Unschooling Journal Feb 6 – 12, 2022

by | Feb 20, 2022 | Blog | 0 comments

This week, I worked on a lot of math and not a lot of Science. I worked on (and finished) the unit 12 Send-in Assignment for math NVOL. I also worked on a lot about the history of the atom. It was pretty fun because I got to search stuff up, and searching stuff up is like going on a scavenger hunt. I also worked on a lot of WITW.

This week, I learned about machine learning, so I decided to try that! I worked on making machine learning program in Scratch.
I worked on WITW and I wrote the answers on the computer so it’s very easy to edit.
I wrote (and finished) the article about the history of the atom.
I worked on a lot…
of WITW!
I learned about the order of Canada, and I also learned about what the ceremony for selecting a member of the Order goes.
And every day, I worked on a journal/diary where I write about stuff I did that day.
And I made an animation! I used my dad’s new IPad to do it.

LC Response

Hi Ethan,

It’s great to hear you enjoyed researching the history of the atom. I agree that research is like a scavenger hunt in some ways, and that that is part of the appeal. I’d love to hear how you went about looking up various things for the essay. Thanks for sharing the first section of the essay — it looks like your introduction nicely captures the key idea that understanding the atom has taken many, many generations of building on and revising previous ideas, and also that this process will continue as we learn even more.

I’d be interested to hear more about the machine learning program you made in Scratch. I’d also love to hear about what you learned about machine learning in general, and what you might want to learn about it next.

For the work you shared about the Beijing Olympics, it looks like the first part was regarding a political cartoon. I remember being asked to analyse political cartoons in high school social studies class and feeling mystified, but then as I read more news and had more exposure as an older teen I found them much easier to understand. Have you seen many political cartoons before? It’s great you’re starting to analyse them. Here’s an encyclopedia article about political cartoons; as it notes, political cartoons reflect the opinion of the cartoonist (not necessarily something everyone would agree with).

The What in the World about the Order of Canada looks interesting. This came up in the news a week ago when Steve Fonyo died and newspapers wrote about his life — I see that your What in the World article mentions him as an example of an Order being removed. If you were to win a prestigious award for an accomplishment, what kind of award would you want to receive? 

Thank you for your Observing for Learning.

Best,

Shannon

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