In this project we taught our teacher how to use tools on WordPress blogs to enhance them. Currently in maker we are trying to improve our blogging skills so that our learning portfolios are a more professional and clean. Teaching our teacher a skill helped us think of tools to teach him but it also helped us to think of more tools we can use in our own blogs to improve them.
The tool I chose was how to add a menu link. You can see on my blog on the top it says “my YouTube channel”. If you click on it it will take you to my channel where I post videos of some of my projects. This is a very useful tool for me because it makes my YouTube channel easy to access for all of my visitors. Below are the instructions I used to teach Mr. Harris how to add a menu link to his blog.
There is another step I discovered that people need to do if they have never added a menu before. Next time I give a tutorial to someone I need to make sure it actually works for everyone.
I would like to find more cool tools I can use for my blog to enhance it more because it would make my blog more interactive and fun to click through. In maker we are still working on improving our blogs so stay tuned for more updates!
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 as a learner.
Introduction
Grade 9 has gone by so fast, and looking back, I can see how much I‘ve grown this year. This year I have gotten rid of some old bad habits that have brought me down, and created new habits that have lifted me up. In this post Iwill be talking about some of the strengths I‘ve developed and built upon, some ways I can still improve, and going over my goals and intentions for next year.
VMV
Growth Over the Year
Over the year my quality of work has gotten so much better. At the beginning of the year I didn’t pay much attention to details and I didn’t create work that was visually appealing. My filming, editing, and storytelling abilities have grown so much.
Video features Peak Potential and In the Name of the Nation
In that short video, you can see how my use of angles, editing, and audio, and storytelling has grown from my first video this year, to one of my most recent videos.
Over the year in science, I have gotten a lot better at showing my understanding of what we are learning. Science has a lot more memorizing and there is not as much room to be creative with science. At the beginning of the year I got kind of bored of making observations so I didn’t do the work that helped me actually learn the subject. I was starting to see a lot of ghosts in my Showbie spots. This was a big mistake because once it was time to start the fun part of the project where I could incorporate what I’ve learned in a creative way, I had not learned anything so I was lost. In the end I didn’t have much of an end product.
Once I realized that I needed to learn the subject throughly before starting to create my end product, I was able to be more successful. I started to see less ghosts in my Showbie, and the observing and memorizing became more enjoyable because I knew that it would help me be successful.
Asking for help and feedback is something I still need to work on a little bit, but I think I’ve gotten better at it over the year. Another good habit I have started is using all of my class time effectively. I used to leave a lot of work for homework and I would not be working very hard in class, but now I use all the class time I have to do my work.
Areas For Improvement
One thing I can improve on is managing my time effectively. I can create good work, but a lot of times I don’t give myself enough time to do that work. I will have an idea for a project and think it will only take a hour when in reality it ended up taking like 5 hours. Because of this, I find I often get burnt out and overwhelmed with the expectations I set for myself. I also end up not finishing a lot of work or have a messy and rushed looking product.
Another thing I need to work on is completing my reflective blog posts. I need to start keeping record of all my projects so I can learn from my mistakes and keep seeing the progress I’m making.
Am I Ready For Grade 10?
With the new good habits I have gained, I think I am ready for grade 10. Seeing how much I’ve grown just over this year is crazy. Being in grade 10 means there is less time to get to my vision from my VMV, and I have already seen progress this year. My mission was to create work that I was proud of. I can say that this year there are a number of projects I am really proud of. I am now one step and one year closer to reaching my vision!
Welcome to my second post about the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. You can read my first post about the book here. This post is about the next three habits in the book, and they are:
Habit 4: Think Win Win – have a mindset that everyone can win. You don’t have to lose for other people to win, and others don’t need to lose for you to win.
Habit 5: Think First to Understand Then be Understood – Be a good listener. Pay attention what others have to say.
Habit 6: Synergize – Work with others and recognize their unique strengths. Celebrate diversity.
These habits are all about working with and communicating with others in an effective way.
Habit 4 is really about not being selfish, and having the mindset that everyone can succeed. Doing the opposite of thinking win win is thinking lose lose. It’s the mindset of “if i go down, everyone goes down with me”. People who think like this would rather no one win, then have someone be ahead of them.
Think first to understand is such a valuable habit. It’s about listening to what others have to say, and not being selfish and only wanting to be heard, but never willing to listen. Sometimes when I’m listening to someone talk, I catch myself thinking about what I have to say next, rather than what the person is saying to me. The habit says “seek first to understand” not “seek first to listen”. Sometimes people are listening, but not understanding because they aren’t actually thinking about what you have to say.
When I think if synergize, I think of synchronized swimming. All of the swimmers are working together to create a really cool piece of art. Everyone on the team contributes a lot. The prefix “syn” comes from a Greek word that means “together”. Synergy is about working together with others and celebrating everyone’s unique skills, and diversity. This habit goes hand and hand with the last 2 habits. For everyone to win, we all need to work together to make it happen. Before we work with others, it’s good to listen to what they have to say, understand where they come from. Everyone comes from all different types of backgrounds. Everyone has different skill sets and everyone is can contribute those skills to accomplish one goal.
Our Second Video
If you have watched our second video, you will know that at the end of it, it says there will be a part 2. Liann and I decided to come up with a new idea because we were very happy with how the last one turned out. While brainstorming for our new idea, we both worked really well together and we used habits 5 and 6 a lot when generating ideas and deciding what roles we would have. The video is below hope you enjoy it!
I like our new video a lot more because it feels a lot more professional than the last one. At the starts Bathilda and Beatrice shut each others ideas down, refused to cooperate, and they wanted eachother to lose. After they both didnt win, they decided to combine their skills, understand eachother, and work together to be hired by the boss. In the end working together ended very well for both of them.
What I Learned
In PLP we do tons of group projects. These 3 habits are so useful when working with a team or group. Everyone works together to achieve 1 goal. No one is trying to be better than the other people in the group.
The book 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens is the teen version of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The book was written by Sean Covey, and his dad wrote the original version. This book talks about how you can implement 7 habits in your life so that you can be successful and effective. As I read this book I will be writing 3 blog posts and making 3 short videos about the book. You can watch me and Liann’s video below. In this post I will be focusing on the first three habits mentioned in the book.
The first 3 habits in the book are:
Habit 1: Be proactive – take initiative, don’t blame everything on everyone.
Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind – know where you want to be in the future, set goals.
Habit 3: Put first things first – prioritize things, put the big rocks first.
These three habits are mainly about getting in the right mindset so that you can do the next 4 habits in the book. If you want to be highly effective, you need to know what you want and what you need to do to get it.
The first habit is the most important habit in the book. Being proactive is not blaming your problems on other people, and taking action to be successful without thinking other people are in your way.
Habit 2 is all about setting goals and knowing where you want to end up. How can someone be successful without knowing what success means to them?
Habit 3 helps you get to where you want to go. You need to put the more important things first so that you an get to your end goal. This habit is also knowing your values and what is most important to you. Everyone’s values are different, so what other people put first, might be low on your list.
Our Video
Liann and I made a short video about these 3 habits. You can watch our video below!
In our video, Bertha was doing the opposite of the habits. She wasn’t taking initiative, she had no goals, and she didn’t have her priorities straight.
What I Learned
After reading the first 2 sections of the book, I realized that I need to start implementing these habits more in my life. I already have An end in mind, but I have not began actually working on my goals.
As I read the rest of the book, I will keep implementing the habits in my life so I can become highly effective!
Destination imagination is a big part of being in PLP. DI is a competition students compete in all over the world. This year the students part of the engineering challenge (the challenge I was in) had to build a transporter device to transport weights across a wire. We also needed to create a story in a contemporary circus style. We also needed to include 2 team choice elements during our presentation that showcase our teams skills and interests. On the tournament day teams must do an instant challenge. It’s hard to explain what it is without an example, but I’m not aloud to talk about it until the challenge season is over. The best way I can describe it is a short challenge teams must do and are scored on their teamwork, creativity, and ability to follow the challenges rules. My team got 1st place in the regional tournament for our instant challenge.
Preparing for Tournament Day
The hardest part of DI this year was time. We only had a few weeks to work on it and only 1-2 class blocks a week to meet with our team. Other than that we had to work on our free time. We came up with a story and built props. My team didn’t spend much time practicing our challenge so we were not very prepared for the tournament.
Tournament Day
On the Day of the tournament it was pretty chaotic. We tried to do a full run through of our presentation but we always got interrupted or distracted by something. When it was my teams time to present our solution there was a lot of confusion to do with our forms that we had to fill out to enter the challenge. The forms basically tell the appraisers what to look out for during our presentation so they know what to score you on. It was kind of my fault that all of the confusion happened because I rushed filling out the forms so sorry to my team! The challenge room had such a big audience. I was not expecting so much people to be watching. When we started our presentation we kept forgetting lines and i could not stop laughing it was so bad. Again sorry team for laughing so much. When it was time to present our transportation device, the appraisers broke our machine. The time limit for our presentation was 8 minutes and they stopped the time when the machine broke, but then started the time before we could finish fixing it. I think after they ruined our presentation they should have let us start over. When the time had started again machine was not fully fixed so it didn’t work which was not our fault. The appraiser looked at our machine, and all he said was “Failed.” And he just walked away. When our time ended I knew we were going to get last place because it sucked. The appraisers didn’t even ask us any questions but we showed them our machine again and it did work but since they broke our machine and rushed us to finish fixing it, the machine didn’t work during the presentation so they didn’t give us any points for it working after the presentation. When we got our scored back they were not good at all.
Conclusion
That was just the regional tournament though, we still have the provincial tournament. Before then we are aloud to make any changes we want to our challenge. We are going to remake our props, practice a lot more so we don’t forget lines, and hopefully we will do a lot better next time. I think DI is great for people who are creative and come up with unique ideas. It’s also good for people who have unique hobbies that they want to showcase.
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 as a learner.
VMV
At the beginning of this school year I created a Vision, Mission, and Values. (VMV for short). My vision was to be proud of the work I accomplish in school. I want to be able to look back at my work and be happy with it knowing I worked hard and did my best. My mission, or how I am going to make my vision come true was to apply feedback, persevere through challenges, and reflect on my work. Some success behaviours that I wanted to use more frequently to help me achieve my mission were agency, self-regulation, and preparation.
Applying Feedback
One of the projects I am most proud of this year is my Frankenstuffies: The Rise of Change project. For this project we learned about the Industrial Revolution. Our final product was a film that showcased aspects of the Industrial Revolution while telling a story story that starred our Frankeinstuffies that we sewed. One of the reasons I like the outcome of this project is because I was always improving my work. When I thought I was done an assignment, I got feedback on things I could improve on, and I applied the feedback.
Perseverance
A project that I am not happy with at all is my TYKTWD project. I didn’t put any effort into this project. When I look back at this project I just regret not trying harder because it was a really cool project. For this project I had a plan of exactly how my TYKTWD video was going to look, but once I started to make the video I gave up because it wasn’t turning out the way I wanted.
On the other hand, when I persevered through the challenges of the Vive Les Machines à Métaphores project, it really paid off. There were a lot of challenges that I faced when building my metaphor machine, but I tried my best and didn’t let my group down. Im pretty proud of how that project turned out.
Reflection
I need to work on completing my reflective blog posts, because reflecting on my projects is when I can get the most out of what I learned. It is also a really good way of documenting my work and having it all in one place for me to look back on. In my vision mission and values I said I wanted to look back at my projects and be proud of them, but if I don’t document them or put them in my learning portfolio, I don’t have a place to look at my projects.
Conclusion
For my mPOL I need to find the answer to the question: What supports (inside and outside of school) am I using to succeed in my learning?
The answer to this question is asking for help and feedback. This can be asking my teachers for clarification on assignments and also applying the feedback they give me, or it would be showing my family my work so they can give me feedback prom a different perspective. Sometimes I cant exactly pinpoint why my work isn’t turning out the way I want it to, so by seeing other peoples perspectives and getting feedback I can do the best work possible.
Ive come a long way since the beginning of this year. I’ve learned so many new things, a lot of them being about taking leadership for my own learning.
POL Declaration
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 as a learner.
Enthusiasm
Over time I’ve learned to be a lot more exited about learning. Learning is really fun, and this year I was able to change my perspective on school. It used to just be a boring place to learn, but now I see learning as an opportunity to maybe find some of my interests or I see it as a way to prepare myself for the future. I was really exited to learn about the immune system in science. It was really cool to learn about because I got to understand what goes on in peoples bodies all of the time to help keep them alive.
Resilience
At the begging on the year I would quit everything when it got too challenging. Now when work gets challenging I keep on working hard and I get through my challenges. An example of this is the winter exhibition. I gave up on making some props because it was difficult and was taking longer than I thought. Now I try to push through challenges with a clear goal in my mind, doing anything I can to achieve that goal.
Balance
After my mPOL, I decided that I need to change how I use my time, making sure I keep a healthy balance for everything I do. In the “The Wilderness Must Be Explored” project, I Was able to manage my time very well. I kept a good balance when going on the Oregon trip, making sure I used my time in the vans to work on my book creator. I also made sure I got even a small amount of time not interacting with anyone every day. This made me not feel overwhelmed on the trip, and I was able to enjoy doing all of the activities without stressing over not having time to get things done. During the exhibition week, I was able to keep a healthy balance of stress. I did not want zero stress because then I would not really care about the exhibition, but if I have too much stress I get really overwhelmed. I took time to not think about the exhibition at all, so I could focus on other things.
Improvement
For next year, I would like to set more goals for myself and stick to the goals I set. Sometimes I don’t really have a plan or an end goal for what I’m doing, and I would like to set goals for myself as a learner. I also want to make really specific goals. For example, if I want to improve on being more engaged in class, I could set a goal to raise my hand once in each class to share my ideas.
Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. l 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 as a learner.
Learning plan
I would like to start off my by talking about my learning plan. I have chose three main points that I would still like to work harder on for the rest of this year. These are communication and collaboration, agency, and preparation. I would like to communicate better with my teachers and ask for help when I need it. I need to be more organized with my school work, and I have started to use a calendar to plan my days. This will help me to stay on top of my work and to stop leaving my home work until the past minute, or even handing it in late. I would also like to improve on asking more questions in class if I am unsure of my assignments. Of course I still need to improve on all of the categories on my learning plan.
Humanities
The two humanities projects that really stood out to me this year are It’s the End of the World as We Know It and Power Play or How It Started. Since Power Play or How It Started and Radical Innovation or How It Is Going both contributed to one end product, I will be talking about them both. These projects stood out to me the most in humanities so far because they were the most enjoyable for me. (Even though the song my group made in “Its the End of the World as We Know It” was embarrassing”
The driving question for It’s the End of the World as We Know it was “How can a text help me understand myself as my worldview is changing?”. We read the book The Outsiders and our end product was a song about how our worldview is changing. In this project we learned what Worldview is and how it impacts us. We also identified the worldview of the text or characters in The Outsiders. We did this by filling out investigations and sharing them with our group every week.
Here are some of my investigations I did while I read The Outsiders. What I struggled with a lot while reading was getting all of my investigations done on time. I often left my reading to the last day so rushed the investigations. I think if I were to do a project similar to this again I would really take more time to be more detailed in my investigations, which I could only do if I gave myself enough time to make do them. While reading The Outsiders I was able to understand how differently people thought back then, showing me how much worldviews can change. While reading I was subconsciously forming opinions about what the characters would do or say, I was even forming opinions about the book itself if I liked it or not.
Writing the lyrics with my group was enjoyable. We chose to make our lyrics a lot about going from elementary school to high school. While writing the lyrics with my group I thought about how much my worldview has changed as I’m growing up. Reading The Outsiders and completing the investigations helped me to write lyrics by helping me understand the worldview of the outsiders so I would be able to understand the worldview of myself.
Power play or how it started and radical innovations or how it’s going really stood out to me because they were both contributing to what I would be presenting at the winter exhibition. Similar the project before where we identified the worldview of The Outsiders, in these projects we identified the worldview of the Middle Ages, The Renaissance, and now. The driving question for Power Play and Radical Innovations was “What can we learn from the past, and why does it matter to us today?”.
In both of these projects we combined art from the Middle Ages (for power play) and from the renaissance (for radical innovations). I really enjoyed combining the art because it was fun to find art and then put my face on it and make a whole unique art piece out of multiple pieces.
I really liked learning about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We can learn so much from the past. While I was learning about these I really saw a lot of growth that happened over time. When we reflect on the growth that has happened it can help us to continue growing and it can help us to know that we can improve on the things we are not as good at now. I love doing art. Sometimes I stumble across my old drawing and sculptures, and at the time I was so proud of them and I thought they were so amazing. Now looking back at them I see how much I have grown, and it helps me to keep going because I know I will keep getting better at art. when we reflect on the Middle Ages or renaissance we might laugh at how strange it was but when we reflect on how much we have grown since then it makes us realize how much further we can grow to. But plants only grow when they have the proper nourishment and I will only get better at art when I practice.
Maker
Maker has helped me realize a lot of my strengths. When I did the Who am I as a PLP Learner project, I enjoyed using Keynote and designing my slideshow. Here is a short clip of my reflection on my Keynote presentation.
I really liked maker because I got to do a lot of things involving design and drawing. Maker was mainly just helping me get used to some of the apps used a lot in PLP and it was kind of getting me used to using my iPad. The projects we did in maker this year were independent so it aloud me to make any choices I wanted.
Science
Science has been really fun so far. I especially liked making observations when we did experiments.
When making my game I struggled a lot with finishing my game. This brings me back to what I want to work on from my learning plan.
I think I could have put more effort into my Mind Over Matter project because I don’t feel like I did my best. I hope to improve and do my best on all of my projects going forward because I want to be proud of the work that I accomplish.
In science I also just really enjoyed looking at pond water under a microscope. It was so cool to see all of the tiny organisms living in the water.
Conclusion
I think I have grown a lot this year. I’d say the two largest areas I’ve grown is with being engaged in lessons and conduct ethics and integrity. I’ve noticed I get a lot less distracted during class over the months, and I use focus modes to silence notifications during school. I also think I’ve improved a lot more from the start of the year with me sharing my ideas in class. I still need to work on it a bit more but I have noticed improvement. Going forward I will continue to improve and I hope I will fulfil some of my goals by the end of the year!
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” – Margaret J. Wheatley
Reflecting on our past accomplishments, disappointments, or past work, is an amazing thing. When I reflect on things I have done in the past, I get to learn so much more than if I had not reflected on it. When we reflect on your past work, get to know why you did that work, and what we got out of it.
Our first PLP (performance learning program) maker project was Becoming a PLP Learner. The driving question for this project was Who am I as a PLP Learner? During this project we used the app Keynote to make a presentation/slideshow to help us understand who we are, more specifically who we are as PLP learners. It was really fun making my Keynote presentation because I loved experimenting with the different features it has, for example animations.
Some Keynote Features
Here are some of the different features that I experimented with on keynote. Before I started making my official presentation, I got familiar with Keynote. I used colour fill a lot, made animations, and used colour fill, gradient fill, and a really cool feature, photo fill.
Me-Emoji
Me-emoji? Memoji? I don’t know what it is called! But… it was time to start creating the first aspect of my presentation. I made a Memoji of myself with a laptop, and on the laptop I put stickers that represent me. The criteria we had to follow while adding stickers was at least one sticker with colour fill, gradient fill, photo fill, and at least one with a drop shadow. Using what I had leaned previously, I was able to put 9 stickers, following all of the criteria, that represent me.
My Three Settings
Setting 1
Setting 2
Setting 3
I created a user manual for me, almost like I am a device, and you are learning all of my features. In the user manual, I had to put 3 different settings or modes that I can be in at times.
If you would like to read my whole user manual, check out my About me page
I am Photo
The first step to my I am Photo.
The second step to my I am Photo.
The end product!
I also created an I a Photo. We started by brainstorming who we are, and putting who we are in I am Statements. For example, I am a Sister. Once I had about 10-15 I am Statements, I put the statements into a WordPack. The final step of the I am Photo was to create the photo. I chose one I am Statement from my WordPack, and took a selfie of of myself that related to my statement. I had my selfie and I was ready to add doodles on the selfie to further enhance the statement. I added a picture of my siblings as well as a few doodles using the markup feature.
Conclusion
Overall, I am really happy with the end result of this project! I don’t think I would change anything about it. Every part of the process making this presentation was worth it. I really like the appearance of my slideshow. My favourite slide was my I am Photo. I think it turned out really nice and it is meaningful to me. I learned a lot about what I am good and and what I am not good at. I didn’t only learn how to use Keynote, but I also learned a lot about troubleshooting tech problems and being able to be honest with yourself if you think something needs to change. If you would like to hear a more detailed conclusion, you can check out my YouTube video at the top! This first maker project was turned out really good and I am happy to share it with you!
Have a great rest of your day (or night). Cya later!
Ever since I was little I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship. I just noticed you don’t know me yet! Hello. My name is Chloe and this is my very first blog post! As I was saying, I am very interested in creating businesses. But I have one problem. Whenever I make a business, I can never sustain it, so I’m going to need your help. For this blog post, I’m going to tell you all of my hobbies, and once you have read about all of my passions, you can maybe comment to tell me what business you would want to buy from!
Earrings!
I’ve always been interested in sculpting and making jewelry, so… why not combine them! At the beginning of the year, my sister got me a polymer clay earring making kit. It came with clay, cookie cutters, earring backs, earring findings, and an instruction manual on how to make the clay part of the earring. I did not like the ideas that it showed in the introduction manual, so I took full creative liberty, and made tons of different designs. I made flowers, strawberries, lily pads, oranges, and some abstract looking earrings. After I was done making my first pair, my mom suggested that I could start an Etsy business!
I loved the idea of selling the earrings I made because one, the process was fun, and two, it would be an easy way to make money.
If you would like to know how to make DIY clay earrings, click here
Stickers!
When I was in grade 6, there were some people in my school that had a small cosmetic business. They sold lip scrubs, body scrubs, and lip balm. I decided to buy one mystery bag to see what all the hype was, and I was also interested in how they ran their business. I noticed that they gave free stickers with every order you buy, and that gave me an idea! I could make stickers and sell them to people!
I pitched my idea to my friends in hopes that they would be in on my business idea, and surprisingly they were in! I bought some sticker paper, and started drawing the sticker designs. After that, I told my friends to advertise my business to my school. After that we only got 1 order. She loved the sticker, but never bought any again.
Last year we had a entrepreneurial fair, and I made about 100 stickers to sell to our school. At the end of the day, we were almost completely sold out!
If you would like to know how to make DIY stickers, click here
Slime!
The first time I ever made slime was when I was 7 years old. I had herd my friends talking about slime and I was so anxious to try it! I begged my mom to buy me all of the ingredients I needed to make it, and finally, she did. After I made slime for the first time in was hooked. I needed to make more! I would sometimes make slime and I would give it to my friends at school. My parents picked up on my obsession with slime, and they told me that I should start to sell it. I started developing my first unique slime recipe, and my mom took a video of me sharing about it, it was kind of like an ad.
Something bad happened a while after I started making slime a lot. I developed dyshidrotic eczema…
If you don’t know what dyshidrotic eczema is, the short way to explain is it lots of tiny little blisters that usually form on hands, and feet. It is extremely painful and itchy when flair ups occur, and unfortunately, playing with slime caused my hands to flair up.
If you would like to know how to make DIY slime, watch this video:
Now that you know what I would like to sell, which product would you want to buy? Help me out by leaving a comment below, because I’m thinking of actually started a business soon. If you have any more ideas of crafts I could sell, I am open to ideas! If you have a small business, the comment are a place where you can advertise it! Just make sure it is a website and not and not in person.
Have a great rest of your day (or night). Cya later!
