Ah Hello Friends, Family, Extraterrestrial and the unknown folks reading this. Welcome to another MPOL post (you can see last years here). The MPOL is the Mid Year Presentation of Learning, which means I sum up: 

1. The PLP skills I learnt throughout the year 

2. The areas where I demonstrated where I’ve shown growth  vs. the areas where I have room for improvement 

3. The goals I am setting for the rest of the school year

So! Time to get this show on the road. 

 

 

The PLP Skills I learnt through the year: 

One of the main points of the year was story telling. We really really focused on our skills in storytelling. We learnt how to create a good story, what is needed like a good plot, a climax, a resolution, interesting characters, etc. Looking back at the beginning of the year, some of the first projects we created stories for I realized all the improvement I made in story writing .

Another skill we focused on was video making. Which does tie in with story telling, because if you don’t have a good story/plot you won’t have a good video. We focused on many different parts of the video making process, such as editing, story boarding, revisions and proper camera angles, good audio etc. I believe this is an area I both made improvements on and still have room to work on. 

A skill that we worked on but was never “officially” mentioned was the ability to incorporate a multitude of things into one project. A good example of that was the metaphor Machines project or the winter exhibition 

The projects/areas where I demonstrated growth: 

The first project is: The ghost town video and the identity Video. When we were in Alberta it was basically a video skills boot camp. I look back at our first video that we made before even leaving Alberta and was amazed by how bad it was. Then after editing our ghost town I was pretty impressed by how much my editing had gotten better and all the skills I learnt to use when editing.

 

I was proud of the identity Video because I created a clear story that I found easy to follow and had some good visuals and used interviews. I was proud of myself for being able to interview people which something I lack confidence in doing. That experience really did give me some confidence and improved my interview skills. The first draft of this video was really terrible, and then it got a lot better when I figured out how to use audio properly.

The second project I am going to discuss is the Winter Exhibition. You will be seeing this project both in the section of projects that I’m proud of and the section I wish I could work on and where I know I can improve. Personally I think this project showed my improvement in story writing, the first draft of our story ended up being completely completely different then our final draft.

For example: our first draft started of being a convoluted version of west side story, where the two lovers both died at the end and the story was atom themed (click on  the post here it will make more sense) and our final draft was still gang war themed with two lovers stuck in the middle sort of story but it was ours, uniquely ours, we had our own characters that weren’t like west side story, the plot was different. Which I believe demonstrated my ability to write and revise a story.

Additionally I was really happy with the fact that throughout this project I learnt a lot about chemistry and was able to apply it correctly in our story. 

 

The last project I am going to discuss in this section is the Metaphor Machines project, which is a project we did at the beginning of the year. I believe that in that project I demonstrated one of the fundamental PLP skills, The ability to take feedback and revise. Now that was one wild wind project (you can see the video that we created to show our machines below, and the blog post here)

 

 

With the metaphor machines project I was constantly having to adapt to different problems that kept popping up. First one thing would break, and then we realized that we have forgotten a part of the revolution we were creating the machine about and then the circuit we were creating for the science portion of the metaphor machines project wouldn’t work. But in the end we created a machine that worked and in my opinion a pretty good video. 

The projects/areas where I have room for improvement: 

The winter Exhibition. Ok so as I mentioned yes I was proud of the story  we wrote but I wasn’t fully happy with the representation of the project. One major problem we had was redaction, we had way to much planned for our room and then we took away a bit too much and last minute had to find some filler. I want to improve on my redaction skills in the coming year because that is something I also struggle with when editing videos. 

 

An area I would like to improve upon is the habit of mind of thinking flexibly. This is a skill Ive been working in but still have quite a bit of work to do. I often find myself having issues with being able to not stick only to the plan and do have difficulties adapting when the plan changes. I also get worried that if I go too far out of the box, if I think too flexibly I’ll end up with a bad result. I think that because I don’t think flexibly enough that I sometimes get bogged down and tied down to things when I could create something much more interesting. 

 

Goals: 

To set these goals I am going to be using my PGP Journal and forms from that journal to make sure I stick with my goals.  

1- Think Flexibly and Positively. This will be tested during DI. 

2- Improve on my redaction skills, being able to cut down on having too much stuff. 

3- Create projects I am proud of, and even if it isn’t the best project I’ve ever done, I shouldn’t get too hard on myself.

4- Keep up good grades without driving myself crazy

 

The final part of this blog post is a question. Feel free to leave a comment. My question is:

What strategies can I use to feel more comfortable with the division of work in groups? i.e. not feeling the need to do more work then necessary because I get stressed.