Welcome to my mid-year Presentation Of Learning or mPOL. Thus far this school year I have been able to utilize and hone my skills in producing and evaluating various forms of media and literature. A good example of this is the first project of the year. Titled “Think you can do better?” it was a project that focused on Canadian politics and was timed with the federal election. My role in this project was a good display of drawing on pre-existing knowledge and leadership. I took the lead in my group, completing most of the work and guiding the group. This is a reflection of my collaborating competency profile, which is about sharing roles and responsibilities with peers. In this situation I did my own part but also did more. This is probably also the best example of my chosen profile for the positive personal and cultural identity competency, knowing that I’m part of a larger community. This also represents the positive personal and cultural identity as to write stuff in a professional political sense this is a must.

But this isn’t just about what I’ve done previously. The important thing is looking forward at how I can improve. For this I would look at our most recent project, “Sounds of Poetry”. In this project the primary task was to write 5 analyses of songs and their meaning. In this regard I believe that I effectively showed my understanding of the poetic meaning aspect of the project quite well. However, once completed our task was to present several of these analyses to our peers. This was more difficult seeing as I wasn’t particularly attuned to converting my righting to a format like that. This brings me to my primary point in mentioning this, that the improvement I should work for moving forward is to be able to transfigure a product in a field which I show strength to one which can better communicate an answer to the driving questions of any project. This is a reflection of my communicating competency profile, which is to use a variety of forms to communicate clearly and purposefully. This also shows the critical and reflective thinking profile I’ve chosen, to evaluate well-chosen evidence to make interpretations, due to my work interpreting meanings of the various songs.

I believe that both of the projects used as examples thus far are good examples of the personal awareness and responsibility competency which I chose that is about recognizing my strengths and weaknesses.

Another way which I could evaluate my progress is in reference to my statement of learning intent which we crafted at the beginning of the year as part of our learning plans. In this I stated that to enhance my learning I must explore greater context and implications to events in focus to gain a better understanding of concepts and competencies. I believe that in this regard I’ve succeeded, as my work in the Manhattan Project project could attest to. In this project I constructed a conceptual art piece which represented not only the context to the Manhattan Project but it’s long term and cultural effects too. On one hand it provided commentary on the culture of complacency which increasing government secrecy has generated like the frog in boiling water apologue; showing the implications. But on the other hand it also provided a real world related situation to give context to the situation at hand. This is a good representation of my creative thinking competency profile of thinking outside the box.

Thank you for observing my mPOL and supporting my aspirations moving forward.