In this slideshow, I’ll display some of the work that I’m proud of from this second half of the year. I’ll explain a bit about why I am proud of it, why it showcases my talents and best aspects of my learning abilities, and how I will use what I learned from that certain project in future projects.

One of my favourite Humanities projects that we did this year was about POWER. We learned about Louis Riel, and debated over whether or not he was “good” or “bad”, in general terms. Nonetheless, Louis Riel is a prime example of power. Our driving question for this unit was: “How does power alter relationships between individuals and societies?” I created an animation about Cuthbert Grant, a powerful Métis leader during the times of conflict between the HBC and the NWC. This project helped me learn about the impact that power, bad or good, can have on people, their relationships and societies, as the driving questing depicts. Power is a driving force, and not unlike the story of Louis Riel, it is often difficult to truly see the roots of power to determine whether it is a force of good intent or foul intent. It was extremely interesting to debate and study this, while choosing to learn about our own powerful figures. Logistically I was also quite happy with the animation that I made. I put a fair amount of effort into making my creation visually captivating and adding colour and backgrounds, something I like to do in my animations instead of having plain backgrounds or simple “setting” backgrounds (for example, a sky or grass in every outdoor shot). I am proud of the outcome, and I’m going to utilize this animation style in the future.

The second project, being part of Scimatics, is a group project that I did with Jason. It was part of our Matter Cycles unit, and we chose to do a project on figuring out a way to reduce methane emissions in the atmosphere. First off, this project was more intriguing and fun to do from the get-go because I have an interest in environmental issues and the impact that methane gas has on our atmosphere and its role in climate change. We had the opportunity to study this more in depth upon researching for our project, and we came up with the idea to create a system that captures methane gas and converts it into fuel to be used to run vehicles. I am still proud of our idea, which I think is clever and innovative, and I’m proud of the work that we put in to make that idea come to life. We did our research on how to convert methane gas to liquid, and then how this could be used as fuel. I researched about the impact that methane had on the environment and learned that cows being fed incorrect food results in the mess of global warming as the release of gases like methane into the atmosphere hinders the sun’s ability to reflect its rays off the earth and back into space. Jason, being a math extraordinaire, worked out some of the difficult equations for how much it would cost for us to make our machine and run it, and whether or not it would be profitable. What I’m trying to get at here is that I learned a ton in this unit, and it wasn’t useless information; climate change is a relevant and pressing issue, and it was refreshing to have the chance to learn more about it and come up with an idea as to how we could help reduce the impact of climate change on our world. I believe this project showcased my ability to invent and create solutions to vast problems, research topics that are still not entirely explainable and work with a partner to both of our abilities.

Maker. In what is one of the best PLP courses, I had the chance to experience something magical called Destination Imagination. Since there are Regionals and Provincials, I’m going to save Regionals for later and focus on Provincials at the moment. Provincials at DI was such an amazing experience for my Improv group and I. We executed our performance well, and we used our practice well. Unlike before Regionals, we actually had some rehearsals under our belts and we were able to deliver a performance incorporating our groups’ skills and energy profoundly. I was playing Athena and Gabby was playing Queen Elizabeth at our Provincials performance, and I was especially proud of our character portrayal. We inserted facts into our character’s actions and we... well, we acted! I put a lot into my performance, and it payed off. I was able to use my acting skills, and I’m glad that i had that opportunity. In future DI’S, I know for a fact one thing I’m going to take away from this DI: PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!! Rehearsals are what make the performance.

Lastly, we have PGP!! My project that I’m proud of for PGP (wow, what a tongue-twister) is actually our final one: our Time Machine. We were tasked with creating something that represented our learning for the entirety of PGP that year. I wrote a story for my time machine, and I’m proud of it because I really do like writing! Being able to incorporate PGP things (time blocking, 7 habits, goal setting....) was an interesting challenge that I was happy to take on. In the end, I was pretty proud with my not-so-short story, and in future projects, I hope to take away one thing: when writing a story for an assignment, start sooner than later! The only thing I wasn’t super proud of for this particular time machine was that I handed it in a bit late, as I couldn’t finish my story in time. Other than that, I think this project does a good job of utilizing my skills to convey my learning in an area.

WHAT I IMPROVED ON IN MY PROJECT SINCE M-POLS: - Animation skills - Research skills - Analyzing skills -DI skills (if that exists??? Can we ever really be prepared for DI?? Unfortunately not) -Writing skills

Here I will be able to go through some of the projects that I am not as proud of, explain why, how they could have been improved, and what I’ve learned from these mistakes.

First off, we have Humanities, and our Heritage Minute projects. We had to create a Heritage Minute based off of the infamous sixty-second history segments by Historica Canada. However, my group’s Heritage Minute faced some bumps along its way. Our biggest flaw was communication; we didn’t communicate enough, so when we were revising our video, the work was ultimately too divided and everyone couldn’t have equal input. This resulted in our video having multiple flaws as there was only one person doing all of the work, and that one person didn’t communicate with the rest of us as to what they were doing. This project would have been so much easier if we had just divided the work accordingly and communicated with eachother about what revisions needed to be made. In the future, I will remember that group project rely on the connection between its members and the distribution of work equally to achieve the highest quality of project.

Our Scimatics unit, about math and games, is the one that I feel could use the most improvement. This project was all about incorporating the usage of exponents into a game that we created. It was a group project, and I ended up doing most of the work. This has taught me that in order for a group project to work, you need to have input from all members to come up with an equally balanced and well-rounded project. Doing it mostly by myself put a lot of stress on my shoulders, and that ultimately effected the outcome of the project, which wasn’t terrible but definitely wasn’t all that it could have been. If we had worked together this project could have come out a lot cooler and higher quality with the combination of two people’s efforts instead of one. In the future I will enforce that idea when working in groups.

Now, I touched on DI Provincials as a success, but Regionals is another story. Being my first DI, and it being Regionals, getting a lower score than Provincials is to be expected because that time for improvement hasn’t been available yet. But I can pinpoint exactly what we did wrong during and before Regionals that made it not as good as it could have been. We did basically no practice! That was our biggest issue. We procrastinated, got distracted easily, put things off..... in the end, it all added up and it felt like we were jumping in blind. Which we were. I feel that I had trouble acting because I was especially unfamiliar with the character I was playing, and that hindered my ability to act, which is something I am usually good at. For future reference, when acting for anything, going over-the-top is better than being too quiet. And I said this for my Provincials SUCCESS paragraph too, but... practice really does make perfect!

Finally... PGP. This is something that actually was the focus at the beginning of our school year, before I even performed my mPOL. But it’s something that I am in dire need of improving! I take full advantage of Things, Calendars, the time blocking skills I’ve gained, but I always forget goal-setting. I think that it could really help with procrastination and setting my sights on aspirations that may seem out of reach now but can be achieved with time. I often feel that if something is difficult in the long run I have a tendency to give up with it and forget that I intended to do it. If I set myself a SMART goal and planned out how I was going to go about my goals, it would improve my goal-setting ability.

HOW I CAN BENEFIT FROM MY MISTAKES: — Remember them for future projects — Improve my presentation skills and general skills for creating projects and doing assignments — Gain experience from making mistakes so I won’t have to make them again later