What I know: I know that probability is used to figure out the odds or chances of something happening or not. I’ve also done probability in the previous years.

What I want to know: Honestly, I think I don’t really have anything I want to know.

Probability is important because: I think I actually use probability more than I think I do, because I use it when I’m choosing what to wear, because the weather effects what I wear. I also use it when I calculate things I’m buying and it’s on sale or something. Also, it’s important for gamblers because they use probability to make decisions for their turn.

I don’t want to do: Honestly in this unit I don’t want to do a lot because I’ve done this unit before, and I feel like we’re repeating things over and over. I’d rather challenge for something harder than usual, so I’ll be completely comfortable with it.

This is my recording of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the koto.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

I think my best speech was my final persuasive speech, because we actually had time to prepare and practice for it unlike the impromptu, but we also had cue cards that helped us during the speech. My persuasive speech also had more facts and sources of information that persuaded people.

Things I could improve in the speech is firstly, the way I wrote somethings on my cue cards. I think for some of them, I wrote things really complicated, that it even confused myself. I also feel like I’m talking too fast, especially at the start. I think if I slowed down, the audience would have time to understand my topic, and have the time to think about the question.

Here is the speech:

8C Drama: Persuasive Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

This is Katie’s speech, which I thought was really good. The use of her pitch, pace, emphasis and inflection made her speech really effective. I think she had a lot of feelings in her opinion on guns, and I was able to see that a lot both by the way she spoke and her physical expressions.

I think copyright hinders creativity because I think the copyright law is too strict. But I don’t think it’s a terrible law. Because, if someone were to ask me if they could copy my work that took time to make, right after I made it, then I probably wouldn’t want them to. But then again, I think this law is too harsh. Life of the creator plus another seventy years. This is too long. I believe people are able to learn and adapt from other ideas from other people, and the copyright law stops this from happening.

Originally, the purpose of the copyright was for the creators to gain profit from their creation/s for a certain time, and during that certain time, people will not be allowed to make copies without permission. It is said that sometimes even the mash ups and remixes that follows the fair use policy is categorized as plagiarism. I think that’s unfair.

In art, we’ve been looking at the stereotypes that cartoon character has, to show their identity or personality. The myp unit question is: “What are stereotypes?”

My font is Playbill. I drew my character as a drunk western male cowboy, holding a beer and having ‘bills’ in his pockets. I made his skin color slightly tanned, because I thought he would be out in the sun a lot, practicing for rodeos, where he gets his money from. His eyes are crossed, because the amount of alcohol he has drunk. He has a smile on his face which is attractive, but at the same time annoying. I made this his facial expression because I thought he would be drunk, and he would be ‘playing’ and taking life as a joke. I drew the mustache because it made him look older; around his 30′s. His collar bones show that he is rather skinny. I drew his arms a little thick, to show he has muscles, although I think this was hard for people to see. I made the color of his shirt bright orange (and red), because he is a person who wants/ has attention. You are able to see that he has money (in his pockets), so he’s pretty wealthy, not he’s not living a hard life. When I was “writing with a picture”, I actually thought what the word Playbill actually meant, and it meant a poster announcing news for theaters, but from my view, I thought Playbill meant someone playing with money, and has a rich, fun life, and from how the font looks like, I thought of cowboys.

I think my strength in this character design is his facial expression and his props/ clothing he has on or holding. I think I did well on his face because during the practice I messed up a lot. The props went pretty well, although I forgot the cowboy hat, which is probably one of biggest thing people would think of when they think of cowboys. As you can see, my first weakness is the hands/ arms, especially the hand which is pulling his hair up is really messed up, because it’s crooked in a wrong way, and even my own hand can’t do what his hand is doing there.

Obviously on my drawing skill, I can improve on his hands/ arms area. Also on my research stage, I could have research more about the small and basic things, like hands and legs.

I think stereotypes aided when I was creating my character because even though my character was pretty simple when you see it, it has meaning to everything, even small things, like the way he is standing, the beer he is holding, the money in his pocket.

Thumbnails of Inspiration:

Final:

8C Drama: Impromptu Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

Recently in drama, we’ve been working on speech making. We were told to pick a random topic from a hat. We had to present a 1 minute speech about it, and we got 30 seconds to prepare. My topic was purple.
My speech was not much of a success, because I really couldn’t think of a lot of things of purple, and I startled and paused a lot. I think my volume, pace and projection was good, but I didn’t really think change my pitch. I could work on emphasis and inflection.

Kate chose the poem, The Last Wolf by Mary TallMountain. I personally liked this poem, especially because it’s about an animal, and feels like it has many deep feelings in it. I liked the part where Kate compared it to a book called Shiver, which was a good comparison because it was related with the same animal, and Shiver is a good book. Her analyzing was good, and told about how the author used the right words, for example the flicking red and green lights are like spirits are fading.

Eva did the poem called Tuesday 9:00 AM by Denvor Butson. I think Eva did well in analyzing the poem, especially when she described the people suffering in the poem to natural disasters. I think this poem is confusing, but her explanation was detailed and easy to understand. I think the part where she compared the poem with a quote from Albert Einstein was good, because the quote really related to the poem, and had a connection. I think she could improve her presentation if she didn’t hesitate/ “um..um” and “like…likelike” so much, and maybe talked a bit more literary features.

Kazuki chose the poem called,  To a Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan. I really agreed and liked the part where he related to the Japanese TV series “Hajimete no Otsukai” (My first grocery shopping). His analyzing of the poem was good and detailed, although he could of improved his slide and how he talked because it was quite long and he talked fast without stopping which made me confused and bored.

May chose the poem, Lift Your Right Arm by Peter Cherches. I think the way she presented it was really creative, and interesting because it involved everyone in the class to join, which made the poem really fun. I also liked her pictures she chose for her slides and the poem she wrote in response to the poem, because it had connection to the original poem she chose. She could have spoken a bit more clearly, because I couldn’t really hear her sometimes.

The two different classical piece I will be looking at will be I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing by Aerosmith. I have posted already two youtube clips of very different versions of this song from the original on another blog post before this one, but I will only be comparing the original to the reggae version. These two songs have many differences when we look at it deeper than just listening to it.

Firstly, the tempo. The tempo is the speed of the music, and this can change during the song, like this song, where it’s very slow at the beginning than starts to get faster. The different version go the song consists faster tempo than the original, which is generally a lot slower. Next, the rhythm. The rhythm is the repeated pattern in a song. The reggae version of the song consists the same rhyme the whole time, the piano (I think) plays half notes. They also use different timbre/ instruments. The original uses violins, piano, guitar, bass and drums. On the other hand, the reggae uses piano, tambourine and drums. Not just instruments, they also use their body as instruments such as clapping (with multiple people). I also think the reggae uses more instruments that are traditional/ cultural such as steel pans. The reggae has soft dynamics and also has low pitch. The reggae compared to the original sounds more fun, but this won’t help the music match it’s topic because the song is about not forgetting someone/ more to sad song, and the of a characteristics of reggae the song a happy song. Therefore, the harmony of these two songs are different. Also, the vocals of these two songs are different. Although the they both are sang by male singers, the reggae singer has some special tone in his voice that stands out. Reggae music started in the 1960s in Jamaica, so there is a lot of Jamaican reggae singers.  Also, the reggae had some parts where there is more than one singer, especially the parts at the end of a verse.

Overall, just by the small differences in the elements of music, the song could sound very different and make you feel different. Like I said before, the reggae is a happy and bright song when the original is a very sad and sorrow. Therefore, not just these two songs I have analyzed, but also other songs and covers people made can have a really big difference just by playing/ changing the elements in the music.