My Learning Portfolio

“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.”

The next step in our PLP journey is the MPOL. The MPOL is a mid-year presentation of learning and since I am still fairly new to PLP, this is my first MPOL. The driving questions we were to reflect on were, How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year? How can I sharpen my Learning Plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of the school year? My first step was to look back at the Learning Plan I wrote when I joined PLP. The areas of growth I identified in my learning plan were: setting realistic goals, being a leader in the classroom, and developing strategies to not become too stressed when faced with the many deadlines and pressures of school and sports. Reflecting on these past few months has taken me on a journey where I have learned years of information. In the highlight of these past few months, I would like to shine a light on three particular projects. The three projects that I feel taught me the most were my revolutions project, my Frakenstuffie video, and My Louis Riel paragraph piece. I found these projects exemplified my strengths as well as areas of growth.

To start the new experience of PLP off I was assigned to learn and depict history in the form of an infographic. The revolution that I chose to study was the French Revolution because I have a lot of interest in Napoleon and the uprising of the people against the monarchy. I felt like I needed to have a passion for the area I was learning about because it made me more engaged. We were assigned to do multiple drafts of our infographic so we could present our best version possible. The first draft felt easy to me because I had a lot of knowledge on the revolution and I was able to insert it into sections and add pictures to support the evidence. Once handed in I felt pretty good but when I received my feedback I felt a bit confused because they wanted me to take out a bunch of information to make it more visually appealing and have less detail. I felt that was a challenge because I felt that most of the information I had was essential to understanding the revolution. I had to make some tough choices on what to leave out and what to keep overall. I felt like I was very proud of my work and thought it successfully portrayed the French Revolution. The skills I took from this project were adaptability and how to capture an audience. In this project, I felt like I wasn’t concise which led to a lot of over-run-on sentences and the reader not being able to understand my message. Now with the skills I have learned I feel that I am more concise and able to engage my audience.

Another very influential project was our recent Frankenstuffie video before PlP I had done very close to zero videos by myself. In previous projects I wasn’t on the video portion so I didn’t learn much of the editing and filmmaking skills that others had previously had because of this I found it a real challenge to make a working video of my Frakenstuffie. Luckily we were taught different media apps to help us with our filmmaking process. I felt that the best media tools were keynote Imovie and cap cut. These three apps allowed me to show my Frakenstufiie in a video that invoked emotion and fear. I captured shots of myself and my Frakenstuffies behind green screens and got some real-life shots. I used the screen screen and movement effect of the keynote to help transport me into places I couldn’t reach in real life. I used cap cuts and special effects to add excitement. Once I had all my clips I put them into iMovie and added my audio. In this project, Before this project I was barely even able to combine some clips to make a whole movie. I felt this was a major skill I lacked before this project which held me back.

One project that I felt I had to learn new skills for was the Louis Riel writing piece. During this project, we wrote about how Louis Riel was portrayed in different media. I didn’t have that much interest in this project because I’m not too interested in Canadian history. This made it harder for me to make up ground because I didn’t have a solid base of information. With hard work and preparation, I was able to make up that deficit and start writing my essay. I felt really good about my essay heading into the first revision but when I got my feedback I was a bit confused. I did my essay more on the history when my teachers wanted it on the comparison of portrayals not on how history related to his portrayal. I struggled writing about this because I overthought and complicated it in my head. It took me a while but I finally got it sorted out and was able to write a good essay. The skills that I took away were not over complicated and time management because I had to rush to finish my project. In the future, I would ask my teachers if I am on the right track so I don’t have to redo everything again.

A Real Riel Killer?

Louis Riel was a historically polarizing figure whose gaining interest has resulted in a more contemporary understanding of how he contributed to Canadian history. Riel has had many positive and negative portrayals depicting how he affected history. Some of the statues showing real life have very different depictions which make us wonder how he truly affected our history. Riel is portrayed in films like “War Stories” which show more of the historical perspective of him and how his action led to his portrayal. There are also other films such as the “Heritage Minute” showing a one sided positive perspective on Riel. Overall a these sources shape of vision of Riel and hope to undercover the real truth about Riel.

To see different perspectives on the so-called “truth” we should look to Lenny and Garboury, they were the creators of an abstract statue of Riel. In this statue Riel is depicted as a man who prevented Canada from growing. He is portrayed as a naked man trying to break free from the narrative as a killer and write a false narrative on how he is a hero. This shows how in 1973 some still saw Riel as the same stone-cold killer. Later in the late 1900s, a more updated statue by Marcien Lemay portrays Riel as a bold and strong leader. The statue shows him as one who stood up for the Métis people and died as a martyr. This proves the more contemporary understanding of Riel and how he sacrificed himself for his people.

Proof of some of the more updated portrayals of Louis Riel is the Heritage Minute showing the final moments of Riel’s life before he was hung. They portray him as a man who is being wrongfully hung and is proud of what he did for his people. If he were to be shown in a  more negative way he would be struggling and fighting but in the video, they show him more in peace and serenity. The final example which shows the negative portrayal is how he is depicted in war stories. In war stories it shows how the government’s reactions to when Riel drove back the surveyors, killed Thomas Scott, and the fighting against the government’s army. Since these events weren’t beneficial for the government, they cast a negative view on Riel and used these views and actions from Riel to kill him. Overall all these portrayals show Riel in many different lights, helping to establish Canada into the nation it is today. Louis Riel’s perception changed from an outcast and killer to an essential character who helped preserve Metis society. As we learn more about Riel we uncover his true identity and his contribution to Canadian history.

When I entered PLP I had some PLP-related goals for myself. The two that I would like to highlight are getting Proficient or Extending in all subjects and successfully building a rube goldberg machine. A goal that I have achieved so far is getting Proficient or Extending in all subjects. I have done this by working hard and prioritizing school work when I would rather do other things. To get to Extending I feel like I need to show that I can go above and beyond. To do this I plan to try to do more than what’s expected so I can exceed my goals. Sadly I didn’t achieve my goal of having a successful Rube Goldberg machine. Despite saying this I thought I learned lots of lessons on teamwork and we were able to get most of it working. I thought if I did this project again I would be able to reach my goal because of the lessons I’ve learned. One goal I have for the second half of the year is to get my projects done for the first time because I redo my project so many times when I can just do it well the first time. Another goal that I have is not to feel frustrated when I receive criticism and to learn how to accept it better. I feel this will help me improve my work and not dwell on the past.

I felt like I showed almost all of the core competencies this semester but the ones that I want to get even better at are preparation and communication and collaboration. If I learn to prepare better I will have more time to do things and have a clear plan to improve. Steps I will take to improve on this are outlining so I stay on one path. To work on communication and collaboration will allow me to express my ideas to my group while also allowing me to receive their feedback. Steps I will take to allow me to work on this is to be more concise with my ideas and narrow them down so I can have a dedicated solution and try to integrate other people’s ideas into mine so we have the best solution possible.

Overall I felt like I have overcome so many challenges to get to the point I am at today. I changed from linear to semester, I went from an old-school style of learning to a more modern and composed style of learning all while dealing with sports at a new school and maintaining good grades. The challenges that I have faced over these past few months have helped me grow immensely as a student, friend, son, and teammate.

Some of you may be wondering what is Destination Imagination. DI is an organization that assigns student challenges and has them compete in a competition to show off their solutions. Due to me being a goalie for an important hockey game, I wasn’t able to attend the competition day but to see the real project you have to look behind the machines. Our task was to be able to build a machine that could transform into multiple configurations and shoot a beanbag accurately with distance. Everyone gave different ideas on how we should build the machine and transform it. We finally were able to narrow it down to two ideas and combine them. We had a similar plan for the story except we only needed one idea. Once we had our plane we were off to work. In our team we had a bunch of positives, Everyone was able to work together well, we all contributed to our project, and we were able to successfully come up with up with a working solution. In our group, we all communicated in some form. Almost everyone came to our meetings and if they couldn’t make it they would tell everyone. This allowed us to combine our strengths to make a story in which we got a lot of points on a machine that was one of the coolest in regionals and backdrops and props that allowed us to enhance our acting skills. To make our project go more smoothly, I felt we needed to work on our overall communication because there was a lot of confusion at times. We needed to have one solid communication plan that everyone was informed about so we were all on the same page. Another area of improvement for us to work on is that we could have drafted out what our machine, backdrops, and props would look like on set so we could have a solid layout to build around. In this project, I was assigned to gather materials, assemble, and help out wherever was needed. For the materials, I got us a helium tank, a buzzer, backdrop outlines, and a basket. We used the helium and basket with balloons to create a version of a hot air balloon as our team choice element. Kennedy was the one who painted the backdrops that I got a we used the buzzer as a prop. I helped build helmets and a control panel which we decided not to use even though I thought they were usable if we decorated them. We still might use them for the provincials. I also helped out in the planning and helped come up with some of our ideas for our machine and design. I would like to give shoutouts to Keaton and Silas. Keaton successfully built a machine from scratch which managed to work well. He was successfully able to adapt the machine to meet the many criteria that we were provided. Silas wrote the script for everyone and dealt with many struggles such as people not being there and the script being too long. They both worked hard and were key parts of how we got to the point we’re at. Just because I just mentioned these to people I thought our whole group worked well.

To further our learning for our novel “The Leviathan” we were assigned to create a video that invoked emotion and incorporated transformation while displaying our Frankenstuffie. I found this to be a very fun and creative project that allowed us to bring to life and share the experiences of our Frankenstuffie. The driving question that we were assigned to answer was How do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience?. To answer this we have to look at the process. Firstly, everyone brought in a few stuffies and we cut out the parts we wanted and traded with other people’s dissembled parts to make one unique Frankenstuffie. My stuffie consisted of a seal’s body and a monkey’s head with a raccoon mouth. There was also a cat, a monkey arm and finally a a unicorn mohawk. I felt it was a challenge sewing the Frankenstuffie as I’m not well versed in this area but I perservered and was happy with the final design. Once we had our Frankenstuffies complete, we had to design an intricate story to make our audience feel emotion and passion. I brainstormed many different ideas and storylines with various characters. Finally, after reworking many plot ideas, I chose my story to be based on an lawyer who overcomes his depression to help save the city. We had about a week to write our story and I finished it early so I worked on improving to part to invoke emotion. I also found part this to be challenging because we had to capture the audience’s attention, invoke emotion all while making it simple enough that we could transform it into a video story. Our final task was to portray our story in a video form. We were taught how to use many different apps such as iMovie, Keynote and Puppet Pals. After exploring these apps, I chose the ones that I felt that would help me portray my story the best. I got to work assembling my video story and it was going really well with almost half done until I hit a roadblock. Since I newly joined PLP, I didn’t know that the photos you used in your video had to have a Creative Commons license. This meant I would had to redo my movie. I put my head down and got to work using iMovie and Keynote to create my video. During the creation process, I found that iMovie was the best for a video format and Keynote was the best to display the images. My goal was to take the best tools from both and try to create a magnificent video. By using a mix of green screen and real-life shots to show my skills in multiple tools of film. In this project I learned to get the best version of what your trying to do you need to do it multiple times. So you can learn from your mistakes and see what you need to improve on. I found that taking a break and coming back to it later helped me see some of the biggest mistakes I had. Overall I feel pretty good about how he final video turned out. I thought that it conveyed a interesting story that kept the audience engaged. I wished that I could have shown more emotion so that the audience could feel how my character felt and his changing emotions. If I were to do this differently next time I probably would have tried to get more real life shots because thats the one that the audience connects most to. I also would have tried to use some higher tech animation apps. This would have given a nice texture change to my video and allow people to see the message I was trying to send. Overall I felt really good about how I did and I am thankful for the lessons I learned along the way.
Story: ‘
Bang! A thunderous boom echoed throughout the room as the gavel struck the table. Yet again Travis had been assigned to another low life and ragged criminal named Rambo Marchetti who was being charged with trying to break into an old Jetta. Travis had once been a prominent and dazzling student who had graduated top of his class at Harvard, but couldn’t get into any of the prominent lawyer companies called the Lions League lawyer because of hisviral Tik Tok video of him jumping off a roof with a flaming pineapple.

Feeling the especially hard burden of his mistakes as an adolescent, Travis sulked into the ominous interrogation room to carry out the long and arduous process of interrogation. Half asleep, Travis wakes up because out of the blue Rambo Marchetti started screaming and wailing in his seat. The whole room seemed to vibrate for a good thirty seconds. The guards came in to settle Rambo down and then he said this in a chanting sort of manner, “Me and the Roombscoaus are holding a secret gas at the old abandoned storage unit and were planning to release a gas that will allow us to control people into voting for our party in the election.” He started to laugh maniacally and tried to break free of his handcuffs. The officials in the room ran to alert their superiors and Travis, who was left in a stunned state, was forgotten in the midst of the chaos. Walking out of the Police hall with a hunched over back Travis overhears a message by the sheriff’s office that describes a plan to steal the gas for themselves and use it to create their own political party. Feeling the outrage flow through his body, Travis, whose apathy had dissipated, decided to steal the gas and destroy it. Travis trotted quietly in the night to the place where Rambo described. Tentatively Travis reached his hand towards the closed door, when out of the corner of his eye he spots a rusty and beaten up ladder leading to an open door. Travis slowly creeps over and climbs up as the latter creaked in a eerie sort of manner. When Travis reached the top his breath seemed to waver in the cold night air and he stepped through the half opened door.

As he walks through the door he hears footsteps coming from behind him so he sprints and ducks around the corner. His heart beats rapidly as he waits for a few minutes in silence until the footsteps go away. Travis then starts explores the new damp and dark place, as he is walking he sees a spiral staircase leading up he decides to follow it he hears music playing and people singing he slowly peers over the top of the staircase he sees a bunch of people partying around the gas. Wanting to blend in, Travis decides to join the party and starts dancing. The dancing Travis slowly realizes that some of the people in the party were from the police station, this causes Travis to duck his head down and pretend he doesn’t know them. Avoiding the Police’s glances he slowly starts making his way to the centre of the room when he sees all the police do this weird thing with their chins and Travis sees them make their way towards the gas. Filled with panic Travis grabs the gas container and chugs it hoping for the best. Time seemed to freeze as Travis’ body started changing and morphing. He looked down at his body and fainted by the sight of his body changing into weird creatures. He wakes up handcuffed to a hospital surrounded by a bunch of interviewers shining lights on him. The doctors realize he is awake and clears the reporters away. Travis tried to get up but he was attached to handcuffs. What will happen next ? Will Travis be locked away forever?

Video:

QR Code Please give your opinion on project:

We were assigned to write a multi paragraph essay on how the controversial figure Louis Riel was portrayed. Firstly, we took information from different sources such as textbooks to see how he was portrayed. In the more modern texts we found that he was portrayed more as a hero and a leader but in the older texts he was seen as a mad man preventing Canada from expanding. With all the sources I looked at, I felt like analyzing contrasting opinions would serve me best. I used two statues showing Riel in different ways and two historical videos that made me see Riel in different lights. I chose to write my essay on more of the historical side and how his choices reflected his portrayal of him. I didn’t have much peer critique so I thought I was close to being done. But little did I know I was many steps away from completing our assignment. The last step was for our teacher to give advice but I didn’t know they wanted me to take less of a historical and more of a simpler stance on just analyzing how he was portrayed. I found this difficult because most of my essay was historical so I had to rewrite most of it. When I found a format that was able to meet what the teachers wanted I found it to be way easier, and I easily completed our task. If I were to do this again I would have asked my teachers for advice on how they want my essay structured sooner so I could create my self a better baseline. Overall this was a very fun project and it taught me a lot about Riel and his works.

Peer Advice

Teacher Advice

Final Draft
A Real Riel Killer?

Louis Riel was a historically polarizing figure whose gaining interest has resulted in a more contemporary understanding of how he contributed to Canadian history. Riel has had many positive and negative portrayals depicting how he affected history. Some of the statues showing real life have very different depictions which make us wonder how he truly affected our history. Riel is portrayed in films like “War Stories” which show more of the historical perspective of him and how his action led to his portrayal. There are also other films such as the “Heritage Minute” showing a one sided positive perspective on Riel. Overall a these sources shape of vision of Riel and hope to undercover the real truth about Riel.

To see different perspectives on the so-called “truth” we should look to Lenny and Garboury, they were the creators of an abstract statue of Riel. In this statue Riel is depicted as a man who prevented Canada from growing. He is portrayed as a naked man trying to break free from the narrative as a killer and write a false narrative on how he is a hero. This shows how in 1973 some still saw Riel as the same stone-cold killer. Later in the late 1900s, a more updated statue by Marcien Lemay portrays Riel as a bold and strong leader. The statue shows him as one who stood up for the Métis people and died as a martyr. This proves the more contemporary understanding of Riel and how he sacrificed himself for his people.

Proof of some of the more updated portrayals of Louis Riel is the Heritage Minute showing the final moments of Riel’s life before he was hung. They portray him as a man who is being wrongfully hung and is proud of what he did for his people. If he were to be shown in a  more negative way he would be struggling and fighting but in the video, they show him more in peace and serenity. The final example which shows the negative portrayal is how he is depicted in war stories. In war stories it shows how the government’s reactions to when Riel drove back the surveyors, killed Thomas Scott, and the fighting against the government’s army. Since these events weren’t beneficial for the government, they cast a negative view on Riel and used these views and actions from Riel to kill him. Overall all these portrayals show Riel in many different lights, helping to establish Canada into the nation it is today. Louis Riel’s perception changed from an outcast and killer to an essential character who helped preserve Metis society. As we learn more about Riel we uncover his true identity and his contribution to Canadian history.

We were assigned to create a Rube Goldberg machine that symbolized the French Revolution. First, we were assigned to create an infographic to learn about our revolution and have the necessary skills to build our skills and connect it to the French Revolution. In case you didn’t know a Rube Goldberg is a chain reaction of items to perform a goal. We started out by planning out what each individual person wanted to do and we took one connection from each person and connected them all together. After we did that we tried to sort out all the flaws and got right to building. My idea for the project was to get a bouncy ball to go down ramps and ping pong back and forth off floorboards and then go down a ramp. I decided to cut out hard cardboard and manipulate it into the correct shapes and glue floor boards to some of them. This only took me a few days to finish my part of the project. After I built this I realized the ball was falling out before it hit the end so I had to change it to make it more fluid and consistent. Since I finished early I tried to help wherever else was needed. I didn’t know the hardest part was yet to come. Almost everyone had their machines done with around three days to go until the thing and my group thought they were done but now we still had to connect all of them together. I found this was the hardest part because my group decided to ignore it until the last minute and focus on decorations. I personally didn’t agree with this and tried to work on mine but I needed everyone else’s to be complete so I could work on mine. Unluckily one of our group’s machines got broken and I only got one day to connect them so I couldn’t get it working consistently. Sadly we never got a successful run-through before the presentation but we tried our best and hoped it worked during the actual fair. We had a nice setup and explained ours well but when it got to the actual machine it didn’t go well stuff that we expected to work didn’t work and the stuff we didn’t expect to work did. My machine worked every time I set it up but that didn’t really matter because the machines before didn’t work. Although it didn’t work I had a fun time doing this and I learned a lot from it. If I were to do this again I would have liked to double-check things and have a better time plan so we could deal with mistakes.

We were assigned to make a thrill us video we had to use the skills we learned on how to make a film into making one with no guidance at all. Our group decided to make a silent film to harness the suspense in the film. Since their were no words it proved to be a challenge because everything else was on higher scrutiny. We had to make sure every detail in our film was perfect because then the lack of words would stand out. Also, the background audio had to build suspense because it would keep the audience engaged. This proved to be a challenge because we kept getting noise in the background that interfered with our sound. We overcame this obstacle by going to more secluded places to get cleaner sound. The filming part was also hard because we had to have a stream of continuity by wearing the same clothes and shooting in the same place every day. This proved to be challenging because the forest had different weather everyday. Once we had compiled all our shots we had to put them together this was the toughest part because we realized we couldn’t use some of the shots. Since we didn’t realize this we were left in a time crunch and couldn’t get all the scenes how we wanted it. If we were to do this again we would have a better timeframe so we would know exactly what to do on each day and have room for mistakes.

During this Loon Lake trip, I learned so much about myself and others in a way that will help guide me in making decisions for my future. The experiences I had opened my eyes to things I had overlooked or never realized were there. Some of the most eye-opening experiences were the high and low ropes course, trust falls, and the Jono talks.
Firstly, the low and high ropes courses taught me the values of teamwork, trust, and bravery. On the low ropes course, we had to work together to complete the obstacle course as quickly as possible. This required teamwork and trust because each teammate had to fulfill their role for us all to succeed. I trusted my teammates, and together we achieved the fastest time. On the high ropes course, it was a combination of trust and bravery. Bravery was necessary to climb up to such heights and trust that the rope would catch you if you fell. Fortunately, I didn’t fall, and I was able to believe in myself and complete the challenge. The second challenge on the high ropes course required trusting your partner. We had to walk across a bridge in sync to prevent it from flipping over. Successfully accomplishing this made me realize that to achieve things, you need to take risks.
The next activity that helped me grow was the trust falls. In this exercise, we had to stand on a chair placed on a table and blindly fall backward, relying on classmates to catch us. This experience taught me to trust my classmates more because I essentially put my life in their hands and saw that they could be relied upon in times of need.
Lastly, the talks with Jono really inspired me and changed my perspective on life. The informative talks showed me what I needed to succeed in the world. The information that resonated with me the most was the realization that our generation lacks patience. Since we’re constantly in front of screens, we seek instant gratification. Whenever we have a spare moment, we turn to our phones. However, being cut off from technology for a week made me realize the little things I had been missing out on. One valuable lesson I will try to transfer back to school is that to achieve great things, you have to take risks in the world. If I take more risks I should have bigger successes and will have valuable lessons from my defeats.

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