enjoyable things with my time doing work.” On my Pop-Art that you can see below, the clock represents time management and I chose that because I frequently lose track of time, and don’t use time when I have it. The scale represents balancing my time by keeping each side equal. The paper and pencil represent writing down ideas and that’s important because I often find myself wasting time trying to come up with the perfect idea, and lose track of other good ideas.

The second and final major assignment in this project was to make an artifact relating to Atomic Habits. It could be anything! Some people made cakes, made album covers, and even redid their entire bedroom. I made a lock box challenge. It’s similar to an escape room, where you have a bunch of clues, and have to figure out the combination of numbers, letters, or shapes to unlock the door, but instead of trying to get out of a room, you’re trying to open a box with a reward on the inside. I chose to use four locks, each with a four digit number code. The clues all relate to key points throughout Atomic Habits and unlocking the locks represents working on good habits, and making bad habits more difficult, invisible, and unattractive. Click on the box below to see the clues I made, and try to solve them for yourself! (Some of the clues require a copy of Atomic Habits to answer) 

The driving question of this project was “How can small changes in my habits shape my success this year, and beyond?” A small change that I could make to shape my success would be to put a notification on my phone when I am on a game or YouTube for 1 hour. That would help me to not lose track of time, and I would have more time to do homework. I could make a cue and response system where my cue is the notification, and my response is to turn off my phone and start working. I think that would really help me, and I’m going to implement that into my daily life. 

Did you know that Dr. Frederick Banting, the inventor of insulin, sold the patent for only $1? 

Welcome back to my first blog post of the new school year! It’s still hard to believe I’m in grade 10! Our first project this year, was about why the world needs more Canada. We investigated the identity of Canada through discussions on current events, diversity, and Canadian literature.

We started this project by looking at the local news to learn about what’s going on in and around Canada. I chose to do some more research on the theft of the portrait of Winston Churchill from the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa, that I heard of while watching The National. I presented the information that I found to a small group of my classmates, and we discussed details like how it took 8 months for people to even realize that it was stolen, and the fact that it was sold at an auction in Europe. It was very interesting to see how a missing piece of art can be such a big deal for so many people. 

Another step that we took during this project was to analyze Canadian literature. We read some short stories including Tupelo, Totem, The Jade Peony, Meditations on a lake, and bread, to look at story elements like plot, setting, point of view, characters, conflict, theme, mood, and diction. I found this a bit challenging because the stories had hidden meanings within them. For example, Tupelo isn’t just a story about a crocodile under a bed. It’s a story about immigration, and acceptance. 

By this point, we’ve finished the lead up learning and work, and we’re almost ready to start working on the final product of this project which is… Drumroll please… Making a podcast episode! Everyone chose a unique, individual topic to do their podcast on, and I chose diabetes care since it’s a topic that I have a lot of experience on, since I, myself have type 1 diabetes. But before we could actually make the podcast episodes, we had to do some research to figure out what to say, and then write a multi paragraph composition (Essay) about it. It took a while for me to write my multi paragraph composition, but it wasn’t too hard. I included information about aspects like Canada’s universal healthcare, Canada’s global impact on diabetics and diabetes care, and especially Dr. Frederick Banting’s generosity. Dr. Banting was a Canadian medical scientist who discovered insulin. He could’ve made a lot of money off of the discovery, but instead he decided to sell the patent for only 1$. He said he thought it would be unethical for someone to profit on a discovery that could save lives. 

Before recording, editing, and finalizing the podcast, we had 1 more step. That was to make to intro music and cover art for the podcast. We looked at the cover arts and listened to the intro music of a few popular podcasts, and learnt how to use Garage Band to make our intro music. Everyone made their own cover art and intro music (Some people made more than one), and we had a class vote to decide which one we’d use. You can listen to my final podcast episode on Spotify here, and listen to everyone else’s here. 

My answer to the driving question of this project, “Why does the World need more Canada?” is that the world needs more Canada because Canadians believe in health over wealth, and are working towards a better world. I enjoyed working on this project because it helped me to get more of an understanding about what’s going on in the world around us, close and far. Another reason I liked this project is because I got to choose my topic, and that helped me relate to my work, and it motivated me and helped me persevere. I think that helped make my work better as well. 

Thank you for reading to the end of this blog post. Hopefully you enjoyed it! And keep an eye out, because I’ll have another post out soon!

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

I want to start by talking about how I made my work unique to me so far this year. A good example for this is in my “What Inspires Me?” video from the Story Finding in the Rockies project. I made this video unique to me not just with what I’m saying, but how I’m saying it. I decided to make it into a parody of one of my favourite songs, “Wake Me Up” by Avicii. I really like music, so I though this would be a great way to incorporate my interests with my work. 

What Inspires Quin | Wake Me Up Parody

Another example of where I made my work unique this year is in the Sparks Fly Project in science. We were learning about circuits, and, since I already knew a lot about circuits, I wanted to challenge myself. When we had some time in class to practice making circuits, I made a working Menorah with the right candles lighting up for each night of Hanukah out of LED lights and wires.

There are multiple times that I’ve felt frustrated with PLP work this year, but DI was definitely the most frustrating. I think one of the main reasons it was frustrating for me was the unfortunate timing. When we started working on our solutions, maker was just about to end, and it was very hard to find time outside of school hours that all of our group members could make it to. My group ended up only having one, maybe two meetups per week, and I don’t think we had our entire group in one place until the day before regionals. 

Now, I want to talk about a project where I learnt a lot about myself, and how I work. In the Rise of The Frankenstuffies project, I realized how much I struggle to make storyboards. I don’t think the usual format of a storyboard works very well for me. I find that they really don’t help me make a video/movie/film out of a text, and they just waste time when I have to draw every scene (Even just a very rough stick person and background). Also, for me, time stamping scenes is hard and unhelpful, because I can’t guess how long something will take very well, and if I guess too low, it throws everything off. For the current WWI Con project, I think the storyboard was very useful for making a graphic novel because it helped me make sure I had enough panels, and where and what size each panel will be. 

However, during the Frankenstuffie project, I found a way for me to make storyboards that are helpful to me. If I just write a brief description of each shot on separate keynote slides, I can easily look for what I need to do there. When I finish each shot, I put the clip over top of the keynote slide, effectively crossing it off the list. Now that I have that figured out, I will be able to make videos much easier in the future.

This year, I think I have improved in success behaviours such as time management, enthusiasm, and resilience. 

In the past, I haven’t been very good at managing my time and avoiding distractions. But, since I’m going to be away next week, these last couple weeks have been very busy for me. With the spring exhibition later today, this tPOL, a band concert on Tuesday, and work for my other classes that I need to get done before I leave, I’ve had to push through, and I’ve gotten everything done in a way that I’m happy with. I think, especially near the end of this year, I’ve gotten much better at time management, but I’ll still continue work on my time management skills. 

In my mPOL, I discussed how I wanted to relate to my humanities work more, and challenge myself in it. In the current WWI Con project, I challenged myself to learn how to use AI image generators, and I made my images using that. It took a lot of work to learn how to use AI, and how to get consistent characters. I found AI very engaging, and it made this project quite fun to work on.   

I think I’ve become more resilient this year in many ways. The most evident time that I became more resilient this year was during the Name of Nationalism project. In the past, I’d often get overwhelmed by large volumes of material. This year, I’ve worked on keeping calm, and it’s led to much better results. For me, resilience is crucial to finish assignments on time, so I think this will also help me reduce the amount of assignments that I hand in late. 

Thank you for reading my tPOL. 

How many Bosnians does it take to start WWI? The answer? Seven. Five to do nothing, one to have bad aim, and one to kill Franz Ferdinand. 

We just finished another project in PLP, and this one was about nationalism before World War One. We started by choosing what country’s nationalism we’d be focusing on, and I chose Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before this project, I barely knew anything about Bosnia and Herzegovina. I knew that it exists, but I had no idea how big it is, where it is, or even how to pronounce Herzegovina (Hur-suh-gov-een-ah).

The final goal of this project was to create an informative YouTube video on our case studies. This was a fairly short project with not very many steps until the final video. One of the things we did before making the video was watch other YouTube videos about nationalism from creators like Heimler’s History, and Crash Course. We watched these videos not for their content, but to learn about how to format our videos and make them interesting to the viewer. 

Okay, it’s time to start working our videos. I started by writing some questions that I wanted to answer about Bosnian nationalism.  I knew that Bosnia and Herzegovina only became a country in 1992, so one of my questions was “What was the area of present day Bosnia called before WWI?”, and another was “How did Bosnia and Herzegovina gain independence?”.  After a quick google search, I concluded that Bosnia and Herzegovina were provinces in Austria Hungary before WWI, and were a part of Yugoslavia between the end of WWI and 1992. Some of my other questions were “Where were the region borders in Austria Hungary?” and “Why were Bosnians important during WWI?”.

Now that I have my questions, I needed to answer them. It took a lot of research but I finally had the necessary  understanding that I needed to make my video. I started by planning my video in a graphic organizer with a general idea of what I’ll say in each shot, and the visuals that will be on screen. It was time to write my script. This was the hard part. I went though multiple editions, but I didn’t really like any of them. Eventually, I settled on something I was happy with, and started filming. The filming process was very easy and, even though I tripped on my words enough to make an entire bloopers video (That you can watch here), I got it done quickly. The editing was also very easy, and using some new skills and techniques that I learnt in the Rise of the Frankenstuffies project, I also finished that pretty fast. 

So, do you think that overall, nationalism is a good or a bad thing?

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

I want to start by talking about a project where I learnt a lot about myself, and how I work. In the Rise of The Frankenstuffies project, I realized how much I struggle to make storyboards. I don’t think the usual format of a storyboard works very well for me. I find that they really don’t help me make a video/movie/film out of a text, and they just waste time when I have to draw every scene (Even just a very rough stick person and background). Also, for me, time stamping scenes is hard and unhelpful, because I can’t guess how long something will take very well, and if I guess too low, it throws everything off. 

However, during that project, I found a way for me to make storyboards that are helpful to me. If I just write a brief description of each shot on separate keynote slides, I can easily look for what I need to do there. When I finish each shot, I put the clip over top of the keynote slide, effectively crossing it off the list. Now that I have that figured out, I will be able to make videos much easier in the future.

There are multiple times that I’ve felt frustrated with PLP work this year, but DI was definitely the most frustrating. I think one of the main reasons it was frustrating for me was the unfortunate timing. When we started working on our solutions, maker was just about to end, and it was very hard to find time outside of school hours that all of our group members could make it to. Because of our limited schedule, we really didn’t make much progress until the last minute. It was also frustrating for me that multiple of my group members didn’t really care about DI. I think it would be better for next year if there are some groups that only have people that really want to do DI and are interested in making the best solutions, and to have other groups for everyone else. 

Now, I want to talk about how I made my work unique to me so far this year. A good example for this is in my “What Inspires Me?” video from the Story Finding in the Rockies project. I made this video unique to me not just with what I’m saying, but how I’m saying it. I decided to make it into a parody of one of my favourite songs, “Wake Me Up” by Avicii. I really like music, so I though this would be a great way to incorporate my interests with my work. 

What Inspires Quin | Wake Me Up Parody

Another example of where I made my work unique this year is in the Sparks Fly Project in science. We were learning about circuits, and, since I already knew a lot about circuits, I wanted to challenge myself. When we had some time in class to practice making circuits, I made a working Menorah with the right candles lighting up for each day of Hanukah out of LED lights and wires. 

For the rest of this year, I want to focus on getting my assignments done on time. I think one of the main reasons that I’ve been late on some assignments this year is that if I don’t finish it in class, I get distracted when trying to work at home. I want to work on moving away from or removing distractions so that I can get more work done on time.

I also want to challenge myself more in projects that I relate to. I think I relate more to science and Maker than I do to Humanities, so that will be challenging now that science and maker are done. 

Thank you for reading my mPOL. 

And in first place… Take McFlight! What?! How?! Our solution didn’t work at all! How did we win? 

Okay, let’s rewind a bit. Destination Imagination (Or DI) is a global educational non-profit dedicated to inspiring the next generation of innovators, leaders, and creative problem solvers. Every year, there are four different challenges to choose from: Fine Arts, Engineering, Technical, and Scientific. I chose Technical, and was put in a group with three other grade 9s and one grade 10. My group members were Maddie, Lucas, Liam, and Tom.  

This year’s technical challenge is called Pinball Heroes. Each team had to make a pinball machine with three machine modules, and an action adventure story to go with it. Unfortunately, I can’t give very much details about what my group made because we have another tournament coming up. 

I think our group really struggled with communication. We basically just had a table until the night before the tournament. I think one of the reasons that we procrastinated so much was because we couldn’t find a time outside of school hours where we could all get together and work on our pinball machine. 

On the day of the tournament, we made a bunch of last minute additions and changes, and we rehearsed our play. We went to our instant challenge, which I’m not allowed to say anything about, and then we rehearsed our play some more. It was finally time. All our work from the past few months came down to that moment. Our presentation went decently, but we had a lot of holes in our story, and only half of our machine managed to work. Luckily, we were able to improvise and we ended up winning in our category. 

This is my sister… You might be wondering why she’s so mad. Well, I ripped her stuffies to pieces! You might think that’s pretty mean, but there’s a good reason, I promise. 

We just finished another project, so it’s time to reflect upon it. This one was called Rise of the Frankenstuffies. The goal of this project was to find out how writers make their message clear and engaging to their audience. The way we did this was by making our own stories and short movies. 

But a PLP project is never that simple.

To make our stories, first we had to read a story. We read a book called Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld. It’s a very good book about a reimagining World War 1, between the Clankers and the Darwinists. The Clankers use very ahead-of-their-time machines, whereas the Darwinists use fabricated creatures. Keep that in mind as I tell you about making my story. 

The first step of writing my story was making my character. But instead of just imagining our character, we made them in real life! We cut pieces off of stuffies and sewed them together in fun and goofy ways. But there was one problem… I don’t really have any stuffies. Luckily, my sister let me have some of her old ones. I ended up using Mickey Mouse’s body and legs, Blues clues’s ears, a cat’s head, a tiger’s nose, a unicorn’s horn, and a monkey’s arms. Doesn’t that sound like the Darwinist’s fabricated creatures? Hmm, I wonder if that’s why we read Leviathan and not some other book haha. 

Okay, now that I have my character, I need to come up with a back story for him. I’ll give you a quick summary of what I came up with:

Specimen #12, 036 was estimated to have been born in November 2006. He has no known ancestors in over 2 000 years. He is being studied in a science lab, and can’t remember a time when he wasn’t. He doesn’t have a proper name, so he goes by 36 (Short for Specimen #12, 036). He forces the scientist to pay him $9 500/month to research him. 

Now that I have my main character, I can start to decide what will happen in my story. I learnt about the hero’s journey, and wrote a summary of what would happen in each section. 

I decided that instead of writing and filming my whole story, I would just do a section of it with more details. I chose to use the 5^th and 6^th sections, because they have the most action. I plotted out my story using a Transition-Action-Details template where I listed what happens in each scene, how each scene starts, and the extra details about each scene. 

It’s finally time to write the story. It would’ve been way harder to write with out having done all the planning and preparation. I think as the story went along, I started slowly adding less details but I think I did a very good job on it. 

Now that I’m done the story, I can start to make my movie. I started off my making a storyboard. In the past, I’ve often struggled with storyboards, and this one was no different. I find that they really don’t help me make a video/movie/film out of a text, and they just waste time when I have to draw every scene (Even just a very rough stick person and background). Also, for me, time stamping scenes is hard and unhelpful, because I can’t guess how long something will take very well, and if I guess too low, it throws everything off.

However, during this project, I found a way for me to make storyboards that are helpful to me. If I just write a brief description of each shot on separate keynote slides, I can easily look for what I need to do there. When I finish each shot, I put the clip over top of the keynote slide, effectively crossing it off the list. Now that I have that figured out, I will be able to make videos much easier in the future. 

Speaking of making videos… 

If was very difficult to make my movie because I was using multiple different apps, and multiple features of these apps that I’d never used before. I used PuppetPals for the first time ever, and it was very hard to put each piece from each app together. But after a lot of work, I finally finished!

Enjoy!

New year, new project, new blog post. This was a very quick project because we had to squeeze it in before the end of the first semester. Enter: Let’s get Riel. 

In this project, we learnt about the evolving portrayal of Louis Riel while improving our writing skills along the way. We started by learning about the Red river settlement and how Riel drove the Canadian surveyors away in 1869. Then, we made Frayer Layers to expand our vocabulary.

After that, we looked at some texts to see how he was portrayed. We looked at three statues of Riel which were all very unique and told very different stories. We read through some primary sources (Newspapers from the 1800s, a documentation of Riel’s speech to the jury from 1885) and we watched a Louis Riel Heritage Minute by Historica Canada. Here is a paragraph that I wrote about it: 

In this text, Louis Riel is portrayed very calmly as he reflects upon his life and the battles that he fought. He says “I battled an insane and irresponsible government” which shows how Historica Canada looked back at what Riel did and interpreted his opinions. He mentions how he fought not only for himself, but also for the people of Manitoba and the North West. In the video, it seem as though Riel has accepted his fate because of how calm he looks. It seems somewhat uncanny to me, because if I was in his shoes, knowing my upcoming death, I would be very frantic. I wonder if he was this calm when it actually happened. 

It was time for the final product! Can you guess what it is? It is drumroll please… More writing!! It is a writing project after all. This time it’s a multi paragraph response to the driving question, “How has the portrayal of Louis Riel changed over time?”. But nothing’s ever perfect on the first try, so I sent it to my teacher for feedback. 

And here’s the final copy:

You know what time of year it is! No it’s not Christmas time, silly! Well actually it is Christmas time, but that’s not what I meant (But, is it still Christmas time if this gets posted after Christmas? I don’t know🤦‍♂️). Alright, let me give that another try. 

You read the title! Our PLP 9 winter exhibition just happened and it’s time to reflect upon it! 

If you didn’t get to go, the PLP 9’s designed and created Rube Goldberg machines in which each connection  was a metaphor for each group’s revolution. My group had the Haitian revolution, which is a very unknown revolution, especially in comparison to the other ones in the room.  

Okay, but how did we get here? Our this project was actually a long time coming, as it started all the way back in October with a Nation X experiment. We were divided into four groups with differing amounts of people before learning the roles of each group. There was group A (The poor workers), group B (The business class), group C (The ‘police’), and Group D (The royal family). We played out about a week of ‘in game’ time (around 2 real life hours) where the lower classes became increasingly more unhappy with how the nation was being run, and in the end, revolted against the upper classes, and created a new nation taking over Nation X. Keep in mind this was before we knew what the project was about. We just happened to make a revolution at the start of a revolution project before we knew it was a revolution project! I actually didn’t make the connection that we’d made a revolution during that experiment until now, while I was writing this paragraph. 

From there we started to learn about revolutions. We modernized Crane Brinton’s theory of a revolution using analogies as examples to demonstrate and simplify Crane’s theory. Crane Brinton’s theory is a common cycle including the four main stages of a revolution (Incubation, moderate, crisis, recovery). I used a seed growing into a tree on mine to show how a small seed of discontent can develop into a full blown revolution. 

To help learn about revolutions, we read George Orwell’s Animal Farm which was based on the Russian revolution. In this book, the animals on a farm in the UK become displeased with their farmer, and they pretty much kick him out. I won’t spoil rest of the story if you want to read if for yourself. We had 5 book chats at intervals throughout the book where we had different prompts to liven up the discussions. An example of these prompts was to write a question about the book on a piece of paper and pass it around in a circle with everyone else writing their answer on it. This encouraged us to reflect on the book and to see other people’s opinions and thoughts about it. 

After that, we were given one revolution to become an expert on. As I mentioned earlier, mine was the Haitian revolution. The first task was to make an infographic with a lot of information about the Haitian revolution and demonstrate how it fits into Crane Brinton’s theory of a revolution. 

It’s Rube Goldberg time! Well, sorta. We have to conceptualize our machine before we can build it. We started by writing down some events from the revolution we could use as metaphors. Then, we came up with ideas for connections that we could use on our machine based off of the events. 

Another thing we had to do before actually building the machine was to plan our documentary that we showed alongside our machine at the exhibition so that we could film while building. This documentary showed the building process for our machine, as well as some other theatrical additions. 

Okay. Now can we build? Finally! We gathered our materials, most of which were old household objects and cardboard, and over the next week and a half, we put it all together. But, the building process wasn’t very smooth. I think our group was full of leaders with not enough listeners. There was a lot of miscommunication and disagreements, and unfortunately, we never got a completed successful run through.

Despite the lack of a working machine, we still presented at the exhibition. We had an entire script written, but a last minute decision was made to ditch the scripts. It was too unnatural, and it would be better just to talk than to read. At the start, I was doing a lot of umming and forgetting what some things meant, but by the end, I was pretty confident with what I was saying, and I was able to explain the metaphors in the machine and the progress of the Haitian revolution. 

We were gone again! 

That’s right! PLP 9 has already gone on two field studies this year. But this time, something was a bit different…

Unlike the other field studies I’ve been on in the past in the PLP program, the most recent one at Loon Lake wasn’t lead by the PLP teachers. The Loon Lake site is on a UBC property in the middle of a forest about an hour drive from Seycove. Upon arrival, we met up with the main three Pinnacle Pursuit [link] employees that would be leading our group throughout the week. Jonathan, or Jono for short is the CEO and founder of Pinnacle Pursuits, and was the leader of our group. 

Over the week, we did many workshops, activities, and challenges including rock climbing, archery, ropes courses, and more. We learned about leadership, trust, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, communication, and much more. Some of my favourite things we did were rock climbing (Where I got to the top of the wall in the third fastest time ever!), the ropes course, and fort building. Some things however, were harder for me, and put me out of my comfort zone. The most obvious example of this is the trust falls. We started small, with a group of people pushing me around in a circle. But eventually, we stacked a chair on top of a table and fell of of that. That was very scary for me, but, in the end, I did end up doing it. 

One of the challenges was to build a shelter using sticks that could protect my entire group from the elements. We looked at our location and decided what frame would work best. We worked great as a team, and our shelter fit more than 3 times the necessary amount of people. We divided up the necessary tasks with some people gathering materials, and others finding a location to build. Then we all came together to build it. We used good Teamwork and  communication skills and worked together to get the job done. 

At the end of the trip, (almost) all of our parents came for a closing event where we showed them some of the learning we had done over the week, and shared a “Transfer Goal”. A Transfer Goal is a goal that I set for myself based on the experiences and learning we accomplished over the week.  My Transfer Goal was to work on being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I set this as my goal because I was really uncomfortable with the trust fall, but after I did it, I felt relieved and proud that I’d gone outside of my comfort zone. I’m glad that I pushed myself to be able to see what I’m capable of achieving. 

All in all, I really enjoyed this experience. I learned a lot about emotions, communication, teamwork, my classmates, and most importantly, me! Building these skills will help no matter what career I choose. I will certainly come back to many of the worksheets we did over the week for help in the future.

Take your kid to work day is an annual event in which grade nines from all over Canada follow their parent or any other adult to their workplace. This year, it took place on Wednesday November first, and I followed my mom to the North Vancouver courthouse.

 I learnt about the different jobs of different people at a courthouse. I made a video to tell the story of my day. Unfortunately, due to safety concerns, I wasn’t allowed to film in very many places in the courthouse, so I tried to work around that as best I could. Check it out below!

Recently, the PLP 9s went on a field study to Alberta. If you read my last blog post, you know that it wasn’t really about the trip (If you haven’t read it yet, read it here). So that’s what this blog is about. Lets hop right in.  

Before we left, we started by learning about the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and how it shaped Canada. I did some research on many of the places we’d visit, and the geography of the area. We learnt about the 5 themes of geography, location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and regions. We created a thesis to help answer the driving question “How has the geography of the west shaped who we are?”. My thesis was “The grand beauty of the Rocky Mountains improves peoples mental and physical well-being”.

While I was there, I asked people if they think their well-being was improving while they were staying near the Rockies. Everyone I asked said yes (Click here to see the full video), and how could you disagree with them!?! Just look at these pictures!! 

On the trip, I made a comic life about the 5 themes of geography featuring pictures I made on the trip. I described the pictures and why they relate to the themes of geography in a multi-touch book that I’ll write about in a moment. This was the first time I’d used the comic life app, and I really liked having the ability to curve and twist the words in cool, weird ways. 

The multi-touch book included my comic life and descriptions for each picture, as well as a picture/reflection from lots of places we visited on the trip. It also has all of my videos from Maker (See how I made them here). I found it quite difficult to make this book because it was challenging for me to make personal connections with many of the places that we’d visited. I find it hard to see the history of a place when all I can see is the present. 

Quick Mountain beauty break:

When I got home from the trip, I was looking up some information about the Columbia Icefield, and I saw some pictures that were taken from a similar angle three years apart, and the differences shocked me. The glacier had shrunk so much that I didn’t even think it was the same place! The rock I circled is a good reference point to visualize the change. This research helped me understand how the present has been shaped by history and human interaction.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, something might seem familiar. That’s right! This isn’t the first trip I’ve been on in PLP. Way back in May, I went to Oregon, and you can read more about what happened on that trip here. 

Thanks for reading!

Recently, the PLP 9s went on a field study to Alberta. But that’s not really what this blog post is about. If you want to know more about that, check it out here! So what is this post for then? Well, on this trip, we had to make 3 videos and one more after we got back. So lets start with the first one.

Silent video

Before we left, we made a plan for the storyline in our groups. We would be filming at the ghost town at the Three Valley Gap hotel (It’s a great place that people alway drive by, but almost never stop at.). Our plan was to film in the saloon, but upon arrival, we realized that most of the saloon was blocked off by ‘jail cell bars’. We wandered around the ghost town for other places with a similar setup, but didn’t find anything…

UNTIL, we went into the roundhouse, and noticed some fancy trains that we could go inside. With some clever editing by Caelum (See his blog here), we made it look like we were in the saloon, even if we were only in a fancy train car.

Watch it for yourself here!

(Here is the link to Ryan’s blog. I can’t add links in drop-downs 🤦‍♂️)

Tik Tok style video

For this video, I used a Tik Tok trend to make a short video. I had a plan to do a cool transitions video showing all the places we went to, but I quickly realized it wasn’t going to work and I needed to adapt. After looking at pictures of the places we’d visit, I was exited to go to the Athabasca Glacier at the Columbia Icefield. But when we got there, there was a ton of snow and clouds, and I could barely see my hand in front of my face. So I made a Tik Tok vs. Reality video about my experience comparing the beauty in the videos and the fog that I saw. Here it is!

Investigative video

This video was made to answer the driving question in humanities, “How has the geography of the west shaped who we are?”, and you can see more about that here! In this video, I interviewed people that I met on the trip, to confirm my thesis: “The grand beauty of the Rocky Mountains improves peoples mental and physical well-being”. Check it out here!

At Home video (What inspires me video)

This is the video I made after getting back from the trip, and it’s the one I’m most proud of by far. For this video, I really wanted to show ‘Me’. I really like music, and I had done two other song parody’s for school assignments/applications in the past, so this idea was perfect. The first step was to decide which song to use. I was trying to find some alternative lyrics that went very well with the original lyrics of some of my favourite songs. I came up with lots of ideas, and eventually decided on “Wake me up” by Avicii (RIP). Then, I had to make lyrics for the rest of the song. The next step was to actually record the audio. The singing was pretty quick and easy, but getting the background music was the real challenge. I couldn’t just use the original song because having two sets of lyrics fighting to be heard wouldn’t sound good. I found an instrumental version of the song on a website called X-minus (Link to it here). Then I gathered some video clips, and used Keynote to animate a few of them. After putting it all together in IMovie, here’s the final result:

Thanks for reading!

As the title suggests, I just had my first spring exhibition! I presented an ad that I made from our Oregon coast field study. I’m here to tell y’all about it and how I prepared for it.

So, this all started back near the start of May. We PLP 8’s started a project called “The Medium is the Message”. We started by learning about media, and defining a bunch of fancy words that involve advertising, like consumer (a person that buys items for themselves or others, sometimes influenced by media), target audience (a specific group of people that businesses direct their advertisements to), mass media (the spread of communication, pictures, words, thoughts and ideas), and more.

Then, I did a survey about advertising, and collected answers from my parents. The purpose of the survey was to see if ads work, and what types of ads are more effective. 

After that, I filled out a table about how advertisers persuade their audiences. I picked some ads, and looked at how they tried to persuade their target audiences. While I didn’t like the worksheet format, it was interesting to think about whether I was more interested in buying these products, as a result of the ads.

The ad I found most persuasive was the Orion telescopes one. I liked it because it was funny, and I’m quite interested in space. Here it is.

My next challenge was to make an ad for a business in Oregon. So, off to Oregon we go! Learn more about my trip here!

I was assigned to make an ad for Clark’s Restaurant in Cosmopolis WA. I did some research on Clark’s and then, it was Oregon time! Or not…? Well, you see, the trip is usually early in the year, but because of Covid 19, it had to be moved back to the end of the year. And unfortunately, that led to conflicts. On the first day of the trip, I also had a band cabaret that I had worked very hard to be ready for. So, a deal was arranged for me and the other 5 kids in band to go 1 day later. But unfortunately for me, the plan was to go to Clark’s on the first day, so I didn’t get to go, and I missed out on interviewing the owner.

After getting home from Oregon, I asked my group about what they learnt from their interview, but I didn’t get as much information as I wanted. For example, I didn’t know that Clark’s used to be a general store, or that, even after multiple owner changes, they never changed the original decor. I also didn’t get to taste the food, or see what the place looked like. This made it way harder to make my ad.

I made my first draft for my ad. As you can see below,I ended up doing 8 more drafts before finally making it to one I was happy with. I think my ad improved a lot from my first draft to my last one. The final one looks better and doesn’t have as much empty space. Aren’t you hungry, just looking at this!?! 

The last step was to present it at the exhibition. Me and my team prepared a table to match out theme with snacks (coke bottle gummies, and marshmallow ice cream cones to represent Clark’s famous milkshakes), and a game (putting a cheeseburger together as fast as possible).

So, how did the exhibition go? I think the spring exhibition went very well. I was way more confident than I was during the winter exhibitions.  I was able to talk about the process of making my ad and my trip to Oregon.

But the exhibition wasn’t perfect. My biggest problem with it was the break times. Or, should I say the lack thereof. During the winter exhibition, we were given designated break times, and we mostly stuck to it. For this exhibition however, we didn’t get designated break times, and since it was shorter than the winter exhibition, I assumed I should just stay at my station for the entire time. Other people had a different idea, and were on non-stop long breaks. Also, there were too many students eating the food that each station provided because they were meant for the guests.

My favourite part, by far, was doing the grade 12’s tour. It really inspired me, and it really makes me want to stay in PLP, just to do something like that! 

See you next year!

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

So what is a TPOL? 

A TPOL is a transitional presentation of learning. In these TPOLs, students showcase their learning using work we’ve done this year to prove that we’re ready to move onto the next grade. They demonstrate opportunities we have to progress as a learner for the years to come. TPOLs usually occur at the end of the school year (Mid to late June) and are student lead conferences between the student, a teacher, the parents, and sometimes more guests, similar to MPOLs.

So let’s hop right in! First I’m going to talk about My goals for this year. My goal for humanities is to get accomplished, whereas for Science and Maker, I was aiming for extending. The reason I chose these goals is because I wanted to push myself in subjects that I enjoy and am good at.  

Something that I think I could have done a better job at, as I mentioned in my MPOL, is the first PLP project I ever did. “From the Outside(rs) looking in” is the title of the very first project I did in humanities. In this project, I read “The Outsiders” and did many small assignments along the way. I was quite slow on many of the assignments and not because I was putting a lot of care and effort into them. I think I wasn’t ready for PLP as it is a big jump from what I was doing in grade 7. 

So, if that’s where I failed this year, then where did I succeed? I think I did a very good job on my Mind over Matter science project (Especially the final product). The final product for this project was to code a video game using scratch. I had used scratch for many things in the past, but if I’m being honest, I forgot about it’s existence, so this project reintroduced it to me. It wasn’t hard to get re-used to and with my experience on the platform, I quickly coded a unique game that I was very proud of, before helping my classmates with their’s. Check it out here! Since then, I’ve coded 2 more projects on scratch for fun that you can check out here and here. (The two games I’ve made require a keyboard to be played, for now at least.)

Another area that I struggled in this year is reflecting on my work. A big part of PLP is learning from your failures and sharing them with the world in things like blog posts and POLs. This is hard for me because I find it easier to look at facts than to reflect.  I’ve looked at TPOL blog posts from PLP students in older grades, and many of them talked about struggling with reflections and blog posts, so it seems like a common challenge. 

So, What does my work reveal about me? To answer this question, I’m going to take a look at my first science project this year, Small but mighty. I think I did a very good job on this project, as well as my other science projects. This shows that my work is better when I connect more to the subject. I’ve always liked math, science, and making stuff, and when my work can relate to the things I enjoy, I will produce a better final product.

But for the first part of Small but Mighty, I think I did even better than I would on a normal science project. Why? Because there was just the right amount of space for creativity. The immune system character cards weren’t like worksheets with one correct answer, or something where I had to design the entire thing. It was the perfect in between. I got to draw and customize my own characters while having a rough outline I could follow. Getting to choose what characters to use let me incorporate more things I like (In this case, Pokémon), and make puns and have fun describing them in a way  that works for the immune system organism that I’m using them for, but also based on what they look like. 

That said, one of my goals for next year is to be thinking about the assignment ahead of time. For example, in my Oregon Coast Field Study journal, there were some places I went to where I had to take pictures or videos for my journal, but I didn’t always check to see what I had to do there, so I ended up not having all the pictures that I needed. If I had been thinking about the assignment, it would have been way easier to complete. That’s one thing I want to work on for next year. 

Speaking of the Oregon field study, it seems like a good time to compare my first project in PLP with my most recent one. For my most recent project, I was assigned a business that I was going to visit in Oregon and make an ad for. I did some research on my business (Clark’s Restaurant), before going to Oregon where the plan was to go to Clark’s, and interview their owner. Instead, I went to a band Cabaret, where I played music for the entire school. I gathered information from my group members, who did get to go to Clark’s, but I didn’t get everything I wanted. With the limited information I had, I started making an ad for the spring exhibition. I was also pretty slow on this project, but this time, it’s because I had a lot of drafts (9). I put a lot of effort into each draft, and they got better and better each time. I think my work improved drastically since the start of the year. I was very proud of the ad that I presented at the spring exhibition. 

Also, at the exhibition, I did the grade 12’s tour, and I really enjoyed it. It really inspired me, and I can’t wait to do something like it in the future. Over all, I think my first year of PLP was a good experience. I’m looking forward to being a member of the PLP program again next year.

Recently, the PLP 8s went on our first field study, to the Oregon Coast. So, I’m going to tell you how it went.

So, why did we go to Oregon in the first place? Well, we started by learning about media, and advertising. I was assigned a business that I was going to visit in Oregon and make an ad for. I did some research on my business (Clark’s Restaurant), and then, it was Oregon time! Or not…? Well, you see, the trip is usually early in the year, but because of Covid 19, it had to be moved back to the end of the year. And unfortunately, that led to conflicts. On the first day of the trip, I also had a band cabaret that I had worked very hard to be ready for. So, a deal was arranged where me and the other 5 kids in band would go 1 day later. But unfortunately for me, the plan was to go to Clark’s on the first day, so I didn’t get to go. But that wasn’t the end of the problems. 

The bus that they took to get to Oregon broke down and we didn’t have enough room to get everyone home. So what happened? Well, after over 10 hours of rescheduling and replanning, we eventually left home… SIX HOURS LATE. We stopped in Burnaby to pick up another van, but it wasn’t ready for us, so we had to wait for almost an hour. With the delays that occurred, a six hour drive, became a 10 hour drive. I learnt a lot about patience, flexibility and adaptability that day.

From there on, the trip went normally, so I’ll get to the meat of this post, what I learnt! 

One of the places we went where I learnt a lot is the Hatfield Marine Science Center. We actually went on two separate occasions because there was so much to do. I learnt about many things, including tsunamis, crabs, shrimp, ROVs, and more. ROV stands for remotely operated vehicle, and, I got to build my own!  I designed it before building it using small pvc pipes, and I added pool noodles to get it to neutral buoyancy.

Another interesting activity we did was a tour on a boat called “marine discovery tours”. On this tour, we set crab traps in the river before making our way to the ocean. While unsuccessfully searching for whales, I learnt how they have one of the longest migration routes out of all of the animals in the world. After collecting the crabs we caught, we learnt about why the world wouldn’t work without what we didn’t expect to be too useful, plankton. Plankton is used in pharmaceuticals, diet supplements, pigments, and more, but there wouldn’t be any fish to eat, there wouldn’t be nearly as much oxygen on earth, and most importantly, THERE WOULD NOT BE ICE CREAM!!! Or, ice cream would be… let’s say… different…

Anyways, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on Christmas Day 2022, and since this was my first real travel experience since then, I learnt a lot about that too. I learnt how hard it is to calculate carbs for my meals, especially at buffets, and the fish place (where we shared a meal with a classmate). Often, I would get more food after my shot, so I eventually ended up adding more insulin to my shot in anticipation of the arrival of more food. I came home with the newfound skill of being able to independently handle my diabetes. 

All in all, it turns out, Ore-gon all right! 🤪

Here is the journal I put together during the field study!

Going Coastal 2023

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

read.bookcreator.com

And here are some other pictures I took!

I just finished my second ever PLP science project and it was just as good as the last one (Link to it here) if not better! For this project, we started by looking at objects and learning about their chemical and physical properties and making qualitative and quantitative observations about them. I learned how to use a triple beam balance (Check one out here) and user rulers to measure the size. I learnt the method to find the density (Mass X Volume = Density) of items. Then I found an object in the classroom that I used some of these strategies to describe. Can you guess what it is?

Mass: 65.765g (Quantitive)

Volume: 62.146cm³ (Quantitive)

Density: 1.058g/cm³ (Quantitive)

It is cylindrical. (Qualitative)

It has a big hole through the middle. (Qualitative) 

It’s a light brown-ish colour. (Qualitative)

It’s flammable. (Qualitative)

After my friends tried and failed to guess it (Are you better than them?), I learnt about different states of matter and how they change from one to another. I learnt about the kinetic molecular theory with this super cool website (?). Then I was ready to do a science experiment! I worked with Sidney (Link to his blog here) to design and execute our experiment.  We wanted to see how/if the type of liquid (Carbonated vs non-carbonated) makes a difference when diffusing a sugar free or regular gummy bear. Here is the slideshow we made.

The observations are a bit small, so you can read them here.

And onto the third and final portion (Not including writing this) of this project (And the funnest portion!). I learnt about atoms and their structure. 

Just remember:

Oops, i got carried away 🤪. So the final portion of this project is…

That’s right. I coded my own video game on scratch! My game is a obstacle course, but you, the player is a ice cube and you can change the temperature to become water, or gas as well! You can play it right here right now! Instructions are on the right side of the screen. See you there! 

Since the start of February, most of our classes have changed. For example, instead of maker, I now have science until the end of the year. In science, we just finished our first project, Small but mighty. For this project, we started by learning about cells and cellular organisms. I looked at many different things including dirty water, a dead moth’s wing, eraser shavings and more through microscopes and observed cells splitting and duplicating. Here are some pictures I took:

Water: (It’s way dirtier that I expected!)

Moth wing: (Woah! That’s a very cool pattern!)

Eraser shaving: (Looks like a… Cloud?)

Cell duplication: (The pink circle is 1 cell. The purple ones have both split, one into 2 pieces, and the other into 4 pieces.)

After that, I hypothesized that things we touch often will have more bacteria than things that rarely get touched, and I predicted that a doorknob would have more bacteria than a wall. I swabbed a doorknob and a wall and rubbed them on a substance called agar (A gelatinous substance used to grow bacteria.) in a Petri dish. I waited 7 days to compare the bacteria that had grown from the doorknob and the wall. The results? It turns out (Drum roll please)… I was right! There was more visible bacteria on the doorknob side than the wall side! The doorknob, however, didn’t grow nearly as much bacteria as I expected, or as much other people in my class who I used a doorknob. I think the reason for this is that I chose a doorknob that doesn’t get used as often as some others. here are the results: 

Next we learnt about the immune system and it’s components. I made character cards for each type of cell (And antibody) in the adaptive immune system. I used Pokémon as a base for my drawings, and I made puns out of their names. For some Pokémon, I tweaked their appearances to suit their cell more, for example the white blood cell (White blood CELLebi) had to be white of course. For others, I made up descriptions that make sense based on the Pokémon’s appearance and the cells. My personal favourite is the T-CELLesteela, which also happens to be based on one of my favourite Pokémon, Celesteela. 

We then learnt about vaccines, and how all four different types of vaccines work. An inactivated vaccine has a dead or inactivated virus that, when entered into the bloodstream, triggers the immune system just like how a activated virus would, giving the body a training session against that type of virus. A live attenuated vaccine works exactly the same as as inactivated vaccine, but the virus is weakened instead of killed. A subunit vaccine has small pieces of the virus, but they’re big enough to trigger the immune system, just like the previous two. mRNA Vaccines contain the DNA of the virus which, when injected, will be created by a ribosome inside of the cells, and that will trigger the immune system. I made a public health infographic with help from my friend Finn (Go check his blog out as well!) talking about a common reason why people might not want to get a vaccine. 

To finish this project, I made a public health poster for kids. My poster will likely be put in a North Vancouver elementary school (sd44/nvsd). I used drawings done by students at Eastview Elementary (An elementary school in sd44). 

Overall, I think this was a great way to start science, and I hope that the rest of the year will be just as good. 

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

So what is a MPOL? 

A MPOL is a mid-year presentation of learning. In these MPOLs, students showcase their learning using work we’ve done so far this year. They demonstrate opportunities we have to progress as a learner for the rest of the year. MPOLs usually occur in late January and are student lead conferences between the student, a teacher, the parents, and sometimes more guests. 

Avatar- My most proud project in Maker so far.

For the project I did on Avatar, I had to make a box/artifact representing our chosen theme statement from the movie. The theme statement I chose was based on the ‘conflict between humans and nature’ and was “Too much unchecked development can upset the balance of the natural world.

To represent my theme statement, I wanted to show the balance of the natural world. On one half of my box, I painted a forest and used real foliage to make the trees. The Mother Tree from Avatar is sticking up over the top. The other half of my box is a giant bulldozer. I put a balance scale on top of my box. On the scale, there used to be two trees, one on either side, and it would have been perfectly balanced. But, a bulldozer came and knocked one of the trees over, and off of the scale, unbalancing the whole thing. This shows how too much unchecked development can upset the balance of the natural world.

I’m most proud of this project because I’ve never done anything like it before, and I think it turned out well. I’ve never presented my work to anyone other than my teachers and peers, so this was a big change for me. 

BLJ- My least proud project in Maker so far.

The big life journal was essentially a big worksheet on my IPad. It was asking about my goals, my dreams, my mindset and much more. I’ve never liked things like this because it’s hard for me to think into the future. My answers ended up not as thoughtful or deep as they could have been. 

The Outsiders- My least proud project in humanities so far.

Way back in September, I did a project on the book “The Outsiders”. I read the book two chapters at a time, doing small assignments related to the book at each interval. I’ve always been a slow reader and have never liked novel studies, so therefore, I found this assignment very challenging. I definitely think I could do it better next time, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it again. 

The Renaissance- My most proud project in humanities so far.  

I just finished a project on the Renaissance in which I made a triptych featuring me and some innovations from the Renaissance. A triptych is an art piece with three panels. On the left side, I am in the Renaissance with some of the new things that were created in that time period. In the middle was me with what those ideas became. And on the right, I am with the ideas that they used before the Renaissance. I am proud of this because I had no idea how it would turn out and I think it was great. 

Did all of my work meet my standards?

Almost all of my work was up to my standards so far. Only two things at the start of the year didn’t. My least proud project of each subject was the first one I did in each, the BLJ and the Outsiders, which are the only two that were below my standards. Being the very start of PLP and high school altogether, I guess I just wasn’t quite ready for the jump. 

For the rest of this year I want to…

I want to improve my note taking skills. I usually struggle to pick out useful information, especially when it’s being read to me, and can’t be paused (I don’t want to miss something important while taking a note!). My goal is to listen and read with the assignment in mind. 

I also want to get better at breaking big projects down into small pieces. I can find projects overwhelming, and tend to procrastinate as a result.  This will be a big challenge for me next semester, but hopefully I’m up to the challenge!

To make my triptych, I used a combination of many apps on my IPad, including Keynote, and Superimpose X. I used Superimpose X to edit my face into historical paintings and I used Keynote to put everything together.

To make this triptych, I had to learn about the Renaissance and the innovations from that time period. This wasn’t too hard, because we had a pretty good source as a classroom resource. We also had to look up some external sources. We learned how to do some fact checking, which started quite tough, must became easier.

By far, my biggest takeaway from this project was learning how to fact check. My life will be way easier from now on!

What do you think?

This is a book that I made using pictures I drew in Maker recently. I learned about a lot of cool tools in Sketches Pro. I learned about symmetry lines, different brushes, the fill tool, layers, and the airbrush tool. I also learned about colours, shapes, and lines. I think the picture look great and I put them all here for you to see!

In PLP, we just had our first exhibition of the year, and my first exhibition ever!

Each grade 8s made a box/artifact to representing our theme statement from the movie “Avatar”. I chose to base my theme statement around the conflict between humans and nature.  My theme statement was “Too much unchecked development can upset the balance of the natural world”.

To represent my theme statement, I wanted to show the balance of the natural world. On one half of my box, I painted a forest and used real foliage to make the trees. The Mother Tree from Avatar is sticking up over the top. The other half of my box is a giant bulldozer. I put a balance scale on top of my box. On the scale, there used to be two trees, one on either side, and it would have been perfectly balanced. But, a bulldozer came and knocked one of the trees over, and off of the scale, unbalancing the whole thing. This shows how too much unchecked development can upset the balance of the natural world. Check out my box below!

Overall, I thought the exhibition went smoothly. I found the presentation kind of difficult, but I think I can keep working to improve my presenting skills. It was quite hard to stand for the entire setup process and presentation (Almost 5 hours straight) and giving my legs a bit of a break would have been much appreciated.

Building the box was fun, and it helped me reflect on the importance of the themes in the movie. I was proud of the work I did and enjoyed showing it off to my friends and family. It was also nice to see what some of my peers did for this project.

How might I use the still image to create and communicate through technology?

I can use a picture to show an emotion or tell a story. A picture can add impact to important points and make things more interesting and engaging. 

The 3 skills that I found most important are 

• the timer – It allows me to take a include myself in a picture.
• the lighting – It allows me to adjust the mood and/or emotion in a picture.  
• being able to move part of an image onto another. – It lefts me tell a story and make a more interesting and engaging image. 

Here are some photos I took using some of these skills.

Who am I as a PLP learner?

Today in Maker, we are making our first blog post to answer this question. To do so, I’m going to describe some work that we have done in Maker so far this year. It’s only been two months, but we’ve done a lot.  So let’s dive in!

The first project I’m going to write about is the ‘I am’ WordPack that we made. We wrote down a list of thing that can finish the statement ‘I am’ and then we put it into WordPack (An app that makes a shape out of a list of words). For this project, I had to really think hard about who I am.  I found that my identity is related to my family, the sports I play, my hobbies, and more.

For our next project, we made a user manual for ourselves. It is structured and formatted like a product user guide. I wrote a lot of information about myself. We had to write under titles including Product guide, Getting started, Accessibility, Settings, Warnings Troubleshooting, and Tips to maintain optimal performance. 

Meanwhile, we’ve done many projects in our Big Life Journal. Some of those include our Dreamboard, our Bucket list and our YouTube channel.  These projects show who I want to be or what I want to do in the future. I wouldn’t have thought so much about my future without these projects. Some thing that I put on my dreamboard is that I want to learn to play the piano, I want to get into university, and I want to do robotics. 

Last but not least, I’m going to write about the Laptop Memoji that we did. For this project, we had to make a Memoji to resemble ourselves and use the Memoji with a laptop. We then added ‘stickers’ onto the laptop that are meaningful to us. The stickers that I put on my laptop show different things about me. Pie is my favourite dessert, I play the electric bass guitar, I play hockey.

Welcome to my first blog post.

In Maker today, Thursday October 20th, 2022 the grade 8’s learnt about our blog posts! From now on, you can expect frequent new posts about PLP.  In Humanities, we are on the home stretch on our ‘From the Outside(rs) looking in project.