Tech Post: Timber Harvest

I was surprised at how hard and dangerous logging was. It was very risky to be a logger. I was also surprised at all the machines needed throughout the logging process. Also, machine evolution through the years was incredible. It was so interesting how some of the jobs people had to do in the less recent videos had been entirely replaced by machines. One last thing I noticed was that most people think that the entire process is just cutting down the tree, but you have to turn the logs to usable lumber as well.

Picture Essay Blog Post #1

We got a new project in English. It is a picture essay. A picture essay is basically a collection of pictures that together tell a story. You can have a caption, paragraph, or nothing explaining it. I chose to have captions. The topic of the photo essay is our life in the coronavirus. I already finished mine. This is it:

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You may have to click the link, then it takes you to the video. We are all going to share these on Monday. Another thing that we had to do was do a rough sketch of the pictures. This is mine:

That is the end of this post. I hope you enjoyed.

Fantasy Blog #2

Today I wrote an analytical paragraph. There are some comfortable parts and some challenging about writing it. The comfortable parts are that when I am writing it, I feel like I am reflecting on what the characters have done, but I am also reflecting on what I would’ve done If I were in their position. I also like how when I analyze what the characters did, I feel like I am also learning from their mistakes and their successes. A challenging part is that sometimes I’m writing it and I just don’t  understand why the character did something, but when I think about it more I start realizing what was going through the characters mind. Another challenge is that when I am using a quote, I sometimes don’t  remember the exact words or page number, but that only happened once and I figure it out. This concludes my second fantasy blog post.

Fantasy Blog #1

This is my first Fantasy Unit Blog Post. My feelings on the fantasy genre are that I like it, but I think that realistic fiction is better. I find that sometimes fantasy books are hard to understand and have a lot of things going on in the beginning, without the author explaining most of it. I don’t really like that, but as the story goes on and I start understanding more of what’s happening, I really enjoy reading it. My favorite fantasy book is probably Percy Jackson, because I could really relate to the story and its characters. I am reading four books for this unit: Mazes of Power, Barbary Station, Cry Pilot, and Embers of War. Overall, I am really excited to start this new unit.

Passion Project #7: Coping With These Times

As I’m sure you know, these times means the coronavirus quarantine. It has been pretty tough to not have a teachers guidance with this project, but there were some benefits of not being in a school environment for this project. One of them was that I was able to do the project at my own pace, like I could work on one thing when I wanted to and another thing another time. There were also challenges. One challenge was that we had basically no guidelines, which is also good, but it was kind of tough because I was always questioning what I was doing and if it was right. Another challenge is that we couldn’t really ask Mr. DeBerry any questions unless they were important, meaning that we couldn’t just check in with him whenever we wanted. I learned about myself during this project that if I really push myself, I can do really hard things, and that I can be self resourceful if I really try. Something tough was the time management, because sometimes I found that I was procrastinating a little bit. This is my last Passion Project blog post. Bye!

Tech Post #9/Last Day :(

Today is the last day of Quarter 3, making it the last day of Tech. Next quarter I will have Art. I am really sad that that Tech is over, but I am happy to be moving on to a new Quarterly. I really enjoyed Tech, and I learned a lot from it. For example, I learned how a type of machine called an automaton works, I learned what sautering was, I learned about atoms and electricity, and I learned a lot about mechanical engineering. I am very grateful that I got the opportunity to learn about all of this because I probably never would have if I hadn’t taken this course. My favorite part was when we did our automata because I could let my creativity take over and do whatever it wanted. I will really miss Tech. Goodbye. 🙁

Tech Post 7/Triangles

In Tech we learned about triangles and how they are the strongest shape. This really fascinated me because I always thought that every shape had equal strength, but know that I know about this, it makes perfect sense. A square can be made into a parallelogram, and a hexagon can twist into another shape, but if you think about a triangle, it can’t really contort in any way. I also never thought about this, but bridges have so many hidden triangles it’s crazy. Also, a lot of other structures do too, some beams have them. This concludes my post. Goodbye!

Electricity and the Atom/Tech Post 6

We started learning about electricity and atoms. I have always been pretty interested in this topic, so I am pretty excited we will get to learn about it. Mr. Calvert made an EDpuzzle, and that was pretty cool. I never knew that there were different types of atoms, and what really surprised me is that these different atoms have different weights. I also thought that it was really awesome how technology has evolved so much, and we can actually take pictures of atoms. I never thought that it was possible. I also thought it was cool how this one guy Dalton predicted, almost exactly, how the atoms looked. This is a picture of a hydrogen atom:

EDpuzzle/Tech Post 5

So, with the coronavirus keeping us out if school, We need to find a good resource to keep teaching us about our topics. One resource we have been using that I really like is EDpuzzle. The way it works is Mr. Calvert assigns us a video, but what EDpuzzle lets him do is add questions to parts of the video, so he can see what we’ve learned. EDpuzzle is cool because the videos are pretty interesting, and you can see if you really understand with the questions. This is a picture of the layout:

Passion Project #4: Learning About Myself

I have learned a lot about myself already during this Passion Project and these times. One of the major things I’ve learned about myself is that as a learner, I would much rather be doing things hands on, like the actual coding part, than be doing research. But I know that both of these are important, so I have to push myself to be doing great research. I’ve also learned that I can be very resourceful when I need to be. I already kind of knew this about myself, but I am seeing it in action during this project. As I expected, there is not much about Unity’s creators and facts, so it was tough to find good information, but I figured it out. What I have learned about myself as a reader is that I try to find only the most important things in articles and not really read them, so I am trying to stop doing that and read the whole article. As a writer, I have realized I tend  to go straight to what I think is important information, but now I am trying to write the whole story, not just the cool parts. I know that I have a tendency to procrastinate, but I am trying to shut that off. I think I have really improved as a time manager for myself, and I am trying not to procrastinate with this project.