Hass Project – Napoleonic Wars (Week 2)

Matthew Baldock on

During our time in class, and at home during the holidays, we have made progress towards our final goal of a simulation game. We have created a Gantt Chart to act as a timeline for our project and have finally finished the research portion of our project. Moving forward, we need to start on the presentation portion. we still need to complete the boards for Europe and the Battlefields. we also need to do the finishing touches on the Military, Political and Diplomatic Gamecards. These tasks are achievable if we follow our time budget shown in the Gantt Chart. We have also left 5 days to allow us to push back tasks if we are struggling to do a task within its allocated timeframe.

Hass-Project-Gantt-ChartDownload

HASS PROJECT – The Napoleonic Wars (Week 1)

Matthew Baldock on

As part of our Year 10 Humanities course, we are able to research a project of our own choice and are required to create a final product to showcase at a final exhibition in Term 4. the topic that my group and I have chosen to research is the Napoleonic wars. Our main focus area is to give a better understanding of all elements of the time period. The steps that we have completed are:

  1. Dividing research into 3 topics: Military, Political and Diplomatic
  2. Find and Source 10 seperate sources that will be relevant in helping us acheive our end result
  3. Starting on a timeline for key parts of the project and setting deadlines for certain elements.

Our plan for continuing this project includes brainstorming ideas for how to present our final product and creating a rough sketch for how it will look on the Exhibition Night.

Year 10 English – Inquisitive growth

Matthew Baldock on

During this year in English, many of my learning skills have been tested to withstand the pressure of ATAR learning. One of these skills that had seen the most improvement is my inquisitive ability. This ability was tested during our second task of the year in which we had to write a speech about a problematic topic using a persona. The task was foreign as we had never written as someone else before, but it did not worry me. I had decided to write my speech on problems in YouTube’s suggestion algorithm and had taken on the persona of a YouTube PR representative. During the assignment preparation, I had researched how YouTube recommends their content and certain harmful events that were caused due to their lack of agency. My extensive research had gone so far that I had researched extra topics just so I could better understand the situation, I had essentially absorbed the knowledge needed to be my persona. My hard work was later rewarded with an amazing score for achieving greatness in a foreign field.

My inquisitive growth had also been showcased during our sixth assignment where we had to compare two separate texts in an essay. During the preparation time before the essay, I had extensively researched both texts by memorizing various quotes and scenes and pinpointing how each quote was similar and different to one another. I had even studied how to write an essay to the point where I had a formula for each paragraph. This thorough pursuit of knowledge had led me to achieve excellence in this assignment as well. Throughout both assessments, this inquisitive attitude had always been a highlight of my work, as I believe that a normal person trains themselves to remember a concept while I should strive to understand it.

Chat-Bot Challenge

Matthew Baldock on

Over the course of three weeks, My Group and I have been working closely with the team at Firetech/au to create a prototype chat-bot for the popular streaming service Netflix. In our group, we used Teamwork and Individual Leadership to distribute work between us.

We utilised AWS Educate and completed “badges” which expanded our knowledge about the systems used and we used Amazon Lex (Amazon’s private programming platform) to create the prototype for our chat-bot. We divided the work into three main roles: Project Manager, UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) Designer and Lead Programmer. Using these roles, we were able to expand our knowledge on the technology used and also developed teamwork and leadership skills

Sustainability using Maths

Matthew Baldock on

This project that spanned the last three weeks of school had taught us the correct ways to reach sustainability and how to communicate it through mathematic devices (Graphs, Statistics Etc.). This project had us use this knowledge to create products that would communicate sustainable acts through the taught mathematical devices.

Throughout the lessons, we had learnt about the effects of our chosen topic: Food Wastes. we had learnt its negatives, counters and we also learnt about the three pillars of sustainability. These pillars include the Economic, Environmental and the Social pillars which needed to be balanced in order to reach a sustainable future.

My group and I had created a pamphlet to convey sustainability through statistics. We had also created a presentation to show the class to support and successfully pitch the idea of the pamphlet. This had utilised the research we did in class and was based around the three pillars.

First page that covers the Economic Pillar
Second page that covers the Environmental Pillar
Final Page that covers the Social Pillar

Overall, the experience of this project was very beneficial to expanding my understanding and learning about sustainability.

Year 9 Camp, Teamwork and Leadership

Matthew Baldock on

Teamwork is the combined effort of a group to persevere and finish a task or event, and leadership is the ability to guide and help that group to succeed. I believe that that I am able to be a very good team player as I am able to utilize the skills of my teammates to make everyone feel contributary or helpful. I know from personal experiences that void of these feelings can make others feel detached from the team which makes the person feel worse.

Recently, I had the privilege to go to camp and I was able to interact with my peers in a whole new light. We showed a variety of different skills, but teamwork and leadership were ones that seemed to outshine the rest. We were able to show both front and backseat leadership as we each led the group through the Australian outback each day and we helped each other take up groupwork to work as a cohesive team.

An example of a time of teamwork was when someone twisted their ankle on a hike and two other kids, and I stayed behind to help find the safest path of least resistance. We went at a pace he was comfortable with and we were very patient so he could make it back safely. We also divvied up his luggage between us so he would not have to carry more than necessary. Because of this he was able to make it back home without a serious injury.

This is a photo of us hiking the four ways track as a team

Since teamwork also means helping your team emotionally, there were a lot of heart to hearts during the camp. I remember when we were about to head out for another campsite I noticed a group member on a rockface by himself, so I talk to him and find out that he doesn’t feel the greatest and so we started talking about it. As time went on, more and more guys came over and we all started having a chat. This conversation wasn’t the typical guy conversation with people making jokes and cutting in, but it was a more sensible one, which was uncommon between boys but heartfelt nonetheless. This caused us to bond over time as we got to know more about each other, which caused our teamwork and receptiveness to become better. Overall, it was an experience where me and my classmates both got to utilize our skills in teamwork and leadership and get to bond with each other over it.

Creative Industries – Rollercoaster

Matthew Baldock on

In Years 7 Creative industries we were assigned a list of categories that we could choose to do a project form. I had chosen to do rollercoasters. At first, I had thought it would be easy to build a rollercoaster from straws but I was wrong.  My group and I had to use the design thinking process to work out how to build the roller coaster, which methods were effective and how to give our roller coaster a creative edge over the other teams. This project that spanned 11 weeks had taught me creativity, time management and most importantly how to work and communicate in a team efficiently.

 

Dear Year 8 Me

Matthew Baldock on

Dear Matthew Baldock,

Some advice that you could gift to people in year 7 going to year 8 would be to work hard going into the year because it will be best to adjust to the difficulty spike between year 7 and year 8. I would also say that they should prepare to invest more home time into projects and assessments.

I would probably change how this year’s classes would be arranged and which topics when. I would have for HASS: P&L, GEO, ECO, HIS for science: CHEM, PHYS, ES, BIO for Math I would not change anything and for English it would be: DOCO, PLAY, BOOK, P-C

My best learning experience was in HASS and English where I finally understood how to use and essay structure and how to plan and write essays efficiently. I would also say that I learnt a lot from the pop-culture group assignment as it taught me how to deal with the worst partners.

The most enjoyable thing about year 8 would be camp as it was a time for me to relax and have fun during the term and helped me destress from the mountains of work that we had gotten.

My biggest contribution would be when I donated games to my class for them to play with or when I donated to the salvation army Christmas appeal because I couldn’t participate in a lot of events because of a busier schedule with my academic life.

I learnt a lot about myself. Something that I had learnt is that I am a bigger procrastinator than I had thought as during the start of the year I would leave my assessments to the latest possible moment or leave it later then. I also like to not do things with my time, usually.

Breaking Barriers – Fixed to Growth Mindset

Matthew Baldock on

An example of a change of fixed to a growth mindset that I had was when I was in Grade 3 and I started playing footy.
In Grade 3, I started to play Australian Football with a friend and not being too athletic, I was really bad. I felt hopeless and I wanted to quit but my friend really wanted me to keep going with him so we started making goals. After weeks of training and a couple of goals being met, I started to get the hang of it. Till today, footy is my favourite sport and I love playing it even if I am bad at it by setting goals like me and my friend did all those years ago. This had made me realise the value of teamwork and how it can motivate someone to keep going.

 

 

INNOVATEed – Nulsen Directory of classes

Matthew Baldock on

This experience has helped me build my performance skills and over 10 weeks I have learnt how to work in a team effectively and learnt how to effectively speak in front of an audience without stuttering or using fillers.  I also built my confidence skills and was very committed to a topic. An outside activity that helped me was my football team, they help me to develop my teamwork and tolerance with others in my team. I also learnt confidence, commitment and grit.