Hi everyone,
And they’re back, Presentations of Learning. After being cancelled last year due to COVID we have to present to our teachers and parents our learning goals, progress, and accomplishments this year. This year has been tough for me. Between a lack on consistency across projects and various classes. Ive also have found that COVID has caused group work to be incredibly difficult. I’m hoping that a lot will change after this omicron wave and once the next semester comes around. I know everything is up in the air right now but I hope next semester everything looks more normal.
I would say my biggest in school accomplishment this year has been the leap I have made in terms of writing. If you look back on my older blog posts you’ll will notice the improvement. My writing is so much more polished now then it was a year ago. I think this happened because of the amount of different styles of media I have written over the last few years. But I really noticed the jump at the start of this school year. Why, I can’t say exactly, but I believe its because of the fact that I put more effort into the actual writing now compared to my previous research and fact heavy approach. It was mostly a mindset shift which happened at the start of the year. I realized that being able to communicate your point with specific powerful information, was more important then having tons of information and facts and trying to tell your story that way. I still have a long way to go as a writer and I will continue to improve that with every project I work on.
The work Im the most proud of this year is my exhibition project. I think I did a really good job at designing a good memorial idea, as well as did a good job pitching it to visitors. I was proud of how my group pulled together even though we had troubles coming up with an idea and working designing the memorial. I definitely think we could have been more organized and used our time better but in the end the video turned out great.
I’m not very proud of my election project video. I don’t think we accomplished the task. The video was not very well made. We overall needed to work much harder to find a good objective and name. I wasn’t super into this project and neither was my group. That was probably why we didn’t really think much through. Such as filming a video about poverty and wealth inequality on the waterfront of deep cove.
Looking through my work I notice a few key things. First of all the difference in quality and care of work is astounding when I’m interested verse not interested. Just look at my blog post on why we need to change the election system verse my party video. You can tell which one I was interested in and which one I wasn’t very quickly. Also my strongest work is always done at the end of an assignment or project. I believe I need to fail once or twice to find a solution that works for me. This can be problematic on short deadlines though. A great example of this was our Romeo and Juliet Video linked below. A lot went wrong in that project. One of our group members got COVID. We also missed out on three classes for this project so our schedule had to be compressed. We also realized half way through filming that our vision was way to ambitious and we had to cut it down. The final product is a little bit rough but I think we demonstrated growth and learning. I’m also really proud of the police siren effect idea and execution.
I’ve thought a lot about whether or not my work is up to my standard this year. Now I’ve began to question how important having a standard is in the first place. Because what my standards are is an ever changing, complicated question. It depends on a number of factors, my group, the amount of time I have and how interested I am in the work. A good example is during the winter I see the lowest quality output of group work. One reason is I have less time, the Basketball team occupies most of my evenings which prevents me from staying late after school. Overall I need to find an acceptable standard to work towards in this next half of the year.
This video is a great example of the standard of work I would like to consistently be at. I think it was a unique idea, I had a lot of fun making it. As well as it was engaging to the viewer.
Now this year has been incredibly frustrating in so many ways. Obviously Omicron pretty much ruined the winter term of school. Also the weather has been terrible in every way. Finally, PLP and school in general has been really frustrating. I have found a lack of consistency in homework and expectations between not only all my classes, but between every project. I don’t know what to expect in terms of homework. I also have found there have been wildly different expectations for work output, and quality of work on every different project. However, I do understand that COVID has been tough on everyone, and I know delivering consistent results across projects from a teaching end is tough.
I have three main focuses for next semester, consistency, balance, and growth.
Next semester I will focus on having a consistent, quality and output of work. This will require me to push through projects I don’t want to do. A good example of when I did this was in my Romeo and Juliet project. Our group fell apart but I think working together we did a good job of doing a project none of us wanted to do. Another part of consistency is going to be comparing my work to other work I’m proud of to make sure it meets my standards.
Another key focus is balance. I’m often busy between sports, school, and social events. If I don’t keep a good balance I feel extremely overwhelmed. This is extremely unproductive and my quality of work suffers. Next semester I need to find a balance and flow of work which suits my style of learning. In general I put out my strongest work close to deadlines. I think when I get a sense of urgency it forces me to step up and do my best work. I generally need to large amounts of work at once. Breaking it up into small chunks does not work for me as I never achieve a good work flow. One strategy Ive found to be effective is to do a smaller bit of work related to my topic and then that leads me straight into the main work.
Finally I need to continue to grow. I don’t think I grew as learner as much this year as I could. This one much like consistency will require reflection on past work. I want to feel that my work I did during this semester is not on the same level as the work I will do next semester. In order to achieve growth I will need both consistency and balance.
To wrap things up I would like to improve my consistency in my work, as well as to continue to work on my writing. I’m proud of my communication, presentation, and writing skills. I hope to continue my improvement as a learner in this next year.