A Rustic but Angry Rebel

This is Leon, an ordinary man from the third estate. Growing crops, cutting them, and selling them is what I do, or, at least, for the past 12 years. Recently, I became someone more than just a peasant. I participated in this dramatic event called the French Revolution, joined other people like me, and entirely changed France. If you wonder what happened to a person from selling wheat in rather to survive to a man thinking about the future of his country, come read my rustic story.

Below is the paragraph talking about the continuity and change caused by the French Revolution.

The French Revolution was a time when big changes happened in France. They got rid of the king-governed monarchy and established a new way to run the country called a republic, meaning citizens-led. Also, before the revolution, rich people from the first and second estates were treated with more privileges than the poor people. After the revolution, everyone was treated equally. Even though the revolution’s target was to change something, some things stayed the same. Even though France was a republic after its revolution, Napoleon came to power and he made many decisions for France, just like how Louis did when France was a monarchy. Also, although a democratic system was a target of the French Revolution, political events during revolutionary periods like the Reign of Terror still happened. In addition, France struggled to keep it stable even after becoming a republic instead of a monarchy.

From a King that is Well-Fed to a King Without its Head

Il y a 230 ans, le roi Louis XVI était guillotiné à Paris | RCF

Can you imagine a person who has her hair shaped like a boat? Can you imagine thousands of people marching into a prison and destroying it as a sign of rebellion? Or can you imagine the royal king of one country being publicly executed (later on, his entire family) and its head cut off by its citizens in front of one hundred thousand people’s eyes? Welcome to the French Revolution, as the citizens of France fought hard against their leader and superiors for equality and their human rights to be able to survive in the country. This was also considered one of the most significant revolutions of a country that changed its political system from monarchy, meaning that it was ruled by a king or queen, to democracy, meaning that all the decisions were made by the citizens themselves. In our video, we talk about this bloody transformation. Started with the unpleased peasants, they thought that they were treated unfairly compared to people who had a higher level than them since they were taxed higher and caused poor harvests for them, while the other group had always been enjoying their lives with less pressure. Then, their actions began. As they gathered to swear an oath, stormed the famous Bastille, which was a big jail that held prisoners from Paris, and later on, the craziest of them all, killed their king and later on his family by guillotine, as shown by the picture on the top. Our video includes a complete insight into the key events that happened, along with analyzed speeches and well-made graphics embedded. But most importantly, we also provide a discussion of whether the French Revolution was actually worth it or not.

Photo citation:

Un article rédigé par Laurette Duranel avec Bruno Fumat. *L’exécution de Louis XVI, gravure anonyme, Paris, musée Carnavalet / Wikipedia Commons*. Rcf.fr, RCF, le 20 janvier 2023 – Modifié le 17 juillet 2023, https://www.rcf.fr/articles/culture/il-y-a-230-ans-le-roi-louis-xvi-etait-guillotine-a-paris.

What’s in the Mind of a Suspected Axe Murderer

 

LIZZIE BORDEN (1860–1927). Source: Britannica
The central figure of the 1892 Fall River, Massachusetts, murders of her father and stepmother.

You get home, open the front door, and then find your mom and dad lying dead on the floor. What will you do? In this case, you become the main character, Lizzie Borden, in the book The Borden Murders (GoodReads page here). A case like this was shown thoroughly. The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden & The Trial of the Century by Sarah Miller demonstrated how a case can affect a person’s emotions and life.

It was on August 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts, when it all happened. The victims appeared to be Andrew Borden, Lizzie’s father, and Abby Borden, Lizzie’s stepmother. Lizzie, in the first place, acted unexpectedly calm. She first called her maid, Bridget Sullivan, to come and help. Soon, the information spread all over their block. Then the police officers arrived and started to investigate the bodies and the actual murderer. Neighbors were all suspected at that moment. But as the time passed, Lizzie Borden, surprisingly, became their prime suspect. Soon, the time of judgment came. The trial officially started in the courtroom with Albert Mason, the chief justice’s order. Other things also came along with it. It includes emotional loss, gossip suspicions from the citizens of Fall River, and most importantly, the pressure brought by the trial. Among the pages, you will find exciting decisions and bloody truths, along with themes and central ideas developed throughout the story. Will Lizzie Borden eventually pass with innocence, or will she be waiting for her consequences after the result of her being guilty of the murders?

 

The first page is about a central idea that talks about the court and judicial system at the time the story happened, which was considered really harsh.

This also serves as a conflict in the book for Lizzie’s emotions. Before the trial, Lizzie was a calm person. But during the trial, her hands started to shake and tears began to fall down.

The second page is about another central idea, or part-theme, about suspicions in the book.

Throughout the event, many suspicions appeared for different people, along with many different points of view. There are some suspicions that a Portuguese is a murderer, which can be connected to a social issue of racial inequality. But most of them are to suspect that Lizzie is the one who killed her parents herself. There are also consequences for them, which caused Lizzie to take special medicines made from drugs to calm down.

The third page is a cause-and-effect page of the reason and consequences if she really killed her parents.

These are the causes and effects, along with the connections if the murder was really done by Lizzie Borden herself. This could also link with other central ideas like suspicions.

The last page is about the importance of re-reading.

This is the importance shown of rereading here. One example is about another murder case, in which a Portuguese person is found guilty. This connects me to the previous racism issue when I re-read this part.

To sum up, The Border Murders is an exciting novel that contains excellent plots, while showing the central ideas and themes that are important for us to dive deeper. Find out the sequel of Lizzie Borden’s case by opening this book!

 

 

Each One To His Job

The found poem above was taken from pages 3-4 of the short story “Lather and Nothing Else” by Hernando Tellez. It shows the man versus self conflict between the protagonist, also known as the town barber, and the antagonist, Captain Torres. The rising action in this story reveals the internal struggle faced by the barber as he wrestles with his support for a group fighting against the government and his professional job as a barber. In the story, the barber finds himself in an unstable situation when Captain Torres, an enemy officer, enters his barbershop seeking a shave. As the barber lathers the captain’s face, he contemplates the opportunity to take revenge on the man responsible for countless deaths by killing him right away. The internal struggle between his personal beliefs and professional duty forms the gist of the story, as he grapples with the decision of whether to kill Captain Torres or spare his life. The narrative looks deeply into the barber’s inner thoughts and emotions, illustrating the complexity of his choices and the strong effect they could have on how he sees himself and what he feels is right.

If you want to read this amazing short story itself, from what I made my poem, check out here. Or if you want to learn more about the author that wrote this story, check out here.

If you finished the story and have the interest on the background information, I can tell you that all the plots happened in the story are based on a war called La Violencia. This civil war decimated Colombia between 1948 and 1958. If you want to learn more, check out here.

Product Design Blog

“When I first saw the picture of the made LED lamp, I was amazed. I thought it looked really cool and new. It got light bulbs in and seems can DIY the shapes of the outside. So I chose it and gave up the other phone holder choice.” It was online classes for us then, so we couldn’t do both. I can’t promise but I predict you will be able to try the two of them. 

(PS: This is my third time writing a blog, and I hope I can help you.)

Starting

Our designing app, Fusion 360, was, sometimes really really tricky for me. Early before the project, I basically could only draw some random circles, and easy rectangles, or, make a symbol using them. Soon I learned some new techniques and tools, in Fusion and applied them to some small figures:

One bull head using the “mirror” tool.

A star, I guess, still with the mirror tool.

For this turtle, I tried using more complicated tools. For this one, I included the circle, mirror, and one called “Circular Pattern”, which is kind of complex to use but very effective. The turtle’s ‘legs’ are made of that.

LED Lamp

Another normal day for me. But not normal when I got to my PD classroom. There’s a poll for us. Choosing between a phone holder sticking on the locker we tried to do on campus and a LED lamp that seems really cool. I was thinking about just the beginning part of this blog.

Our teacher, Miss Kim, soon announced the instructions to us. We’d divide up into 2 groups depending on what we chose. We will first need to analyze and gather ideas for what it should look like and what should we design on it. and soon, our first part of designing begins; making finger joints.

(My essential idea of a finger joint)

Fun Part

In the beginning part of December, new information came to us. The following process should be inserting pictures and ‘tracing’ them, meaning creating & inserting lines in the outside of the symbols we want on the image. So we will be able to cut it out on the lamps. I mean, it is a little frustrating at first. And I’m sure everyone will be confused, especially me in online classes.

Bottlenecks

“Wasn’t that easy for me,” I often tell myself when I’m working. I didn’t have a hard time finding pictures to trace but deciding what, to trace. I did many versions, at least 10. Finally, I finished. I saved myself from the “borderline of loss.”

Finished sketch.

Advice for LightBurn

On January 4, Miss Kim announced LightBurn, an app I downloaded a long time ago.

What it looks like, remember to download from Self-Service.

We now finally know that this is the last gate until laser cutting, well, I somehow predicted before already. Never mind, let’s go back to the instructions that include experiences after 2 times big corrections, 4 small corrections, and several times looking/checking.

  • Don’t change the size of the design for the first time using LightBurn
  • Look and memorize the colors for your sketch, really important.
  • Outside of the lamp, has to be red:

Example.

Also, The hole (for my 3rd square, one black hole, and two tiny red holes) needs to be carefully made.

Correct, correct, correct

My first submission for my LightBurn file got some problems, and I promise you also will unless you’re an expert at LightBurn. My 3 photos above, they’re all refined so can be referred to if want. My biggest problem was my face (2nd square for this picture) because it’s really hard to construct and sort. The detail inside the face is hard to do, so I recommend not choosing these kinds of faces. I resubmitted, and finally, the prototype came out. It will be in cardboard and only the final product will be in wood.

Analyzation

The next step for us is to analyze our prototypes, from Mr. Diego’s help, I realized that I need a small hole for the cord in one of my sides, and has to make it bigger. I did about 16^3. I think this size is big enough to fit so you can also make it. (PS: You can use some math in LightBurn just as I did if you don’t want to go back to fusion. Only works on changing sizes: if you want 16cm like me, you can do 16*2 which is 32, and time it by 10 because it’s in mm.)

It’s the width, not the height. Which isn’t 360 accurate because there’s a blank space between the two panels

You should remove the bottom line of the square (the one that overlaps the finger), but you can not to.

Conclusion

When I first saw the picture of the made LED lamp, I was amazed. I thought it looked really cool and new. It got light bulbs in and seems can DIY the shapes of the outside.

January 18, my final wood lamp is out. It didn’t disappoint me. On Oct 17, the project started, experienced 3 months of great designing time, had become one of my favorite works in ISB, and I hope you, can experience the same joys and happiness in Product Design.

Light bulbs aren’t out yet, but I can tell it’s color-changing! 🙂

(Final PS: I heard that Miss Kim will be starting this project at the beginning of the course, so, good for you!)

Daniel’s Product Design Summative-The Straw

Part 1: Divergent Ideas

Our ideas of brainstorming the utensils are actually coming from our brains directly. When we have an idea, we share it with each other. We draw it on the sheet if we think it’s acceptable and appropriate. But if we have ideas that are not so good, we decide if we want to improve our thinking more, which creates a new design; or we just give up the design. We discuss a lot when we decide if a design is good or not. This helps us come up with 10 different ideas that will help on eating food better.

Part 2: Feedback&Refinement

We have received a variety of post-its that includes both positive and negative feedback, and the most wishing feedbacks are the hoping for a neater look, which needs improvement on handwriting, drawing, and space usage. So, in parts 4 and 6, we’ve improved a lot on the drawing/writing and also organizing the space. Here are the 2 pictures of the drawing before the feedback and the drawing after the feedback.

Before:

After:

The 2nd picture is definitely clearer and neater than the 1st picture. I can tell that feedback is very important and impacts us to improve in a good way.

Also, since there is no feedback on changing/improving the design of the straw, we came up with an improvement of changing the two-people straw to single person straw, because we think this two-people straw is not so useful. If we change it to a single-person version, it doesn’t require several people to be able to use the straw, but any person can use it.

Improvement:

Part 3: Reflect&Share

The strength of this utensil is that it can be shortened/lengthened, which helps the user by drinking the beverage without wanting to move. The weakness of this utensil is that it might be dirty to use if your hand is not clean. The materials we need in rather make this are plastic and rubber bands.

Our Cardboard Arcade Game:

In those pictures I took, you can see our cardboard arcade that was made: the basketball hoop shooting game.

This game was played with a ball, a shooter and some hoops. You goal is to shoot the balls into the hoops to get points by using the ball-shooter, just like the picture above. There are easy ones, which you will get lower points by shooting in. And of course, there are harder ones that when you shoot in you will get higher points than the easy ones. There also includes cool features such as double-pointer and a 500pt box. That means when you throw into the box you will get 500 points immediately. Come and try if you want!

Here are some things that I would like to change.

Firstly, I would measure the cardboards more precisely and so we will find out easier when we are attaching the cardboard pieces to the main arcade. That will be more beautiful and also, more playable.

Secondly, I would change the point system lower so that it might be more sense for the target than the high points and even HIGHER targets we want to challenge. So that more students will come and play our game.

Lastly, I would want to make the arcade bigger and so it will be more interesting and also, more people will come and play our games.

My biggest obstacle of this arcade was making the ball-shooter, because it need to have a lot of  small cardboard pieces and you have to make a hole in it. It took us 4-5 classes to finish the shooter. Another part of the shooter is the small connecting wood bar. We have to cut it from a long wood bar. And we have use all we had(knife, scissors, mats etc.) and we finally made it after two class. This game need to be easier, I think.

Overall, I think this arcade was successful because it works the best statut of all of the tests we had, and a lot of 4th graders had came to our’s and played. I would love to make another one next time, and of course I’m going to choose Design at 7th grade.

Welcome to Your New Blog!

When you blog you create posts and posts are categorised according to your subject. Some categories have already been set up for you. If you need more categories you can add them as needed. It’s important that your posts have the following:

  • An engaging title – this should not include the name of the subject since this is referenced in the category.
  • Body – this is where you share your learning. This can include text, images, embedded videos from Dragons’ Tube or elsewhere. You should always consider how your post looks to your audience. Is it engaging? Do they want to keep reading?
  • Category – select one that has been set for you or add a new category. Posts can have more than one category e.g. Humanities and Myself as a Learner

Click on the images below to learn more about blogging: