Recently our unit has been about the earth and space. A few of our assignments revolved around different rocks. This poster was an assignment about asteroid mining. I used the information I collected in a document to create this poster.
This is my final poster:
What are you most proud of in your poster?
The amount of information that I had for this project was less than what I have had on my previous poster. I think that this information was arranged in a better way. My different points both made sense even though they were opposing sides. I am proud of my opposing points because I think that it really shows the risks in asteroid mining, and although there are many benefits to it, it could not be a good idea.
If you were able to do this project again what would you do?
I think that if I did this project again I would check that my factors for each individual point fit it the most. Some of these points I could not decide which factor to use and I might have chose the wrong one. If I had the opportunity to do this again I would also look at what different companies were going to do asteroid mining.
This unit I would like to improve in my cardiovascular endurance, because it will help me when I join swim squad and start to do laps. It will also help with the tournaments that I play in squash. Another thing that I would like to work on is my strength. I am not very strong and if I become stronger it will help in my further fitness. To help develop my cardiovascular endurance I can do activities that will help strengthen that such as running long distances and using jump rope.
Last week on thursday, we had a visitor come to school to perform and teach us about asian music. He played the Shakuhachi, as well as two of our music teachers playing traditional music on koto’s and shamisen. The shamisen and shakuhachi are both instruments that I didn’t know until this session. During there visit we were asked to think about the question “What makes music sound like it belongs to a particular part of the world?”.
During there visit they played a lot of songs for us, even though they were long I still found them interesting and fun to listen to. These were all of the pieces that were performed:
Classical koto/shamisen/shakuhachi trio – Eghigo Jishi
Shakuhachi solo – Honkyoku
Koto/shakuhachi duet – Kaze no Uta (Song of the Wind)
Koto solo – Gensokyoku (Fantasy)
Koto/shakuhachi duet – Deep Forest
On these different instruments techniques were used. On the koto techniques called pressing to change the note, sha sha, atoshi and shan The koto was tuned in a pentatonic scale, which is a scale of five notes.
I think that my favorite piece was the Deep Forest, which was an original song written by the koto teacher and our visitor. They told us the song was based on there hiking trip. As they were playing the song I thought of going through the forest in the fresh air and coming out feeling refreshed. This song reminded me of a hiking trip that I had been on which I really enjoyed.
I liked the shakuhachi instrument the best because it was a new instrument to me and I enjoyed learning about it. The visitor showed us the different sizes and the change of pitch in each size. I was surprised at how hard it was to blow into the shakuhachi and how much the positioning of the lip affected the sound that came out the instrument. I was also surprised that the shamisen notes were played with feeling its place other than having positioning. I think that the sound the instrument made when he slid his hand down the neck of it. I think that the scale of the instruments made it sound japanese. The tuning also had a big affect in this, but what I thought made the music sound really japanese was the buzzing sound that the instruments made. I really enjoyed this introduction to our new unit and I think that it has really helped me to experience a new kind of music.