For this year’s MPOL, I wanted to focus on two topics: creativity and curiosity. These are the two concepts that have most fuelled my passion for learning this year. Using these traits in my work has formed better work that I am interested in and proud of. After nearly 4 years of doing blog posts, paragraphs, videos, and more, I have gotten bored with these formats. It’s been hard to find ways to make these assignments new and creative.
The first step in this is to find creative ways to present my thinking. When an assignment is open to any format of my choice, I’ve tried to step out of my comfort zone to try something new. Being creative in these styles of a project made the work easier and enjoyable. This made my assignments engaging because it forced me to care about the outcome of it. I was motivated to create work I was proud of because it was fun to try something new. Throughout the first half of the year, I was also able to enjoy my final product as much as the process. When I wasn’t able to choose formats that sparked my creativity, I instead chose to focus on topics that made me curious. I found themes that made me ask questions that I actually wanted to answer. I learned things I wouldn’t have otherwise just by going deeper into topics that fascinated me.
My presentation of my poetry!
In our beat poetry unit, I found joy in writing creative poems. It was a way to express the inspiration I got. This was a new kind of freedom to create my own ideas. I was able to treat this poetry as art. By formatting my poetry book in a way that made me happy, I was both learning and creating at the same time. This made it enjoyable to work on. I showed my learning in a new way that I hadn’t tried. Poetry isn’t something I’ve done much of, so it was nice to try something new. I turned out to really like it. Here is a link to my book!
The next project I want to talk about is my Manhattan Project book. This was a fun project. I took the approach of making this book look a bit like a newspaper. I designed this book so it would have a common theme throughout. The Manhattan Project was a new topic for me. I was unaware of the atom bomb, at all, so it was fascinating to learn about it. Because of this, I was curious about my work and the topic. I am quite proud of the outcome of this project. Still, looking back, I can see ways I could have improved it.
Next is our Lord of the Flies unit. I find the topics of psychology and sociology quite fascinating, and this project was based largely on those topics. My favourite part of this unit was our “Journal Entries”. These entries were very loosely guided, meaning that I could write topics to write about that make me curious. I was able to form opinions based on facts and information. It was enjoyable to creatively write from my thoughts instead of formal writing. These journals are probably my favourite thing I’ve done this year. You can read them right here!
Journal 1
Overall, creativity and curiosity inspire me to learn. These traits have made my work more enjoyable to create, as well as the work I care about. I hope to be able to grow these traits throughout the rest of the year. My question to you is, how can I best use curiosity to the advantage of my learning?