My mPOL (my progress of learning) Presentation

Thank you for coming to my mPOL 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, and I will showcase evidence to support these statements. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner. I want to start by saying how big of a difference PLP in grade eight is from how grade seven was. In elementary school, our learning was much less independent and creative, and much more, well, elementary.

In PLP we have learned to learn in depth, and to have a much more immersive learning experience! This transition to PLP has been sometimes chaotic, but ultimately much more fulfilling, rich, interesting, compelling and enjoyable! As a learner, I think I have a pretty good standard for my own work, and I usually aim to exceed expectations. I will always put in the necessary amount of effort into my work to achieve those goals. I usually am a visual and verbal learner, and I love collaborating with others, which is why I enjoy the PLP program. I like the idea of not only creating work, but presenting it to people, and receiving critique to improve on it.

My Learning goals

In my Learning Plan, I have set the goal of an exceeding mark, for humanities and Science, and for Maker, I have set an accomplished or meeting expectations, as my goal, and received these grades for these classes (other than science because that is next semester). The main reason for my goal of an accomplished mark in maker, is because I sometimes struggle with utilizing the iPads full abilities for visual aids and the generally more visual side of my assignments. I excel in the written aspect of assignments and can easily convey a lot of my assignment through writing, and will sometimes get revisions on certain assignments for not having enough pictures or artistic visuals.

The thing is, I am generally an artistic person, and I don’t mind drawing visual aids on my iPad for assignments. It is due to my lack of knowledge regarding my iPad and the apps and helpful tools within it. I haven’t found a perfectly efficient, useable and generally effective method to use certain apps yet, and sometimes struggle with the electronic side of PLP. This is why I am sometimes hesitant and reluctant to put in as many visuals and extra things as needed. My goal is too experiment, and learn more about the iPads tools in order for me too find and use a method and app or apps that I can regularly use and be comfortable using. My first draft of my Humanities Keystone 3: The Crusades presentation is a good example of my stretch in the electronic visual aspect, and I will showcase photos of a few of the slides of this presentation.

 

As you can see, my first draft presentation was full of written information, but lacked a lot of visual information. I did improve on this in my further drafts, and by receiving feedback from the teachers on my revision, I was able to create visual aids, and ultimately learned from my failure.

My Growth in Maker

In Maker, we have done three projects which are becoming a PLP learner, making interesting images and finding fun with drawing, and I enjoyed and learned a lot from all of them. My two favourites were making interesting images, mainly because it helped me learn a bit more about photography and utilizing the camera app on my iPad, and finding fun with drawing. Finding fun with drawing is a project we did all on Sketch’s Pro, which is a drawing app. We made drawings that had to incorporate detail, and colours that help represent our drawing and how different colours can bring different emotions and aspects to your artwork. Then we put all of the drawings into a book on the app book creator, as well as a table of contents and an about me page.

I found this project super interesting because I didn’t know much about digital art and drawing before I did this project, and I learned not only how to use it, but many cool tricks you can do with it like blending, drawing perfectly strait lines, and generally being able to utilize all the tools in sketch’s pro and what they have to offer. As evidence for my growth in this specific Maker skill, and as more evidence towards my general growth in the visual electronic aspect of Maker, I will show some of the drawings I created.

By learning new skills in drawing apps provided by PLP and used in PLP, I am growing my ability to use digital art in a way that showcases and supports my learning. The main idea of using art, photos and many other creative and cool things you can do on your iPad is so you can support work in a creative aspect, and show your work in an entirely different way of understanding.

I believe I have surpassed my learning plan goal of an accomplished for maker, and I have significantly grown in this subject since the start of the year, and here are some photos that I have made during this project that I think represent my growth in the visual and electronic aspect of my learning.

My Growth in Humanities

In Humanities, we have done four projects, which include The Outsiders, power play, keynote project slice and radical innovations. My favourites of these four projects was either The Outsiders, or Power Play. The Outsiders was a book report we did on The Outsiders, which is a book set in the 60s, following the lives of a group of boys, called Greasers who live in New York and struggle with poverty. It follows the theme of worldview and how it shapes perspective, and the conflict and injustice between the rich and privileged and the poor. Power Play was a project based on the Middle Ages, and the Crusades, with the main point of the project being how power shaped and influenced peoples lives, and how people dealt with it. We learned about different aspects of power and how impactful you could be with it, with examples of power such as the Church and Royal system (Monarch, Nobles, barons).

I found both of these projects very interesting, compelling and fun to do. Especially the power play project, because I’ve always wanted to learn about the Middle Ages and human history has always been super interesting to me because it is fascinating to see the way we have evolved and grown as a species, and to see our past errors. Power Play consisted of three parts, each incorporating presentations on keynote,  and I will be showcasing parts of my Crusades presentation.

I choose to showcase this presentation because it is some of my proudest work in Humanities, and it is a presentation that I worked hard on to create. The Crusades presentation is the same one that I showcased the first draft of as evidence towards my stretch in the visual and electronic aspect of PLP, so this being the revised draft of the presentation, it will double as evidence of my growth in the visual and electronic aspect.

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Procrastination (including getting sidetracked) Habits

Procrastination is something I struggle with as a student. Putting off work until I have a short time to complete it for me is not a result of not caring, but thinking that I have more time to do it when I don’t, or being distracted by my device, buisy schedule and my peers. This can happen both during school, and at home, and is something I need to stop if I want to stay on track academically. These habits and these problems can be fixed and changed by using the app Things, and using time blocking on my calendar more to make sure I know when my extracurricular things happen, and to check for due dates and making sure I have put them in these two apps. I will also try to prioritize homework overall, and start sitting beside people who don’t distract me from my work.

So far when I have put work off I have still been able to hand in good work, and therefor i do not have a direct example or evidence of this stretch in my schoolwork, but it has still resulted in me having to further put off things that I both want and need to do. It could also result in me rushing through work in the future, and not submitting work that represents my ability and potential as a learner. My goal is to find an effective and working relationship between my schoolwork, and my sports and extracurricular activities outside of school.

Another way I have been practicing rejecting that want to do it later is by forcing myself to sit there, and not do anything else. Even if at first it is fairly unproductive because my mind is still set on doing other things, In a couple of minuets I am ready to focus and get work done. After doing this many times, it will train my brain to kick into gear much faster and start working right as I sit down. I learned this technique from an amazing podcast that I often listen to called The Knowledge Project, on an episode all about focus.

So far I have covered my stretches, strengths, habits and goals of PLP term one, and I have covered a reflection of my grade expectations for myself, including PLP Maker and Humanities and my journey as a learner and student between both of these classes. I have given an accurate and honest evaluation of my learning, and this concludes my mPOL presentation of learning.

Thanks for listening!!