Tech: Digitech | Evaluation Of My Animated Story

In the context of in the neighbourhood I will design and produce an animated story for children | 5 - 8 years olds to be used to show my audience target the everyday things that happen in the neighbourhood as kids.

My animated story is still currently under construction. May you please help me by giving me feedback on my conceptual design of my animated story.

Inquiry: Comparing Bridges

During our inquiry session, we were learning about Bridges, Tunnels and Towers. For this task we were asked make an comparison between the Wynyard Crossing Bridge and The Golden Gate Bridge. I worked collaboratively with Sanujan. If you don't know the Wynyard Crossing Bridge is a bascule bridge in New Zealand, and the Golden Gate Bridge a suspension bridge in San Francisco, California. Before we created this Venn Diagram, Sanujan and I had no clue about the Wynyard Crossing Bridge and The Golden Gate Bridge. To be honest we've heard of the Golden Gate Bridge, but never researched deeply about it. So we got to learn many new things.

Inquiry: Alphabet Key

This term, our focus for inquiry has been structures. We have been doing numerous amounts of activities based on this topic, and have all had a lot of fun. This activity in fact was the first one we had to complete. For this activity, everyone would be given a template with labels from A-Z. Our task was to find as many words as we could about structures. With these words, we would put them into the correct sections, and have a session to tell everyone else what we got. This task was to be done individually, and although it was fun, I would've preferred to do it with someone so that we can get twice as many answers.

Inquiry: Types Of Tunnels

This term, we have been focusing on structures as our inquiry. We have been doing many different activities based on this topic, but this one was about the type of tunnels, and the materials they are excavated into. In the process, we found 4 different tunnels. Hard rock tunnels, underwater tunnels, soft rock tunnels, and open cut tunnels. This activity had to be done with a partner, so I worked with Sanujan. We had a lot of fun working together for this task and others, and I hope that next time will be better.

Inquiry: Comparing Different Towers

This term, our inquiry focus has been on structures. We have been doing many activities based around this topic, and this activity was about towers. Our task, was to compare 2 different towers with our well known Sky Tower. This task had to be done in pairs, although we had to choose someone from Mrs Anderson's group to work with. So for this activity, I chose to work with Aung Naing. We had a lot of fun working together for this activity, so I do hope that next time we work together, it'll be twice as fun.

Maths: Chocolate Egg Question

Today all the maths groups were set a rich task to revise division. Most of our maths skills are well rounded but because there is a lot of people who do not know basic skills such as multiplication and division the set tasks could only be answered by using multiplication. To make sure we could explain our understanding of the question Jeremiah and I put together a DLO explaining how we got the answer to one of the set rich tasks. Jeremiah and I found this easy as we are both capable of doing basic math and our ability to explain the step by step procedure that helped us get our answers did not pale in comparison.

Writing: How To Tell Analogue Time

This week for writing, we were all asked by Miss Kirkpatrick to write an explanation, explaining step by step, how to tell analogue time on an analogue clock. In this explanation, we needed to explain how each hand of the clock works. Although this does not include the seconds hand, as it is not necessary to tell what minute, of an hour, of a day it is.

How to Tell Analogue Time

Tick tock, tick tock, this is not the sound of your average digital clock, rather an analogue
clock. A well known way of telling the time, but it is very famously known for the large
majority of people not knowing how to tell time from it. You may think that it is fine,
because you have a digital watch. Although knowing how to tell analogue time is a very
vital skill. Allow me to explain how these amazing pieces of technology work. Once you
have finished reading, you should know how each hand works.

There are two main hands all together: The hour hand or the short hand, and the minute
hand or the long hand. Let’s begin by learning about the short hand. This is the hand that
tells you what hour of the day or night it is. For most analogue clocks, this hand is
moving constantly every minute. Although it changes to the next hour each 60 minutes.
Here is a quick example. If the hour hand is directly on say three. Then it is three o’clock.
Although, if it is directly or nearly in between to numbers, say five and six, then the time is
most likely half past five.

Although this is not it. We still need to learn about the long hand. This hand is what tells
you what minute of an hour it is. This hand too is moving constantly. It changes each
minute every 60 seconds, and as said before, once the minute hand has moved 60 times,
it therefore has been an hour. Although there are quite a few call outs that comes with the
minute hand. Such as a quarter to blank (Blank being the hour it is). A few others would
be a quarter past blank, 45 to blank, 45 past blank, and half past blank. An example time
of the minute hand would be if the minute hand is on the hour three, then it is both quarter
past, and 45 to. Another example would be if the minute hand is on the hour 6, then it is
half past.

That is basically all you need to know, although you may have picked up that I said that
there are two main hands to the analogue clock. So what is the other remaining hand. Of
course, the second hand. This hand is constantly changing each second. Although you
don’t need this hand to tell the time, as usually you will not hear that the time is a quarter
seconds past eight thirty five. In fact, some analogue clocks don’t even have a second
hand at all.

We have not been learning digital time, instead, analogue time. Knowing how to tell
analogue time is a very important skill, but now that you have finished reading, you should
know how each hand works. So now, when someone asks you for the time you’ll know.

Inquiry: Comparing Different Structures

Through out our learning sessions in inquiry we've learnt many things about bridge, tunnels and towers. As you can see Sanujan and I have created a 3 circled Venn Diagram making a comparison between bridges, tunnels and towers. In order to complete this Venn Diagram, Sanujan and I were using our smart searching skills to find information for a particular segment.

Inquiry: Comparing Tunnels | Gotthard Tunnel and Water view Tunnel

This term, our focus on inquiry has been structures. We have been doing many different activities about this topic, and this activity was based around comparing two different tunnels. The Gotthard tunnel, and the Auckland Waterview tunnel. To compare these tunnels, we in pairs created a Venn Diagram. If you do not know what a Venn Diagram is, basically, you have two circles put together to have 3 circles. One on the left, one in the middle, and one to the right. In the outer circles, you will show the differences between two things, while the similarities will be in the middle. For this task, I worked with Sanujan, and we had a lot of fun researching, and drawing.

Tech: Digi Tech | Working On Our Animated Stories

Today, we had yet another session of tech. In tech, we have been learning how to code, in order to create an animated story talking about something in the neighbourhood.  My story is based around a game show. This show is run by a wizard named Genero, whom captures his contestants. They must answer 3 questions correctly to be granted their freedom. The way that this relates to in the neighbourhood is that this show is watched on local T.V all throughout the contestants neighbourhood. I have planned everything out for this animation, and I am near completion for this project.

HIIT: Term 3 | Week 5 | Session 2

Today we had our second session of our HIIT workout for week 5. In this session, our exercises were: push ups, squats, tap step, and star jumps. Although not everything went as planned in today's session, as we ran into a technical issue. Half way through our workout the music that would constantly be played in the background unintentionally stopped. We were all confused, but were reassured to continue. It turned out that our speaker, (the Ue boom) ran out of charge midway through our session. Now it was up to us to make sure that we were doing the exercise for at least 20 seconds, and had a 10 second break. We did around 5 sets of each exercise, having 20 seconds to do our exercises. I sure did have a lot of fun this session of HIIT. Though I do hope that next time we do something a little better than push ups, as that immediately got us tired right away.

Our Trip To The Sky Tower

Today our class, along with a few others visited Auckland city to learn about the infamous Sky Tower. This may just seem like a cool trip that we had to pay a small fee for, but you'd be wrong as we were kindly funded this trip by Mr Douglas Bates. Because of his kind act, we along with Learning Space 1 and Room 5 learnt so much about our iconic structure. We learnt such things as the glass we were standing on was a whole 38mm thick! Also that the Sky Tower's weight is equivalent to 6,000 elephants! There are over 70 floors in the Sky Tower, and we only visited roughly 15% of it! The main part of the trip was visiting the main observing floor, which is floor 51. From here, you can see people bungee jumping off from the top, and at least 80km of land at every direction. While we were up here, we all had a little challenge for ourselves. We were all given a little booklet with blank boxes, with arrows pointing at a landmark. All around us were hand rails with information on them about nearby landmarks. Our challenge to figure out what to put in each blank box. I had a lot of fun learning a whole bunch today, and I believe that everyone else did too.

Maths Week: Scaled Drawing

Last week, we had our very own maths week. In this week, the whole school would leave their everyday work, and focus just on maths. This includes any type of maths. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Although our class decided to do even more, scaled drawing. If you are not aware as to what scaled drawing is, basically you would have found an image to draw. This image would then be printed, and have grid lines drawn around the image. Next you would draw the exact same amount of boxes on a piece of paper. Although we would enlarge the size of these boxes to 2cm. That is it! The enlargement ratio of our drawing was 1:2, being 1cm grid lines converted into 2cm grid lines. Giving us the scale factor of 2. This was my, (Along with all other year 7's) first time doing this, so it was a challenge for most of us. All together, it took most people from Monday, to Thursday. Although there were still a few that needed to be completed on Friday. We spent every block of last week working on these drawings, and helping the other people the really needed it. Once we had finished drawing our image, we moved onto colouring it in just so that it looked as stunning as it could. Colouring took around the same amount of time as drawing the image. That is if people were doing a really good job at making sure there were no white spaces. The final thing to do now, was to place the image on a sheet of A3 coloured paper. Along with a label displaying our name, and the words scaled drawing, and 1:2 Enlargement. Now that mine has been completed, I am really proud of myself. Altogether, my favourite part has to be my body. The reason being that I made sure to keep it as symmetrical as possible. Along with the shading underneath the body. Next year, I will make sure that I choose something a bit more challenging and detailed, as I completed this one rather quickly. What I found most challenging in this activity was the colouring. I say this because I needed to make sure that not a single white space was left. I had a lot of fun drawing my scaled drawing this week, hopefully I have an even better time next year.

HIIT: Term 3 Week 4 | Session 2

Today, we had the second session of HIIT for week 4 of term 3. The reason as to why I did not publish a blogpost earlier is because I did not take part in the session. That's because I was sick. Although Monday is not what we are talking about. We're talking about today's session. Today we had only two exercises opposing to four. Our two exercises were push ups, and star jumps. We did at least six sets of each exercise. The session ran for at least 20 minutes, and we all had a lot of fun doing it.

HIIT: Week 3 | Session 1

Today, we had our first session for the third week of HIIT for term 2. For today's session, our exercises were high knee sprints, tap step, mountain climbers, and start jumps. We did this rotation in 4 lines of five, and ended up doing it at least 6 times each. We would do each exercise for 20 seconds, and have a 10 second break. This session of HIIT, we definitely managed to get puffed, as that is the goal for this whole program. Constantly, we were energised, and hard working to push our limits, and improve our previous records. I don't know what our next exercises will be, but I hope we will get just as energised.