April’s Blog ;)

It’s Spirit Week and I have been participating!

On Monday it was Bedhead/PJ day, and I wore SpongeBob SquarePants PJ pants with a shirt and my robe and slippers.  On Tuesday it was Canada Day.  I wore a Canadian T-Shirt and red socks.  And, today, it was Idol Day.  I made a SpongeBob costume!! It was annoying though, so it came off in the afternoon.  Tomorrow is Switch Gender day, and then Class Colour Day (our colour is red.) I am participating on those days.

Cordwood Curling is coming up for grades 7-12!

We didn’t even know it was coming; Mr. Fisher just announced it this morning.  We didn’t get to pick teams; they were drawn out of a hat.  Cordwood should be fun.

Dance tomorrow night!

It is a Sprit Week Dance.  It is $3 to get in, but if you are wearing the clothing of the opposite sex you can get in for $2.50.  Since tomorrow is Switch Gender day, I guess if you show your spirit at the dance as well you can get in cheaper.  I am still deciding whether to wear clothing of the opposite sex or not.  Either way, I’m very excited for this dance!! Dances are always fun.

Pep Rally!

There is a Pep Rally on Friday, I think.  I am in the Tug-of-war (’cause I’m so big and strong, right? ) Oh well…hopefully I won’t kill myself. I am still asking myself why I signed up for Tug-Of-War.

Well, that’s basically all of the events for this week.  I guess since it’s Spring Break after this week, we have to squeeze it all in.  This has been a very busy week, but a fun one!!

~Chipsey 

This is our last week of school!! Yay!!

 As far as I know, I have no plans for Spring Break.  Maybe my parents will surprise me with something? I doubt it.  Oh well; I like being at home sometimes.  Spring Break will be fun; I will hang out with my buddies.  After all, that’s the best thing to do in life!

I do have a Spring Break job, though.  Mrs.G, the highschool math teacher, asked me to babysit her cat while she’s gone over Spring Break.  Since I have nothing better to do, I accepted.  I also want to see her cat; I have cat-sitted that cat before, and she’s a lot of fun!!

I am very excited for Spring Break; it’ll be great to get a week off of school.

~Chipsey

I have quite a bit to say about our podcasts and vlogs!

Let’s start with what me and Anna have been doing.  We recorded our very first vlog.  It went great.  We did it on book reviews; we reviewed the novels ‘Eragon,’ ‘The Five People you meet in Heaven,’ and ‘Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Hotties.’  Now all we have to do is edit the video on the computer (we are using the program called ‘Pinnacle Studio 9.’)

We also listened to peoples’ podcasts on Friday.  We had a sheet that had a chart on it.  The chart was positives and negatives for audio and content.  Everyone had some pretty interesting work done. 

Everyone’s on a roll now!

~Chipsey

Next week is Spirit Week at Joseph H. Kerr School!

Spirit Week is where you dress up to show your spirit for a certain day.  Here are the days and the events:

Monday - BEDHEAD/PAJAMA DAY: This is where you wear your pj’s to school and don’t brush your hair, no matter how messy it is.

Tuesday - CANADA DAY: This is where you dress in red/white, or somehow look Canadian.  Show that you’re truely Canadian!!

Wednesday - IDOL DAY: This day is where you dress up as your idol…fun fun!

Thursday - SWITCH GENDERS DAY: Girls dress up as guys, guys dress up as girls.  Does this say it all?

Friday - CLASS COLOUR DAY: Each class has a certain colour that they have to wear.  Our colour is red.

There is also a Spirit Week Dance.  It’s on March 23rd.  I can’t wait; the dance and week are going to be great!!

~Chipsey

We have been working on our vlogs and podcasts with a lot of success.

We have completed our script for our thrid episode, and we have completed our second episode.  Also, we have finished our ‘long-term planning.’  Long-term planning is planning ahead what your episodes are going to be about.  Now, all we need is a camera to record our third episode. 

Our third episode is about book reviews.  We have chosen to review ‘Eragon,’ ‘The Five People you meet in Heaven,’ and ‘Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Hotties.’  We have given short summaries of the novels and what we thought of them.

Hopefully the recording will go fine.  I’m sure it will.  We are going to try and get versions of the books and show them on the camera.  That may not work though, so it may not happen.

~Chipsey

Me and Toni did so AWESOME with Science Fair!

We have been asked to compete with our project in Flin Flon Regionals! WOOHOO!!!!!!! Yeah rock on for science geeks!!!

But we still have a lot of work to do…we have to work on our backboard, type up our log book, build another bridge, and so much more.  But the work will be worth it! 

…And if we win this science fair, we get to go to QUEBEC for PROVINCIALS!!!!

~Chipsey

In Science Class we have been going up to the highschool science lab and working with microscopes!

It’s really cool…but some of the stuff you can see is GROSS!!!!  We are in tables of three and I’m working with Nikita. 

We have only been there for two days so far.  Yesterday we basically just played around with the microscopes and we then did some work.  We had to use samples and draw pictures of it.  Today we actually picked up a pencil.  We had samples of plant and animal cells and we had to draw what they looked like and we had to lable parts, like the nucleus, cell wall, etc…so it’s really neat.  We have three strengths: 4, 10, and 40.  Obviously, the higher the number, the closer the microscope gets.  As you get closer you can see some pretty interesting (but gross) stuff.

Microscopes are the easiest kind of science for me to work with because textbook questions are difficult and this stuff is actually kind of cool!

~Chipsey

In class we have started Podcasting and Vlogging!

Podcasts are things that you can record your voice on.  Vlogs are just video blogs, you are on camera and blab for a while.  Our class has started Pocasts and Vlogs. 

We are in groups of 2 or 3, and I’m with Anna.  We are doing 10-12 episodes, and our show is called ‘Entertainment of our Days.’  We are done our first episode and almost done our second one.  We are going to make changes to the second one and we have started our script for our third one.

Oh, speaking of scripts, we had to do scripts for our episodes so we could remember what to say and plan what we are going to say.  Also, we had to have a topic for our podcasts and vlogs.  Me and Anna are doing ‘Entertainment.’

Our first episode is an interview with Mr. Fisher and a student from his class, Toni.  Our second one is centered around newly-released movies.  Our third one is going to be about book reviews.  The first two episodes are going to be podcasts and we are hoping the third one will be a vlog.

I’ll keep updating news about our podcasts and vlogs!

~Chipsey

There’s a program called “Audacity” that allows you to record your voice, import MP3 files, and much more!

We are working with it in school.  It’s on the computer and it’s a lot of fun!  We are working with podcasts and vlogs.  We need to think of 10 - 12 episodes for either podcasts or vlogs.  Vlogs is a video blog.

We can interview people for our projects as well.  We are in partners and I am with Anna.  We are almost done our first episode!  We are interviewing Mr. Fisher and Toni for it.  We are doing it tomorrow at lunch.  I can’t wait, it’ll be fun!

I’ll let y’all know when all of the episodes are completed and how they went!

~Chipsey

Copyright law is very important in our world.  It prevents people from stealing things that we don’t want them to have.

What is copyright? Copyright law means that something someone has made or produced (music, buildings, plans, etc.) belongs to them.  If you want to use it in a movie, commercial, TV show, etc…you have to get permission from the owner to use it.  If you claim something to be yours but it isn’t, the owner could sue you.  There is also a large fine for downloading music or videos off of the internet.

Why do we have a copyright law? If there was no such thing as copyright law in a country, industries such as record labels and software companies that produce intellectual property would probably go out of business.  If there was no copyright and no way of protecting their productions, everyone would steal it and the company wouldn’t make any money.  Without money the company would shut down.

Some advantages/disadvantages of copyright law: Some advantages of copyright law for the creators would be they would make more money and they don’t have to worry about people taking their productions.  Some disadvantages for the creators would be everything has to be licensed even if they don’t want it to be.  Some advantages of copyright law for the users would be it would encourage more people to get into the music business.  Some disadvantages for the users are they can’t take things without permission, and they could get sued.

“Creative Commons”: The Creative Commons enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.