SON GCE Portfolio

For the final Ollywood AP, I analyzed the film  Stand by Me  by Rob Reiner, released in 1986. It is a boyhood coming-of-age film set in the 1950s. In this class, we have gone through the entire process of film making from start to finish - pre-production, production, and post-production. This analysis includes all of the elements from those three phases of production, such as film editing and cinematography. This AP is in the form of a podcast with an accompanying slideshow and sound clip from the movie. Pardon me if my voice pauses or gets quiet or slow at some points. I hope you enjoy! TRANSCRIPT Hello, I will be critiquing the film Stand by Me - a coming of age drama directed by Rob Reiner that was released on August 8, 1986, starring River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, and Corey Feldman as the main characters. This film was based off Stephen King’s novel, The Body. The film is set in the year 1959. It begins with a junior high boy named, Vern Tessio...

Hello. For this final Game Changers AP, I will be telling you all about Help, We’re Alive!  - a game by SM, BD, and me. In the game, Help, We’re Alive! , one of two players is a group of scientists that are researching an alien life-form on a space station. Another team is a group of hackers who shut down the space station's power that released the alien from its stasis chamber. It is up to both teams to restore the power and get the Keycard to escape the space station before the other team does, without being caught by the alien. This game is recommended for families and friends, ages 12+, who like team building activities. The lesson of the game is that it is better to work through certain situations together than to do them alone. Link to the Rules Here The first draft of  Help We're Alive!  started out having all four players on the same team, and the alien with its own track that it follows. We did not want this game to be the same thing over and over aga...

Hello, in this blog I was told to make a podcast about myself. I thought, what would I feel more connected to than my Lithuanian roots. This is for a class called Who Am I, WAI for short. It is a philosophy class where we learn all about different philosophers and ourselves too. Sometimes it would even connect to our FUEL class. We were assigned to read a book called "Sophie's World", which is a philosophy based book about a young girl named Sophie who receives unknown letters written by a mysterious philosopher. The letters would contain data of famous philosophers from the past, and questions like "why are legos the most ingenious toy in the world?". This is where the FUEL part comes in. Sophie would observe the letter and actual legos and realize that they are like atoms. They are unbreakable, could be connected and separated, and used to make something else. Like how atoms are used to create elements. That is a taste of what Who Am I is like. I hop...

This term, I have been taking a class called Fuel. The topic of Fuel is to find more ways to use renewable fuels instead of non-renewable ones. Renewable fuels are energy sources that never run out, such as wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal energy. Non-renewable fuels are fuels that we only have a limited supply of and have to find, like oil, coal, uranium, and natural gas. Non-renewable fuels are the cause of the greenhouse effect. The more we use them, the more global warming becomes an issue. During our FE (Field Experience), we learned how the Tesla company is making cars that run on electricity. In addition, Tesla is helping pave the way for alternative energy sources by manufacturing solar panels, solar powered home storage units, and electric semi-trucks. The main issue with electric cars is the ability to take them long distances and locating charging stations along the way. If we can increase the demand for electric cars, gas stations could, eventually, be re...

Hello, I am a 9th grade student here at GCE Lab School and I have been taking a class here called Thin Red Lines, TRL for short. This is a Humanities class that's main focus is maps, that is one of the many reasons it is called Thin Red Lines. Ever since this course started, I learned so many new things about maps that I never even knew about before. Instead of showing a big picture used for directions, each map has its own interests and disinterests. Yet, no matter how many maps we make, they still wouldn't have any interest because the world keeps on changing. But that doesn't mean we stop using them. On one field experience, we were split up into groups and each were chosen a location to reach, using a map. It was a map of Chicago and its interest was, well, Chicago. When one group reached their location, we switched off to the next one. While each group went they got timed by our teacher until they got to their destination. My group was the first one to go. While ...

In Rocket Science class with Aaron Moring-D'Angier, we learned several things with respect to space travel, aircraft flight patterns, communicating with extraterrestrial life, and binary code. Towards the end of the term, we each had to design and build our own water bottle rockets for launch. Working from a proposed budget, we crafted our rockets out of materials such as 2 liter bottles, cardboard fins, construction paper cones, etc. Later, we analyzed the flight of our rockets by calculating the maximum height of our launch using the total trip time and distance. Below is a slideshow of all the work I compiled during this course. I hope you enjoy it!