Welcome to my blog post on my Tpol. 

 -So my main goals I set at the beginning of the year was to manage my time more effectively and be a more responsible learner.

. Improving at these goals has certainingly helped me grow as a learner throughout this year

I’m also going to be discussing completing work to the best of my abilities/motivated learning, time management and organization, reflections. As all these things best tell my learning story this year. 

Effective/motivated learning – 

During this year I have grown to be an effective and motivated learner which comes from my focus and engagement in class which enabled me to understand the content we learn on a deeper level. Having a better understand on what we are learning allowed me to apply my problem-solving, critical thinking skills, and creativity to my work. Being more engaged has also allowed me to pick up important details as well as skills and stragegies PLP has taught me which further improved my learning. The project on Russian Nationalism showed me how important these learner stragies can be. During that project, I had to research Russian nationalism and create a video explaining it. The 5 Ws questioning strategy really helped with directing my research and organizing my information.

 Other than just knowing more, I find that higher engagement in learning also builds curiosity and interest in the topic I’m learning, which serves as an important source of motivation me. There have been a lot more projects I have had great interest that demonstrate this. I really enjoyed studying and creating film in the Thrill us project. Studying how filmmakers create entertaining content that conveys a message or emotion was super interesting. I also loved learning about chemistry in Science. Doing different experiments and creating the final art work was really fun. 

-Liking what I’m learning has definitely increased my motivation as a learner. Motivation is the driving force behind action. With higher levels of motivation, I have found been prioritizing school work and procrastinating less which is definetly something I have improved on this year. This has also led me to become a more responsible learner that could meet most important deadlines this year and almost all of my assignments, escepcially later into the school year. 

-I believe that these improvements have allowed me to begin creating unique work that demonstrates my creativity and deep understanding. And I find that a deeper understanding of a topic always builds more interest and love for what I’m learning further fueling my motivation. It’s kind of like a good learning cycle.

-However, I often don’t think my final product captures what I can offer

(Completing work to the best of my abilities)/time management/work-life balance Sometimes I struggle to complete work to the best of my abilities because I don’t have any time to. While I have certainly dedicated a lot more time to my learning this year, I often find myself rushing to finish my work towards every end of a project. While you could argue that it is about the time you spend on your work not when that it matters. Cramming most of my work near the end has put a strain on my ability to create the best work I possibly can. And it’s not good for my health. For an example, let’s take a look at my most recent project where I had to create a WWI Comic book. A day before the due date I still had to color many of my panels and create some new ones. To complete my deadline I had to stay up most of the night and make story changes. I didn’t like those story changes because it affected the message I wanted to convey and my overall storytelling. So that project was a good example of how time management has affected my ability to complete work to the best of my abilities. Despite all this, my time management skills have improved since the beginning of the year and my mPols. As I have found it easier to meet assignments deadlines and effectively complete my work. I that now it’s just time management for bigger, final projects that I struggle with. It is due to the fact it’s a bigger and harder load to manage.

I have one goal for my learning moving forward and it is to work on my time management skills. Time management has been something I have struggled this year. It greatly hinders my learning, my work-life balance, and my ability to complete projects to my best of my abilities. I know that achieving this goal would be a long journey as I have to change my bad habits I have had all my life. Despite my many setbacks, I definitely think I’ll be able to achieve this goal as I am motivated to become a better learner. PLP and its projects have definitely grown my interest in learning since the beginning of the year. I will try different strategies to divide up my projects into manageable chunks and make sure my progress is steady. And continue to set reminders to make sure I meet deadlines.

Thanks for reading,

Claire