PLP has been a huge change in my school life, and something you may know about me by now is that I really don’t like change. So as I made the big decision to join this course, I made a goal for myself. My goal was to attain the same grades that I had before joining PLP.
Unfortunately, PLP is all about making mistakes. It has been a continuous test for my ability to grow as a learner. I know that I have grown already, because I used to ask questions like “how do I post something on my blog?”, “is there even a difference between importing a file and sending it as a PDF?”, and worst of all, I kept the same photo on the home page of my blog for more than a month, because I literally didn’t know how to change it. All of this was completely new to me and I knew that I had to work extremely hard to catch up to where the other students in my class already were. Of course this meant that I would continuously be making mistakes, but in the end I would learn from them.
While I was preparing for this presentation, I revisited my old blog posts to see what quality of videos I was producing in the beginning of the school year. While watching some of my old videos, including the Science Safety Video, the Causes of World War I Video, my Camp Capilano Short Videos, and my Trigonometry Project, I was reminded of how far I have come as a learner.
I had so much fun working with my group at Camp Cap because my group consisted of all three new kids and then Kate and Spencer. Looking back on that experience, I feel quite bad for the two classmates who weren’t new. They had to deal with us, and we were clueless. I was responsible for filming most of the video on my iPad and attempting to edit it, but I had no idea how to hand it in, which made things interesting.
My group met the criteria for this project, but our video lacked certain entertainment qualities that would have bumped our grade up a lot. Considering this was one of my first projects in PLP, I don’t think I did too poorly. On the other hand, my group only shot the camera from one angle, and there wasn’t too much of a plot (other than the fact that Claire kept getting hurt and we were both very stupid).
This unit was very long, which should have given my group the chance to make our script more interesting, but no. Between the three of us, we created a very long and educational video, but unfortunately all of our viewers were too busy falling asleep to hear it. To be fair, in our second draft we added more camera angles, costumes, and music which helped liven up our video. In the end, I was very proud of our hard work and excited to be working with students who cared about school as much as me. I really enjoyed working with Claire and Alex, and we had a lot of fun producing the video at my house after school.
I worked very hard on this project, but I left most of the assembling for the night before it was due. When I got home from school that day, my power turned of. This meant that I couldn’t print off my bibliography, pictures, or written essay to go on my poster. Thankfully, one of my friends had the same problem, so we worked together to figure out a way of finishing our projects with no power. The two of us drove up to Parkgate to work in the well lit library. I don’t think I would have gotten a good grade on that project without all of the parts I printed off, so I’m glad that the two of us worked so well together and came up with a solution.
The projects that I am most proud of, are my most recent ones (About Me Video, Letter to Terry Beech, Exhabition Podcast, and my blog posts). I have worked very hard to take the critiques from my past projects, and use them as motivations for my new ones. I am only producing higher and higher quality work, and I believe that I will continue to improve with every task.
As this school year is progressing, I’m finding new ways to grow as a learner. Thankfully, I have stayed close to my grade average from last year, completing my goal. Now that that goal is accomplished, I can set a new one. My goal for the rest of the year is to complete my homework on the weekends with the same level of quality, but in a smaller period of time. This is going to be a hard goal for me, so the question I have for you is, what are some tips you can give me that can help me achieve my goal?
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