Mpols once again

How did I “fail” this year? What did I learn from this experience?

This part is not one of my classes nor subjects, I just feel it is important to reflect on and show how I have dealt with it, so here is the first part of my MPOLS. This year for the first time so far in my PLP experience I had to deal with an issue that had been a problem since the beginning  of the year. I know this sounds like a huge deal or something that could ruin my grades or something, but the truth is this was a really simple thing that I just had ignored for the last three months. It was organization, planning and time management. Sure, for some this skill is super easy but unfortunately for me it definitely is not my strongest skill. I talked to my parents and teachers for a solution to this problem and actually the answer was right in front of me the whole time in the form of Things  ( a time management app). As soon I started using Things properly I felt I had more time to put into high quality work instead of rushing to get every thing done in time. Also having the organization to submit my work on time,  because I was guilty of having completed the work but not meeting the deadlines. To make Things a useful tool I had to constantly use it, this meant I could not just use it once and forget about again. Ever since about on month ago when I things came to a head, I have been using Things on almost a daily basis to make sure I know exactly when assignments are due. It took a some responsibility to make sure I did this every day but in the end it was all worth it.

When I reflect on this experience I am glad it happened at this time in high school. I am grateful that my teachers caught me before my grades where effected and showed me a relatively easy solution that I can easily make a habit out of.

Did the work meet your standards? 

Moving onto the next part which is going to be about the previous revolution videos. I may or may not have mentioned that the quality and effort that was put into those videos is something that I now consider unacceptable. We had very limited time to create and publish the videos, however, that should not have changed how much effort we put in. Some of the problems include poor audio, unnecessary additions to the videos which did not add to our point, and lack of energy, I can find multiple examples of times when personally I did not feel I was giving 100% to the project. Another thing that I think we missed was communication of our topic; the way we demonstrated our topic in the videos was not clear, and that is another factor that made these videos not meet my standard. Even I put a lot of effort in as a whole, our group did not work effectively together towards

the over goal and I am disappointed in the result. Not just in this project, I have identified positive energy or mindset as something I need to work on because it can really have a key role in motivating a group. Just like organization, this is an important thing to develop and I know that it is not as easy for me so I just have to work harder to improve on it. Just like in my sports, I have many positive/motivation coaches and I need to us them as examples when I work on group projects.

To conclude this part of the MPOLS I will say that this project was missing some important elements lacked on multiple levels. Personally this project did not meet my standards but I know for future projects what needs to be included for this not to happen again and how I can better approach group work.

What skills do I still need to develop and what skills do I use.

A skill I use a lot and have developed well is editing using IMovie  . I feel confident in my editing skills and am proud of the work I have done in groups and in solo projects. I was however maybe a bit too over confident and did not read all of the instructions properly on one task, and as a result I got a bad mark.

The task I am talking about was my Live Event post. I was proud of the work I had done and in  the video I had to include some specific elements to show my skills in video creation. Most of these were basic editing tools found in IMovie as well as some filming techniques that I had learned this year and last year. This is also where I usually specialize especially when it comes to filming in group projects or making group movies, I am usually the one to volunteer to do the filming and editing because it is a strength of mine and I really enjoy it.

All that was good for the first part of the project but the thing I need to work on that was highlighted in this post was to achieve a complete understanding of the task before I started. Just like organization, this is also a smaller thing that can mean a lot in a final product of any project. I did not read ahead in the instructions of the task and see that it clearly stated that the video should be my own, so I could show not only my skills, but also how much I have developed since the beginning of the year. Since I was in too much of a hurry to read through everything I completely missed this important instruction, and instead of using my own footage I used the live broadcast that Team U.S.A gave us after each field hockey game. Although it was good footage, it wasn’t me who filmed it so it didn’t show my skills. I was really disappointed when I got my teacher comments back, but I now totally see where I went wrong and ultimately it was a good lesson to learn.

One piece of work that I put a lot of effort into:

The next part of this post that shows the one post this year that I think I put a lot of effort into. This post is going to be the Alberta trip post that I created about two months ago. Now, this post is very important because it reflects everything we did on our trip to Alberta in September and also shows what I learned there and how it impacted me. So much to cover! When I was in Alberta I did my best to keep a clear record of all the places we had visited and what they had taught me. Taking still photos was a simple way to keep information in a chronological order. Some places were easier than others to record their impact on my understanding. For example the Glenbow Museum was easy because we learned about Canadian culture and how it impacts everyone of us. However other experiences that were equally important were harder to understand sometimes, like when we visited Leo’s Buffalo ranch. He showed us some incredible things but some things were more for personal interest rather than something that was necessary for us to learn, (however he was a very cool guy and his buffalo ranch is awesome!). So with all this in mind, I started to write about my experiences, making sure the information I put into it was necessary and told my story. There was a lot to go through!

Overall the post did turn out just about how I wanted it to, I did not put rubbish into the post and made sure the information would keep the audience engaged. Last year making a post interesting and engaging was definitely tough for me; it was my first year doing it but even later near the end of the year it was still a challenge. Now that I have been practicing it long enough, I feel that I have improved on this skill and that now my posts are majorly different from last year. One thing I think helped in this process is I gained more confidence when writing. I know that before PLP I was very nervous when it came to writing because it was a much weaker skill than it is now for me. Over time I gained more confidence and as a wrote more, I could see improvements in my writing. This continues to be an area I need to focus on, especially proofreading before I submit assignments.

how did my goals change during a project?

For the last part of this post I will be sharing how and why my goals during a project changed. For this part I will be using a Scimatics project as my example. What happened was we were given the task of showing how atom bonding can be viewed as characters, I know it sounds odd, so check out the original post HERE. Anyway, my first thought when starting this project was to create a simple animation using Explain Everything that shows the necessary elements,  and that would be it. But then just as I was at the animation part I decided that just doing that much wasn’t enough for me to feel satisfied with my work. So in order for me to be happy with the work I have created, I needed to add something that reflected my personality into the animation, and of course the first thing I thought of was humour. Now, adding humour into a video that is supposed to show how atoms bond with one another is actual quite a difficult  challenge mostly because when atoms bond it is not simple stuff; you need to show how every electron in each atom is affected and if they sharing electrons and all that stuff. The only thing you need to know is that it is not an easy process! So I spent multiple classes working with Bohr models and other material I could reference to attempt to put my own twist on atom bonding. 

In the end it worked out quite well, I finished the project with all the requirements met and I was also able to work in some humour as well which I was very pleased by. To conclude, by changing my goal while working on the project it allowed me to create something that was more personalized and I think that is what made the video so successful.

In the past creating this type of result was much more difficult for me because I had little faith in my abilities to create a good product while also putting my own personal spin on things, but now in my second year of PLP I have complete belief in my skills. I have learned over the year that I can do things like that as long as I pay very close attention and understand the topic completely. By trusting in my skills more I have found that I am able to try many new, different things with projects and individual work.

To conclude this post I will say that I have learned so much in this first half year of school, not only that, but I was also able to identify how I can improve on projects and in group work as well. Using the Star Word Art as an example, it shows some parts of everyone’s personality that other classmates say is their most prominent feature. Mine were hardworking and leader which makes sense to me, but on the flip side I had positive mindset as one of my least prominent traits. This showed me what I needed to work on in order to be better when working in groups. In this first year of school I have been shown what I can improve on as well as what I have been doing well. I have shown how I have developed since last year and how my skills have changed because of this.

My question for my teachers and parents is how can I continue to improve my writing skills which also being engaged by what I am learning and how can I apply this to technology to also improve my future projects.

That’s all for now.

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