Category Archives: ADL

Reflecting on My First Year

Posted on by
Reply

My Grade 9 Year

What a year it’s been! I feel like this year has been a great transitional year into high school for me, in terms of making important realizations regarding my academic interests and plans for the future. This year, I learned a variety of vital life skills, such as time-management and communication, which have helped me significantly to reach my goals. It was a rewarding experience to meet kind and knowledgeable teachers, all of whom I consider to be pleased with my progress throughout the year. Whenever I had difficulty with something, I would reach out to them or my fellow peers, who had a better understanding of the topic than I did. In doing so, I also overcame the challenge of being able to spend a reasonable amount of time on assignments, rather than applying too much perfectionism, something which can be a ‘double-edged sword’. I am very proud of all my accomplishments this year, especially getting a straight-A report card.

My Favorite Website

Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a wonderful resource for understanding concepts in a very engaging way. Personally, it helped me a lot with Math and Science, but I also found it helpful for Computer Programming. It has an uncountable number of videos, all of which contain great content.

My Favorite Video

Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | TED
A TED Talk done by Tim Urban, this video was very interesting to watch and taught me some valuable lessons about time management and procrastination. I watched this video in an effort to fight my habit of procrastination, and it worked remarkably well. It also gave me insight into the reasons as to why people procrastinate to begin with.

My Favorite Image

The image above is the advertising poster which a friend of mine, Bradley Perkins, and I, made for our chess club. It is definitely one of my favorite images this year, because it represents an initiative taken by Bradley and I, and encompasses something we deeply enjoy doing our free time.

My Favorite Quote

Albert Einstein Quote

The quote above would be my favorite quote this year, as it inspired me to incorporate more creativity into my schoolwork. Not that knowledge is not important, of course! Knowledge, while vital for success, to a certain extent, is not as paramount as taking a unique approach to things, as I have learned.

Works Cited

“Khan Academy | Free Online Courses, Lessons & Practice.” Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/. Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.

Tim Urban: Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator | TED. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU. Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.

Zygomatic. QuotesAndWisdom.Com – Quote: Albert Einstein – Imagination Is More Important than Knowledge. https://QuotesAndWisdom.com/38. Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.

Advertisement Persuasion Project

Posted on by
Reply

My Advertisement

Persuasion and Advertisement Techniques

Persuasion and Advertisement Unit Reflection

Why is it important to remember who benefits from the advertisement when you view an advertisement?
It is important to remember who benefits from the advertisement so that you don’t get carried away when considering it for purchase. For example, if you are viewing an advertisement for a sports car, and are thinking of buying it, possibly due to its excellent persuasive methods, it is vital to first think about who actually needs it, and would therefore benefit greatly from the information in the advertisement.

Choose one form of persuasion and explain why it is effective in persuading you/an audience: logical, ethical, emotional on an audience.
I believe that the emotional method of persuasion is extremely effective in persuading an audience, largely because of its ability to connect with viewers’ feelings and deep thoughts. This can be done by enforcing feelings of guilt, excitement, or craving of some sort. For example, an advertisement portraying the lack of clean water in developing countries might have the audience feeling guilty, and obligated to do something regarding that matter.

Choose an advertising technique and explain why it is effective in selling a product.
The logical technique of advertising is effective in selling a product, as it is excellent in the aspect of listing significant features of a specific product, or the reasons why you should buy it. A particularly adequate use of this method is by using a technique called the ‘Salesman Technique’, in which you act in a supporting way towards another product, and ultimately persuade the audience why your product is even better.

Core Competency Reflection

When there was disagreement within the group, I found it helpful to look at all the ideas at hand, and persuade my partner why one idea was better than others. By doing this, we grow closer as classmates and learn more through the process of exploration. I try to listen to my partner’s ideas to the very most, however, I know that it is equally important that my ideas get heard, and that I have a say in group decisions.

One of the ways I ensured my group was clear on what we were doing was to divide the tasks and clarify who was researching what. This allowed us to focus on our own aspects of the project, whether it be creating a persuasive advertisement, or analyzing the details of a good advertisement.

When my group was not productive, we took small breaks in order to get things moving in the right direction. We found that we did more work when we took breaks in between the block, in order to keep our brains energetic when they were ‘overloaded’.

ADL – Collaboration and Solutions for Financial Literacy

Posted on by
Reply

Data and Solutions

All-in cost: $800,000
Down-payment: 15% of All-in-cost -> $800,000 x 0.15 = $120,000
Current allocation: $80,000
Consistent yearly allocation: $10,000

Plan A:
$80,000 into a 3 year GIC, with 4.2% interest.
Year 1: $80,000 x 1.042 = $83,360
Year 2: $83,360 x 1.042 = $86,861.12
Year 3: $86,861.12 x 1.042 = $90,509.3
Invest the incoming $10,000 into a 1 year GIC, with 3.5% interest.
Year 1: $10,000 x 1.035 = $10,350
Year 2: ($10,350 + $10,000) x 1.035 = $21,062.25

Final Year: $90,509.3 + $21,062.25 + $10,000 = $121,571.55

Plan B:
$72,500 into a 3 year GIC, with 4.2% interest
Year 1: $72,500 x 1.042 = $75,545
Year 2: $75,545 x 1.042 = $78,717.9
Year 3: $78,717.9 x 1.042 = $82,024
$7500 into stocks, with no downturn, and 7.5%
Year 1: $7,500 x 1.075 = $8,062.5
Year 2: $8,062.5 x 1.075 = $8,667.19
Year 3: $8.667.2 x 1.075 = $9,317.23
Savings over 3 years: 3 x $10,000 = $30,000
Final Total: $82,024 + $9,317.23 + $30,000 =  $121,341.23

Plan C:

$72,500 into a 3 year GIC, with 4.2% interest
Year 1: $72,500 x 1.042 = $75,545
Year 2: $75,545 x 1.042 = $78,717.9
Year 3: $78,717.9 x 1.042 = $82,024
$7500 into stocks, with downturn; 7.5% and -6.9%
Year 1: $7,500 x 0.93 = $6,975
Year 2: $6,975 x 1.075 = $7,498.13
Year 3: $7498.12 x 1.075 = $8060.49
Savings over 3 years: 3 x $10,000 = $30,000
Final Total: $82,024 + $8060.49 + $30,000 =   $120,084.49

Justification

All three of the methods plans listed above ensure that you will have the satisfactory amount of money in order to make a 15% down payment. Even in the case of the stock market crashing, you will have more than enough money. This is extremely risky, and our group did not originally plan on considering it. I like to take calculated risks at times when there is nothing of massive financial concern, such as the case of Plan C. The scenarios explained have great returns, however, in the case of a potential emergency, the large amount of money invested in the GICs may not be withdrawn without the face of a large penalty, which could prove a major disadvantage in many cases. Also, the returns on the stock may not be as high as expected.

Collaboration and Communication

While performing various calculations and making collective decisions as a group, I was able to give interesting ideas and suggestions to my peers, while being an active listener, which involves enhancing your own thoughts based on the contributions of others. I listened to their ideas, and participated a fair amount in the process. I would award myself a 3.75/4 for my efforts, as I did not always agree with the slightly ‘conservative’ nature of my group members.

Core Competency Reflection

I can work with others to achieve a goal. In order to find the most effective way to attain a minimum of $40,000 over 3 years, we divided the tasks which needed to be completed among the group. By doing this, we established the jobs which each person need to complete, in order for our group to achieve our goal.

I can analyze evidence to make judgements. This assignment required quite a bit of ‘trial and error’, which meant going through the interesting process of trying various ideas, or in this case, scenarios. An example of this is that I predicted that simply using a 1 year GIC or 3 year GIC on their own would not be enough. This led us to experimenting with stocks, which was something we had originally not thought of doing.

I can tell the difference between facts and opinions. One thing which my group members were taking into account was the sheer risk of investing in stocks. This seemed like both a fact and opinion. In our case, we would be considering a scenario in which there would either be no crashing, or only one year of the stock crashing. In this way, it became evident that stocks would actually fetch us more money than we originally had, not making it risky.

I can take on roles and responsibilities in a group; I do my share. When we were deciding who in our group would do what task, I actively took initiative to complete my job in the most efficient way possible. When other group members where struggling to grasp their task, I was able to provide assistance as well.