“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

With every new year passing faster than the latter, it feels like every new project has much more emphasis. This year was filled with variety—lots of highs and lots of lows. And overall, a memorable year. This is not only a conversation about transitioning to grade 12, but it is also about the stories that built up this year.

Hide Your Fires:

Coming off the winter exhibition, I was ready to follow up on some of my best work in PLP from the winter exhibition. And what better to do than a movie on Macbeth and the Cold War. It was an ambitious task, with the past number of PLP classes all failing prior. The roles were divided, and I was the post-production supervisor building off my “jack of all traits but master of none” skill set. I chose how we would tackle missing clips, plot holes, music, and how everything fit together.

Editing, I believe, carried the movie, turning it from a scramble of nonsensical clips when out of order to something everyone was proud of. It sounds pretentious, and there was lots of work done by other groups, but nobody outside of the editing team truly knows how much work was put into the film. Hours transitioned to days. I spent more time on this movie than on any other PLP project. But I can’t take all of the credit; Angelo, one of the editors, undeniably did one of in not the most work in the class. Our teamwork allowed us to contribute ideas unanimously, and revisions were made within a heartbeat. Despite the product turning out really well, my Zettlekasten notes, turning my fleeting notes into permanent notes more often, need some work. 

 

Change My Mind:

Like I am trying to persuade you of my excellent learning, this project’s entire goal was to persuade an audience. Everyone has tried to convince someone, but how often do you stop and sit down to write a persuasive text. Never, right?

I chose cancel culture due to its rising controversy and misunderstanding of the concept. This project was admittedly not my strongest. Without my interaction with an audience, my product felt hallow. And without the audience, it is impossible to persuade people. Like Gandhi’s followers being his power, our audience was our power. Despite the low impressions and remarkably low controversy, I was proud of the text I wrote. It addressed all the points I aimed to target and did it concisely while providing enough support. My best work in the project came when I embraced the unique format of the character limit.

Cray, Cray, Yay! Yay!:

Gandhi was one of the “crazy ones” in the 1997 apple ad. A crazy one is an individual who pushes the human race forward and challenges the previous perception. This was the last project of the year and our exhibition project; we were anxious to see what was in store. We would be creating a portrait to represent our impacter maker. I chose the former Belcarra mayor and author of many books that hold our communities history, Ralph Drew. Inspired by Ralph’s writing, I made his portrait out of paper. Paper was cut in stripes of different thicknesses to form his image. Combining my creative and technical side through my design and creation of the portrait, I adhered to my love of trying to learn everything. I love the concept of doing many different skills in both creative and technical aspects, and it is something I want to experience through jobs later in life.

But the exhibition is more than just the artwork. We needed an entrance, and Angelo, Matthew, Asha, and I made a video to explain the project. In the equivalence of a day, we put together a video combining VFX, animations and editing. It tested our time management and how well we could pull off a last-minute video. As always, it was nice improving my video skills and learning new technology (Google Earth Studio), which I mention so often in these presentations of learning.

Socratic Seminars have come and gone over the year, but this seminar took advantage of everyone watching the whole movie. Starting at extremely confined sentence starters to free reign, we grew in our conversations alongside our quickly dropping restraints. Watching three movies, taking notes, and talking about them seems simple enough. Anything But! Taking notes isn’t just watching the movie and writing what they say. It requires forethought and external research, distinctly something we are not known for. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I improved. Bringing outside information was imperative in our conversations, but it should have been used more. When the restraints were dropped, I contributed by mentioning quotes, asking questions and responding to others.

Learning Plan:

I believe I achieved all of the goals stated in my learning plan. My communication competency has grown substantially through group projects in Macbeth, seminars, and tweets. Communication was the building block of these projects and allowed for better teamwork and products.

It is a goal of mine to extend my learning more through zettlekasten. I’m good at writing notes; it is just finding the time to turn them into permanent notes. Distractions have affected my work less with my news habits, but I still find myself hard-pressed to go back to work after a break. My writing has improved by experimenting using anecdotes for blog posts and I have worked on “show not tell.”

I think I speak for all of us when I say we truly and visibly grew this year and I’m ready for grade 12.

Any Questions?