Introduction of teacher and parents.
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 myself as a learner.
This year, a lot has happened, and I’ve done a lot.
Not only have I done a lot, but I’ve learned a lot.
From the Indian Act to the Manhattan Project, I’m going to be cramming much of that learning into this 7 minute tPOL presentation.
To better summarize my learning, I’m simplifying into the three success behaviours that I feel show how I’ve improved throughout the year and what I need to improve moving forward.
Preparation – Outside School (Sometimes)
“Has a system to manage time and tasks, but may struggle with consistency”
I was originally going to go with Completing Evidence as my main source for future improvement, but I decided to go with Preparation, as I believe it is the root of the problem. This is a competency I’ve often struggled to improve on in the past with, and I’m slowly making my way towards improving, although the process is very slow.
To Do list
At the start of this year, I created a to do list that I check every morning.
The main issue I’ve been having with the to do list is that short projects with near due dates often get prioritized over long projects with distant due dates, causing the latter to remain unfinished until it’s almost due or overdue.
BCFP Videos
Due to how far away the due date was for these videos, I did not start working on the last two until much later than I should have. For the first video, I ended up spending much more time on it than I should have, causing me to fall behind in other areas.
Who Cares and Why Bother Blog Post
This is an assignment that I actually was working on at the same time as the last two BCFP projects I talked about above. This was a similar case, where I prioritized assignments above this, and I spent too much time on those assignments, not leaving enough time to complete this one.
Engagement – Contributions (Consistently)
“Actively participates in discussions and activities and contributes evidence of independent ideas”
Relatively recently, I’ve taken much more initiative to participate in class discussions and perform well in activities, as I’ve been much more vocal in contributing evidence in and outside of the classroom.
Manhattan Project²
During our trip to New Mexico, we were working on our book at the same time. I took the initiative to go out and interview as many people as possible in a journalistic perspective, attempting to get as unique of an answer as possible from the interviewees. This greatly assisted me, as much of these interviews were used in a video for our book, and later for my Fear Factor final product.
Who Cares, Why Bother
During the class discussion of the Who Cares, Why Bother project, I was very engaged in the class discussion and communicated my ideas often, trying as hard as I could to well contribute to the class discussion.
Agency – Resilience (Consistently)
“Shows resilience and persistence in the face of challenges and setbacks”
When I’m committed to a project, I often become very invested in it, and I will spend hours upon hours to ensure it reaches the vision I initially had. Now sometimes, it doesn’t always work out the “ideal” way, but I’ve learned to take what I can and keep moving forwards.
PLP Spring Exhibition
Recently, we had our PLP Spring Exhibition. For this exhibition, as usual, we had to create a product to present to an audience. Unlike the usual exhibitions though, this time we had two classes that our product had to be about. Initially, it was two products for two classes. For the Humanities product, I was in a group, and for the BCFP product, I was working alone. I became a little overzealous and nearly completed my BCFP project shortly after it was assigned, but then a change was made to merge the two products into one. When this happened, I realized there was no other option than to “bite the bullet” and scrap everything I had to create a new product with my group mate that would combine the two classes to a much higher standard.
This decision led to a final product that ended up being a very smooth merging of what we learned in BCFP and Humanities, making my decision to restart a good one.
BCFP Videos
I already mentioned these videos earlier in my tPOL, but they were not just an area I need to improve on, they were also a show of my commitment and resilience in situations like this. I already mentioned that I spent way too much time on these two videos, as I wanted them to be perfect, especially in the visual sense. These were both Keynote videos, and Keynote is somewhat of a limiting video software. For my first video, I wanted to create a transition from a 2D map to a 3D road in a 2D software. I ended up spending 2 hours straight committed to this one scene, and I eventually got it to work. I also spent 6 straight hours working on this one project with minimal breaks on that day. For the second video, I improved on my first one and got it all finished in about 5 straight hours.
I would say that this is one of the times where I may have actually been too persistent in my commitment to making the video exactly as I envisioned, and I could have showed more resilience in my willingness to endure the difficulty of scrapping ideas like the 3D road so I could have more time to complete other projects.
Fear Factor Final Product
For our final product in the Fear Factor project, we were given the freedom to do anything we wanted. Almost. I had to restart from near scratch twice during the production of my final product, a video. The first time I had to restart was at the very start of the project, when I realized that my idea would not integrate the central topic of “fear” into it very well. This wasn’t that hard of a decision to make, especially compared to the next time I had to make a major change.
When I had just over a week left to complete my video, I was currently working on my script. Over the weekend, I spend the vast majority of my Saturday working on that script, although when I reviewed it on Sunday, I came to find that I strayed too far from my initial topic. It took me about half an hour just to come to the decision that I had to restart, and I erased all of my script, over 4 hours of work that ended up amounting to nothing. I took this loss and remade my script using the rest of the time I had on that weekend.
The third time during this project I had to take a hit was when I was extending my video by adding two sections. It wasn’t until after I had completed both sections that I noticed the video was 15 minutes long and would be boring to watch. I ended up fully annexing an entire 4 minute long section of my video in the end to make it work.
The Driving Question – In Conclusion
“How can I showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared me to advance to the next grade?”
There are many things I’m going to be taking away this year to improve on and apply to my final year of PLP, Post-Secondary, and beyond.
Looking Back
My benefits from improving this year.
Throughout the year I’ve taught myself to engage myself further into the topics we’re covering in projects, which has also led to a noticeable increase in the quality and appeal of my work.
My improvement through resilience and persistence has led me to push forward in order to achieve the goals I set out to achieve, both in the classroom, and during my time outside of school.
Moving Forward
Improvements for next year and over the summer.
I’m going to strive to allocate more equal amounts of time for projects, and to not go too far overboard on minor projects, in order to produce higher quality major projects that are handed in on time to a high quality standard. I also plan to improve my work ethic in order to be able to start work much easier, as I find the hardest part is the very beginning of working on an assignment.
Moving forward, I will continue to analyze and improve my learning habits like I have done in this tPOL, and in turn I will improve my ability to gain, retain, and apply knowledge as I move the final year of PLP and becoming into the best learner, student, and peer I possibly can be.
Thank you for listening to my presentation of learning.