This year I have done a lot. We have have started this thing called inquiry blocks, and had 4 successful ones. We also started this thing called BOLTs. BOLTs stand for Blended Online Learning Tools. These BOLTs are basically groups of 5-15 students participating in a miniature course to learn or participate in something in order to get credit.
The first inquiry block started with picking sticky notes off of a wall. I chose one about ISIS. It was an extremely short inquiry, and I feel like my project was not very successful due to me not having much time to work on it.
For the second inquiry block, I decided to continue my ISIS inquiry. My question was "Why has ISIS not been eliminated?" I never found a solid answer other than the fact than we are working on eliminating them. I discovered that although we have a lot of allied countries, we are not dropping near enough air strikes on them as we should be. I ended up making a poster that just had a bunch of pictures on it since I wanted to create conversation with the people who were visiting. I felt like I informed a lot of people about the current situation with ISIS, and I would say this was a successful Demonstration Of Learning night.
My third inquiry block was in the first round of guided inquiry blocks. This inquiry block was based around discovering how the political system works. It was very cool to be able to fully understand where I stand politically. Throughout the inquiry project, everybody looked at different views and opinions on certain things such as education funding, governmental reform, and international affairs. If there was something we didn't agree with, we would state why we didn't agree, what we would do differently, and we would have to make a plan on how we would achieve that goal. At the end of the inquiry block, every student had to turn in a political manifesto, talking about our views on certain topics. Some students participated in a president style debate. Although I didn't participate, it was a very cool thing to watch.
During the same time period as the political inquiry block, I participated in a BOLT lead by Mr. Schneider called Who Am I? During this BOLT, we talked about who we are, and why we are the way we are. We spent a lot of time discussing why people are the way they are and how people tend to put on "masks" in order to conform to other people's standards, and we came to the sad truth that a lot of "masks" are forced upon us. We must act a certain way, look a certain way. During this BOLT, we also did some cool activities, like the picture on the left. This was a personal nutrition chart, talking about what makes me the way I am. The final product for this bolt was a personal manifesto. Schneider gave us a lot of time to complete this manifesto but I used every minute possible. On this manifesto I talked about some things that I do, things I think are right and wrong, and things that I believe. This BOLT was probably my favorite so far, because it benefitted me, and impacted the way I look at life.
Another thing I was working on during the political inquiry block was a BOLT lead by Mr. Justice. The BOLT was called Visualize This. For this inquiry, we did a lot of puzzles and riddles. A lot of the puzzles were extremely difficult to figure out, and some of them I did not even complete. No matter how frustrated I got with the challenge, Justice told me to keep trying to figure it out. This BOLT really helped me open up my thinking and to consider every possibility. For the final project for Visualize This, everyone had to create an optical illusion. The image to the right was mine. Overall, this was a very cool BOLT and helped change the way I learn.
The most recent inquiry block that I took part in was for game design. It was called Want to Build a Game? This inquiry started off by everyone playing games. The teachers who lead it, Schneider and Justice, told us to analyze the games we played and determine the things we liked, or disliked about certain games. Me and two other people, Ethan L. and Jacob H. decided we wanted to create a game together. We decided that the favorite game we had played was called Settlers of Catan. It was sort of a territorial game, and we decided that we wanted to base our game off of it. Little did we know that our final product would be nothing like Settlers of Catan. We wanted to have a hexagonal shaped board, in order to have the possibility of many players. We decided to make triangular spaces, so we could fit in a lot of possibilities to move your pieces. I ended up coming up with the name Vexillum, which means flag in latin. The goal of our game is to capture the flags that are on the board. You can land on spaces to get chance cards, which may help you or may hurt you. As we progressed in making the game, a lot of people took interest in it, and now there are a few people who really enjoy playing, and sometimes they get really competitive. For the demonstration of learning (DOL), we presented our game to the public. We had a decent amount of players come in to our room, and almost all of them seemed to enjoy it. A few of them even told us that they could see the game going into production in the future. I'm not sure about the rest of my group, but I have decided I would like to at least try and get my game produced. We will probably start a kickstarter in order to get the funding needed to start producing them. It may not even happen, but it is definitely a goal I have.
Last but not least, I have had a job for about a month. I work at a retirement facility called Bonaventure. I am a server there. A lot of the residents are really nice, but some are cranky. It is very stressful and is hard to manage it on top of school, but I am slowly getting the hang of it.
