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The learning from year 4 was full of new discoveries, reflections, and thoughts. Each semester brought a different perspective towards modern-day media, corporations, and politics. Since the topics were closely related to our lives, I found the lessons to be real and fairly unbiased. Specifically, some memorable units were, the Israel-Palestine issue, analyzing and watching "The Corporation", and the relationship between media and politics (political compass,  BBC, Murdoch, etc..). Moreover, on top of gaining insightful knowledge on these social issues, I also learned how to distinguish between unbiased and biased media, and in terms garner an accurate perspective. In both school and outside of school, I was able to utilize my knowledge and skills to expand my information literacy, and mature how I view the world. Overall, I had an amazing 3 semesters, in which the research and interactive assignments that I accomplished, have and will continue to affect my critical thinking....

 Due to the snow forecast, our class became online, but we still continued and discussed our group project. Before that though, Mr. Paterson lectured us about how powerful connections in regional scales can also leave a huge impact on the world. Top of the Pops is a show which invited artists of the top 40 songs to perform live (well, lip-synced to be specific). He mentioned how the majority of the audience was young teens. When I looked Franz Ferdinand up, this fact was evident. Little did I know that some of these teens were sexually abused by the host of this show, Jimmy Savile. After his death, many came out and claimed that Savile had abused and raped them. However, no allegations had come out about this incident, and I was curious as to why. Then I learned that Savile had numerous connections with the royal family the prime minister and other high officials. Knowing that I would have been reluctant to start an investigation despite his cruel actions. Even if I do file a repor...

 3 instructions. One pen, and an endless possibility of answers. We were tasked today to draw 9 circles in a square pattern and try to connect them using continuous straight lines. When I first heard about this, I remember discovering a similar one way back in 4th grade. It was a challenge to connect them all in 4 straight lines. But when Mr. Paterson told me that the version I wrote was the easiest one, that's when my creativity started kicking in. However, I couldn't think of any other ideas. When I saw the different patterns I was astounded at how I couldn't think of them. I was so focused on the original answer that my brain wasn't capable of figuring out different ones. However, when it came to connecting all circles in one line, I had a much better streak of answers. In fact, I had thought of at least 3 different ways to complete it with 1 try. It all came down to how you define the instructions. For lines five, four, and 3, Mr. Paterson showcased ways to interpre...

 Absent. The marshmallow challenge looked fun though.

I enjoyed this lesson because we got to look at how politics and individual views affect modern cinema. Star Wars has long been an infamous sega garnering hundreds of fans worldwide. As someone who seldom watches science-fiction, I have always loved the world of Star Wars and its vastness. Watching the older films, I never was unsatisfied with the character development and the dynamic of the protagonist being a male. However, not everyone thought so otherwise. When Disney bought the Star Wars franchise, they appointed Kathleen Kennedy, an assistant to Steven Spielberg. Since she was an assistant, she had no director, producer, film-making experience prior to being assigned the next series to Star Wars. For her, she felt the old movies were male-dominant, and felt there was a lack of leadership roles in women. So, for her production, she cast an all-female crew to work on the final 3 movies. This ended up being the last 3 movies of the franchise and the ones that I watched. Mr. Paterson...

Continuing from yesterday, the topic today was on the history of Scotland and how it came to stay in the UK. I have not learned world history since coming to this school, so I was genuinely excited to gain knowledge on this. Going back in time, Henry the 8th was ruling England. He was infamous for chopping off his wife's head for the benefit of his affairs, and he created a new religion against the roman catholic church to allow divorce. This break-off gave James Stuart a chance to become more powerful. In the end, James was deemed to be both king of Scotland and England. However, due to the powering economic status of England, James decided to shift his business and policies in favor of England. For example, despite having a long history of camaraderie between France and Scotland, since Scotland had to obey James, they were incentivized to go to war. If I was a Scottish person at that time, I would have not enjoyed the biased ruling of James, and neither did Scotland. Fortunately,...