POL

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An Average Post About mPOL 2023

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.

In this year’s mPOL, I want to shift focus. In the past couple years, my POLs were mainly focused on my struggle with procrastination, but lately I feel like I have the habits and strength to overcome the struggles that I put myself through. This year, I want to focus on something that I feel really helped me from the first couple years of PLP. This being specific feedback on each assignments. My goal for the second half of the year is to improve the quality of my work by making a habit of asking for feedback from my teachers or peers when I feel that I need a little something for my work to be up to standard.

 

While preparing for this mPOL, I reviewed my learning plan to see what I had in mind for improvement at the start of the year, and I could see quickly that it needed to change. While reviewing the learning plan from the start of this year, I found that it wasn’t very focused on anything. The main thing that i felt needed to be stated, was that I think that I no longer need to keep my focus on procrastination. It may sometimes still be a problem for me, but I think that I’m ready to focus on new things. While revising my learning plan, I decided that much of my work could use revisions, just like the learning plan. But the problem here is that hindsight is always in 20/20 right? That’s just me looking back much later and using knowledge that was gained far later than when the work was done to begin with. So what’s the solution?
Feedback.

Feedback is something that can be very helpful and can point out what’s missing in your knowledge or work, allowing you to correct it before it becomes a bigger problem. In the last 2 years of PLP, I’ve felt a distinct lack of this very thing, and have decided that this is the best and most efficient way to improve the quality of my learning and work.

A great example of when I could have used some feedback from others was during the winter exhibition. This is because, as stated in my blog post about the topic, I felt that there were many things that I needed to consider while translating my idea into play form that I did not. The main issue I found with my presentation was that the audience might have a hard time understanding what the specifics of the scene meant, as there were minimal props and my play was not long enough to establish these things. If I had consulted someone else with my ideas, I think that we may have came up with a way to make my section of the play much more comprehensive to the audience.

I think that this solution is applicable to almost every single assignment that we do, and that sometimes there will be feedback given to me, but I think that having more than that is important to me reaching my full potential as a learner.

This post started with my chosen solution, not the only one, and I want to recognize that asking for feedback is not the only way that I can increase the quality of my work. Other methods for increasing my work’s quality is to simply use the tools that are given to me. One of the tools that is given to us as students is the rubric for an assignment. A good mark isn’t the only thing that determines the quality of work, but it helps quite a bit. But this brings me to why I chose the solution I did. I felt that throughout my thinking the best solution to help me grow as a person and a learner is to make use of the people around me and ask for feedback when I feel it may benefit me or my work.

The final way that I would like to build on my habits and learning this year is by asking more questions. In my science related classes, I find that I haven no problem asking for clarification or help when I don’t understand something. I think this is because of the way I think, but it works out great for me in those classes. I want to bring that skill into my life in other regards and be able to ask for help and such in any situation.

 

Thank you for coming to my mPOL.

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities, Maker, POL, Scimatics

An average post about TPOLs

Hello and welcome to my post about my first TPOL experience. In this post I’m going to reflect on my learning throughout this past year. Into the post! It may not be the best, but I’m trying my best here!

Overall, I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done this year regarding school. Sometimes things went well, and sometimes they didn’t, but hey, thats how life is sometimes. And I dealt with it. One of the latter times was a project we did at the beginning of the year. It was a humanities project called “The Media is the Message”. I wont go too in-depth here because I talked about it in my mPOL post which you can find HERE. But overall I think that this project was a failure to begin with, but I learned from the failure and tried again until I got it right, and for the successful things, I’m proud of my work was a scimatics project called “Chemistry Coding” this was a project where we used Scratch to create a game that demonstrated chemical reactions in a fun way. You can learn more about that HERE. I think that I learned some great strategies for concentrating and getting things done.

This year I’ve had some great times, but I think that maker is a great example of this. Something very unique to maker is that every project we do incurs a whole lot of creativity. A great example of this is DI (blog posts here (Regionals) and (“Provincials”)). As awkward as DI is for us in the beginning, once we get the imaginary ball rolling we don’t stop for a while. I think that thats very important because creativity can be a huge tool with many things. There are great examples of this like high school students becoming famous through an invention or such. I’d like to build on my creativity more next year and maybe make some fun projects too, I’m looking forward to it!

This year, I’ve procrastinated a lot, and online school definitely isn’t helping. So I’d like to make it a goal of mine to try and minimize the amount of late work I hand in from now on. I hope I can get it to almost none in grade 9!

 

Overall, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished over the past year and I think that, although it wasn’t the greatest, it was mine, and thats good enough for me. Until next year’s tPOL!

One last thing. I’d like to thank the teachers of PLP so much for making all of this possible. You’ve put us through a lot, but we know its all for our learning.

THANK YOU!

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities, Maker, PGP, POL, Scimatics

An average post about my mPOL

Hey, For this post I will be talking about my learning and reflecting on the skills I have learned throughout this year. This post will include a reflection on each subject covered in PLP. This includes: Humanities, Scimatics, Maker, and PGP. For each subject I will provide an example of my work ethic, habits, and proficiency.

The first thing I would like to talk about is this question. “What is my learning goal that I want to reach by the end of the school year, and how will I meet it? This is a very tough question that will come up a few times in this post because this is something that will stay with me for the rest of this school year. Anyway, let’s get to the reflecting.

Humanities: this is one of the two classes that we have every day, meaning that I have lots of examples of work habits and such. The example that I chose for humanities was actually part of our first humanities project, this being The Media is the Message (you can find my post about this project HERE). I have chosen milestone 3 as an example of my hard work because it shows that when I get invested into something I can put a lot of hard work and effort into it to be the best it can be.

This is an example of some work in humanities that I went beyond the expected work without even realizing it.

Scimatics: this is the other class that we have every day! Anyway, in this section I will talk about and mention parts about teamwork and evidence of high quality work. For the scimatics portion of this post I want to talk about our Laser Maze (find it HERE) project. This project was based all around dividing work and teamwork when needed. To be honest, I think I took a little too much of this project on by myself, and made it harder than it could have if I had help from my group members. The thing that I am most proud of in this project was actually the final product. The final product of this project was to make a triangle out of lasers in a Star Wars themed ship/object. We made a Venator class republic star destroyer.

This is the “laser maze” my group made. It’s a Venator class star destroyer from the clone wars.

Maker: this class takes up one of our elective spots, for better or worse, I’m not sure yet, but there have been some great experiences with this class. One of those being the subject for this section! A great experience that I am proud of in maker class was part of the “Power of a Pencil” (find that post HERE) project. The part that I want to focus on is the first milestone A.K.A. name art. The reason I chose this piece was because I was so invested that I even decided to take my time and add to the original and send the second version in. I thought that overall that project let my creativity come out a lot and help me make something that represents myself.

This is the final piece of art I made. I’m very proud of this one!

PGP: PGP definitely isn’t a conventional class. Every month or so a PGP meeting is help where we discuss something important. A part of PGP that I haven’t really used as much as I want to is Things. Things is a great time management app that has a bunch of features built in to help you stay on-track. I try to keep up with things as much as possible but a lot of the time I forget to look at it. I’m looking forward to the PGP meetings ahead of me to help me learn new strategies to keep on top of the game!

This is the Things logo!

Now, for the part where I reflect on my work! (Yay)

This first half-school year in high school has been a huge ramp up in terms of work, but I like that I have to work hard to get better at something like this. Of course, with learning comes FAILure the FAIL meaning “First Attempt in Learning” I have had many of those, but of all of them the piece of work that I am least proud of is definitely my first business advertisement. It was a train wreck and I had no idea if it looked good or bad but I think that over this first half-year I have definitely improved and learned that FAILure isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And now, for the final part of this post! A question! One for myself, or whoever’s reading this.
What new strategies can I use to help further my understanding of what I’m learning?

Thanks for reading this far!

-Keenan

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities, Maker, POL

An average post about my mPOL (2022)

It’s about time for the mid-year presentation of learning! For the first time since Covid decided it would ruin everyone’s plans. My learning plans though, are gonna stay rock solid through these next 6 or so months until this year’s tPOL comes around.

 

Firstly, the POL declaration.

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.

 

Now I want to mention in this post is the learning plans that I made back at the start of the school year.

These were the things that at the time of creation, were what I thought were my strengths and weaknesses as a learner. The growth goals that I had set for humanities had been well represented with progress during the winter exhibition. I have a detailed post which shows that learning here. I think that this specific event is a good example of the progress that I have made there because the exhibition made me go out of my comfort zone and push a pitch of sorts to the people who were at my station. I admit that there were a few holes in the plan I had set up for the exhibition which made progress in this goal a little slower but that’s what we use F.A.I.L. (First Attempt At Learning) for. The exhibition also explored the past wrongs of our own people here in Vancouver and provided more than sufficient reason as to why they shouldn’t be repeated. This event was also a great example of some teamwork (good and bad). The bad teamwork would be referring to lack of communication before the event itself, and the good being that we worked together efficiently enough we pulled through and had an overall successful exhibition.

The growth goals I had set in maker were also represented in the Ology of Apology project, which was the main focus of the grade 10 section at the Winter Exhibition. This is where we learned to see the issues such as the Komagata Maru incident from the perspective of one of the victims or a person being put in that kind of situation. I also think that something that hasn’t even happened yet, DI (Destination Imagination) will be a great opportunity for me to progress to a new height in my learning career.

Now to transition to a different part of my learning plan, the “How?” Section. This section is a part where we would look and think of ways to make our plans for each of our courses successful. In this section, I mention something called a Zettelkasten, which was an idea we were introduced to early in the year that I later found out did not really work for me. Although it maybe an efficient way of storing ideas, you need to be able not only get into the habit of knowing what to note down and what not to, you have to be able to think in a way that allows you to easily access your stored ideas and assimilate them into the work at hand. In my opinion, I think that the Zettelkasten can work amazingly for someone who can enjoy note taking while consuming media, however if you have the kind of thought process where the information you obtain from media just floats around the back of your head until it’s needed the Zettelkasten becomes something of diminishing returns. Hey this might even qualify as growth from the chart earlier!

In this section I also mention procrastination. I think that I started the year off on a great foot, but as the year progressed I slowly went back to my old “do it the night before it’s due” kind of work habit. I’ve thought about this and I’m fairly sure that this kind of mindset when it comes to work I need to get done at home, is because I have trouble getting work started at all when I’m at home. I believe this is because of how I perceive home as a relaxed and lazy kind of place without even realizing it. For example I find it easy to get work done at school, but it becomes much more difficult for me at home because of this unconscious decisions seem to have made.

These were the core competency profiles that I chose at the beginning of the year. When I look back at these, I don’t think I want to change anything. This is because when I reevaluate each of them and look to the rest of the options and descriptions, I still believe that this is what I am capable of and what I want to strive for for the next semester.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me thus far.

Later!

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An Average Post About tPOL 2022

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.

Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

This is the question we are asked to answer in this blog post, as well as our in person tPOL. To answer this question, I want to mention in this post is the learning plans that I made back at the start of the school year.

When I wrote these, I thought that these were my strengths and weaknesses as a learner, and I still do. The growth goals that I had set for humanities had been well represented with progress throughout the year. You can find the more detailed explanations of this in my other blog posts. There have been many F.A.I.L.s during this year, but those ultimately lead to the biggest successes.

The growth goals I had set in maker were also reached particularly in the Project Podcast project this year, which was important to my goals not just because making a podcast pushes past my comfort zone in a way that I’ve never experienced before, but because this project helped me really get used to making use of my habits for making me responsible for doing work when I told myself I would, and the pressure to keep the episodes weekly because of my choice of topic helped too.

 

In this section I talk about my procrastination. This has been a problem all throughout high school for me so far, but I think that I am making steady progress towards eliminating procrastination from my life. During my mPOL I talked about how my progress had slowed, but I think I was partly mistaken. This is because I was looking at the literal aspect of the assignments coming in later, but I found that my strategies had improved significantly and that I can get to work if I am determined to, which used to be very difficult for me at home. I have found that the most effective way for me personally to achieve this is to

 

These were the core competency profiles that I chose at the beginning of the year. When I look back at these, I have only made changes to one thing. This is because I think that I demonstrated these and grew to these heights as a learner, and I think that I can strive for even better next year.

This leads me to my answer to the question “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”

Other than the obvious fact that I went to school every day for grade 10, I think that I am ready to advance to the next grade level because I believe that the learning that I have conducted throughout this year has successfully demonstrated my ability to satisfy or exceed the expectations that have been set out for a grade 10 level. this is reinforced by the projects that I have completed this year, as well as the habits that I have developed throughout the year that can help me learn in a more sophisticated manner in the future, whether it be the rest of high school, or into college or university.

 

Thanks for contributing to my learning career.

See you!