In our math class we were told to pick 3 games heavily focused on deductive reasoning on a website with a bunch of games, like an old flash game website. Although I mainly went and looked at games like connect 4 or the turn puzzle, which had nothing to do with the assignment, I did spend a large amount of time on Minesweeper, a game that focus heavily on reasoning.

Minesweeper for those who dont know is a field of squares you have to clear out without touching any of the mines on the field. Touching them results in a loss. It would be random if it werent for the numbers that showed up when a bomb is near a square, going between 1 and 8 for the amount of squares around it, allowing you to reason where a bomb could be.

At first I played at random, which didnt get me very far, but eventually I was able to clear most of the board using inductive reasoning, and even got close to winning a couple of times. In the end I never won, but that day I got closer to winning than I have ever in my life.

In our most recent Unit, we were tasked with picking a book to read through, and then doing some assignments based on the book. For this unit, I picked The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. Believe it or not, I had not read it before this assignment, and I finished the book within a few days. It awoke my old love for dwarven culture, and made me fall in love with the series. For my first assignment, I was tasked with re-naming ten of the chapters, which I had a lot of fun doing. My main thought process for naming each of the chapters was to base it off of what happened in that chapter, and I gave a brief summary of the important parts of the chapter to explain why I had named each chapter so. It definitely helped on my creative thinking, which was my main goal for this course.

“I Can” Statements:

• I can develop a creative body over time (CREATIVE THINKING)
• I can deliberately learn about things that interest me, and ideas that pop into my head (CREATIVE THINKING)
• I can give, receive and act on feedback to progress in my goals. (CRITICAL AND REFLETIVE THINKING)

In my 3D game design course, we had to design a character in blender, and port it into unity to create a platformer game. In this unit, I had it down basically from the beginning, my only roadblocks being my own inability to use my time wisely, and 8 days I was away due to moving and being sick. It definitely built on my creative thinking, and I’d like to continue building this at home.

I can statements:

• I build on other’s ideas and add ideas of my own, or combine other peoples ideas to create new things or solve problems
• I have interests and passions I pursue over time
• I generate new ideas as I pursue my interests
  

In Unit 6, we were taught a small handful of coding concepts, such as a Binary Sorting, or Linear Searching, which both involve looking at a list and either changing or outputting a specific result. At first, I found them quite simple, as is with every unit. I’m currently working on making an algorithm which gives you the top 5 songs from any artist you put in, and It’s pretty hard. I have the first few bits of it down, I’ve been trying to run it through so it works without problems. I’ve been sick recently, so instead of 5 days, I had 3 days to work on it. However, I have been able to work through it, building on my Critical Thinking skills. This course has been a journey, and has definitely built on both my Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking skills.

I can statements

• I build the skills need to make my ideas work, and usually succeed, even if it takes some tries (CREATIVE THINKING)
• I generate new ideas as I pursue my interests (CREATIVE THINKING)
• I can experiment with different ways of doing things (CRITICAL THINKING)

Artifact 1
In Science, we did a lab which involved 2 cans, we had to keep one hot, and the other one we had to cool down as quickly as possible. This lab was called the “Thermal Energy” lab. Because we were given a small amount of supplies, we had to make-do with what we had in order to complete our assignment. At first, I tied the cold can (the can we had to cool down) to my cold water bottle and wrapped it with aluminum foil, but then we switched ideas and totally came up with the idea to bathe the can in some ice water. Oh yeah, we wrapped the hot can with aluminum foil, that kind of kept the heat in. In this lab, I learnt more about adapting to force a change on something using minimal supplies, rather than the intended goal to learn about thermal energy and how it worked.

Creative Thinking
This lab focused a lot on the two thinking core competencies, but its main focus was the Creative Thinking aspect of it. Using our minimal supplies, we had to get creative with techniques to cool or keep our can hot. It is WAY easier to make a can cold than hot, but then again, we only had aluminum foil, cold water, and tape (and whatever we could find outside). I’m still kind of impressed that we even got the can below 30 degrees, rather than 0 flat.