Month: September 2017

This week I had Blast. Blast is an event meant for grade 9s to interact with each other. A few days prior to Blast, the grade 9s got separated into many teams. The teams were divided by color and there were over 14 of them. After looking at the list, I got put into the stripe group with Aaron. The day before Blast, there was a presentation in the cafeteria about the event. During the presentation, we learned about the events and what we needed to bring.

On the day of Blast, I came to school with strips of duct tape on my shirt. This was because we needed to wear our team color to Blast. At school, I put the stuff in my locker and headed to the cafeteria the place where all the teams were gathered. Once, all the students arrived we loaded onto the buses. The ride was pretty short, lasting less than 30 minutes. After we arrived, the groups separated and head to our activities. My groups first activity was a chicken tossing game. We had to throw chickens into hula-hoops for points. The next activity was a marble transporting game. The objective was to move a marble with tubes into a bin. Soon, it was time for lunch. The whole grade had hamburgers, chips, and a drink. Unfortunately, there was a ton of wasps.

After lunch, the grade a game of musical chairs. Each team chose two representatives, the pair would then need to look for an item before time runs out. The last team to retrieve the item would have been eliminated. After the game, the teams separated to proceed with the activities. My teams next activities were the low ropes course. The low rope course consisted of several activities. By the end of the course, it was time to leave the location. Back at school, the teachers who organized the event got a round of applause and the winners were announced.

In the end, Blast was a fun experience. By the end of the trip, I manage to make a few new friends. I also participated in multiple activities that built up teamwork. Overall, I had a great experience with Blast.

In this essay, I will talk about the reason I lied about my I pad charging. There are two main reasons why I did this. My first reason is the urge to watch tv. On the weekend I like to watch a lot of television. However, on the weekdays there’s nothing to do. Usually, I would be doing homework or reading a book. Sometimes, I just really want to watch something I enjoy. For my second reason, is not being able to fall asleep. Since summer vacation started, I’ve ended up going to bed later than my school time. Then when school started I ended up staying awake until 12 o’clock. The two hours can feel like a very long time with nothing to do.

Fortunately, I have a few ways to fix this. My first idea is to put the electronics outside. If I do this, it solves reason number one straight away. Doing this will separate me from any of the electronics, my laptop and IPad will be outside. Currently, I’m using my phone as an alarm clock so my phone can’t be outside. Unfortunately, this doesn’t solve the sleeping late problem. Fortunately, I could try going to bed earlier. If I go to bed at 9 I should go to bed at 11. If I do this hopefully, I will be sleeping at 10 very soon.

In the end, these are the reasons why I was watching tv. I wanted to watch more tv and I couldn’t fall asleep. Hopefully, by using these ideas it won’t happen again.

Last week, I talked about my first programming experience. This week I will be continuing to talk about my programming experience. Last week, I wrote a blog on my first experience programming. Since then I have learned a lot and on this blog, I will talk about my new knowledge.

Last week, I learned how to use buttons to make images appear and disappear. This week I learned how to label the buttons and images. Labelling buttons, images, or anything in the design area can be helpful in the console area. Labelling will make it easier to recognize the button you need. Later, our teacher told us to make something similar to a dating website profile. It needed to contain a first name, last name, eye color, hair color, and a description. Labeling everything made it much easier to figure out which label we were controlling. The teacher also taught us about string, integers, doubles, and boolean. These four things represented the words and numbers in the code. Unfortunately, by the time I finish labeling everything, it was the end of the class.

The next day, we continued with our dating website. Once, I finished the code and put in my pictures I was pretty much done. Our teacher then gave us the task of making a button that would show another profile. After I finish two more profiles, the teacher showed us how to make subprograms. Subprograms were convenient because we wouldn’t need to keep copy and pasting thing. Once, I learned about subprograms I integrated it into my dating website assignment. By the end of the class, I managed to finish five profiles.

On the last day of school before the weekend, we learned how to make an image move. This lesson was pretty quick, but it was still the most fun of all the classes. Each of the students picked a picture from the Internet. After this, we put in four buttons. Next, we program the violence to move the image up, down, left, and right. Once we finish the controls, the teachers told us to make for more buttons. These buttons would be left up, left down, right up, and right down. Unfortunately, that’s all we could complete in the class.

Overall, I’m learning more about computers every day. By the end of the semester, I would like to make a small game. So far I am having a good experience with programming.

This week I will be talking about what I have learned in my programming class (ICS). The first few days were not that interesting. We watched a movie called I Robot for two days. After watching a movie, our teacher gave us an assignment. The assignment was that we had to write a short paragraph about what the world would look like if it was no portable technology.

Once three days had passed we finally started programming. To start programming, we had to bring a USB key. This was because the school has blocked the use of programs on school computers. The school was afraid that viruses might be downloaded. Luckily, the teacher told us to bring our USB keys during the first three days.

Our first lesson would be how to make a web page. First, we went to visual studios. Visual studios is a software we could write programs on. Next, the teacher instructed us to choose the programming language C#. After everyone has chosen programming language C#, we entered the design phase. The first thing we did was change the background. We all went to the Internet to find a nice looking background. After we found a background we imported it into our program. Then we put in buttons, text boxes, labels, and picture boxes into the program. Just like the background we searched for images to replace the buttons and other things.

After we finished the design phase, it was time to make them do stuff. The first thing our teacher told us to do, was to program the picture to show up when we click the button. To start we needed to double-click the background. Doing this brings me to the console. I then typed “Picture1.Hide();”. This command will hide the image when the program starts. Next, I double-clicked on the button. In the console, I tried the show command. To show something I needed to type “Picture.Show();”. Now when I start the program the picture is gone, but if I click the button the picture appears.

In the end, I liked my first programming experience. The things I did on my first day was very simple. However, I do hope I learn more and that should happen later on in the year. Overall, I had fun and I hope to learn more.

This week I started my first day of high school. In this weeks blog, I will be talking about my high school experience.

On the first day of school, only grade 9 students would appear at school. When I first arrived at RGSS (Richmondgreen Secondary school) everyone went to the cafeteria for an assembly. After a few munites, some of my friends came found me in the cafeteria. Once, most of the chairs were taken the student council made their appearance. After, the introductions from the student council, a welcome from the new principal, and a speech from the board representative, we separated into our HR (Home Room) groups.

Unfortunately, I was not grouped with the friends sitting beside me. However, I did know some people such as Majd or Angela. After being lead to our HR, (224) we took our seats. I ended up sitting in the back of the classroom with Majd. Our first period was French but for our first day, we just received sheets of paper. Most of these sheets are rules and the course outline. Once, all the sheets were handed out we played a game of human bingo. It’s a game where you go around and ask people questions to fill out a sheet.

My next period was “Introduction to Computer Studies”. Luckily the classroom was right around the corner. However, only five other people showed up. After waiting for 10 minutes, A teacher came and took us to the offices. There, we found out we would need to go to room 344. This was because most of the ICS (Introduction to Computer Studies) students were grade 10 and there were no grade 10s in the school today. When arrived at room 344, I sat with some of my friends that didn’t have class either.

Once, the bell finally rang I went to my 3rd period. Normally we would have lunch but since it was a special day the schedule is a bit messed up. Instead of going straight to lunch, we would do our 3rd period first. My 3rd period would be science. In this period, I was reunited with Majd, I also had Aaron and some other people I knew. During the period, we received a ton of sheets. The sheets talked about rules and safety precautions. For lunch, every student got free pizza. After lunch, we had our final period. My final period was Exploring computer technology. In that class, I sat beside Aaron. We again talked about the rules and the course outline. The fourth period was the shortest of the classes. After the class, the grade 9s look at the facilities (for example, we would look at the libraries and outside trail). At 3:35 it was time to go home.

Overall, I had an enjoyable experience. So far I haven’t decided which was my favorite course. I hope to learn more about my classes, school, and classmates over the year. In the end, I think I had a good first day.