“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.”
And just like that, the year is almost over. That means it’s time for Tpols, A time to reflect on our learning, how we improved and how we still need to improve. Specifically, in this post, I will be discussing my performance in humanities and my chosen core competencies. I will start with humanities.
Humanities
It’s wild to think that this is our only PLP class this year as over the past two years we have gone from four PLP classes to just one. However, that doesn’t mean I’m lacking in projects to reflect on. In this semester alone we have done 3 projects, this may not sound like a lot until you look into how big these projects were. Biggest of which is in my opinion the hide your fires Macbeth project. However, despite being the biggest I don’t think it is the best representation of my abilities as a learner. This is for two reasons, the way this project was structured meant that unless you volunteered to be an actor or part of the filming team you would have nothing to do for a quarter of the project, and two despite my role playing an important part in the creation of this film I felt I could have been better suited in another position. That being said I could have tried harder to be put in a better position including presenting a more in-depth pitch. The role I did end up playing in this project was the screenplay editor. In this position, I mainly took on the responsibility of formatting and checking the screenplay for continuity issues. I felt like in this project I could have done more, but before I get into that I think it’s fair to discuss what I did well. In this project, I tried my best to go out of my way to help. This includes offering to format the entire screenplay. This was a challenge as lots of the screenplays had errors that required entire sections to be rewritten. As well as going out of my way to try and do more I also felt as though I did my job at an accomplished level.
Before I mention the second biggest project I feel as though I should mention the underdog in this story, our change my mind project. Despite being the shortest of our three projects I would have to say this was one of my favourites. This is mostly because we were given the freedom to pick any topic that we wanted, within reason. That meant I ended up talking about NFTs and how I think they are not a viable investment. The only issue I had with this project was the fact that we had to write it for someone. Now, I am aware this sounds pretty counterintuitive as the basis of this project was convincing someone on something, but just hear me out. The main issue from this came from the person I picked to convince, which was a friend from Discord. The issue arose when I had to choose the length of my writing because the person I picked had a short attention span I had to shorten my writing. This was a big issue as to properly convince someone about a financial decision, especially someone into crypto you need to have every fact and point covered, which is hard to do when you are limited to 1000 words. In the end, I think I did well in creating a case for my opinion. Looking back on my successes and shortcomings in this project there are a few obvious things I can point out. Starting with successes, in this project, I went above and beyond to research not just NFT as a whole but also researched deep into specific examples such as Cyberkongs. My shortcoming in this project mostly came from sticking to due dates although I’m not going to go too deep into that as I have already covered it like a million times. The other shortcoming I faced was decision-making. During this project, I struggled to pick my topic, format and person. This leads to limitations on research time and struggles to hand things in on time. Overall I felt as though this project serves as a good example of where I can exceed and where I fall short.
Finally our latest project. Despite being the second biggest our latest project was nothing special so I’m just going to get straight to the point. For what I did well I’m going to be focusing on two things, the Socratic seminars and the intro video.
Socratic seminar
Despite not talking during one of them I would still call them a success. This is because during the Socratic seminars where I did talk I felt I tried to contribute as much as I could as well as trying to build upon and inspire discussion. However despite this success, I ran into one issue, that being the difficulty when it came to speaking. I think this is mostly because everybody had something to say but I feel if there was a better structure for talking I might have been able to contribute better. Overall I felt the Socratic seminars were a good example of my successes in this project.
Intro video
I specifically chose to talk about the intro video as I felt it was a great success. The intro video which Angelo, Anders, Asha and I (With support from Alex O) had to finish in two days may have been a challenge but with good communication and a lot of work, we were able to pull it off. The actual creation process of the video was split up between us. I was in charge of the voice-over (editing it and half of the actual talking), music, putting everything together and the end part with the references to the impact makers. I think in this case not only did I but I think the intro video team as a whole went above and beyond to provide the best possible intro video on time.
Despite those successes, this project was not free from shortcomings. The biggest of those shortcomings being as always time management. This led to me handing in parts of this project late including but not limited to my portrait plan and my preliminary impact maker pitch. I also felt as though I could have put more time into at-home research. This would have allowed me to better participate in the Socratic seminars and more importantly build a better understanding of Jim Pattison and his impact on Vancouver/North Vancouver.
Core Competencies
Looking at the core competencies I think it’s fair to say that I am at an accomplished level for almost all of them.
Communication
I think I was accomplished in this competency. This is for two reasons. First of all, is the exhibition intro video. For the intro video, my group and I had to effectively communicate our tasks and responsibilities for the video. The majority of which was done outside of school. Along with communication for the intro video I also for the change my mind project, contact interview and receive feedback from a friend.
Thinking
I think I accomplished this competency for a few reasons. The main reason is my critical and reflective thinking during Socratic seminars. In these Socratic seminars, we were asked to discuss questions about a text we had just watched using references to the text as well as notes we took. Along with the Socratic seminars I feel as though My blogs are a good example of my reflective thinking. Finally, creative thinking I feel that is shown through the brainstorming with the intro video team on how we were going to effectively introduce people to our project.
Personal and social
I feel as though I am almost accomplished in this core competency. This is because throughout all our projects I acted politely and responsibly with my peers. For example, in the Socratic seminars, I always tried to respond respectfully even when I disagreed with someone’s point of view. As well I am always the first one to call out my shortcomings and take responsibility for them. However, I lacked responsibility when it came to finishing assignments on time and keeping up with things such as the zettelkasten notes. I feel as though this did a disservice to my learning as it led to a lesser understanding of the topics and left me unable to participate in certain activities. Overall I hope to be able to improve on this in the future.
In conclusion, I feel over this year I have shown some improvement however overall my performance took a hit and I hope next year I can bring myself back to where I believe I am capable of being.