Why am I ready to advance to the next grade level? This is the question I am asked at the end of every year in PLP and each year it seems I have a similar answer. I feel like I got better at this and that and I ended up learning a lot because I struggled in this. While this is often very true and whenever I do this it’s still accurate but there’s always another level that seems to stay hidden and a layer that isn’t hit with this basic format.

After thinking a lot about how I would change up my format for this Tpol I had a realization. Instead of adding something new, I would simply take a away the veil. Remove the cover.

This time, I’m not going to focus on grades, not on classes, I’m just going to focus on learning. What I learned in school this year. In my opinion, grades should shouldn’t be the drive of students, a students drive should come from the skills and the tools they are receiving that will be translatable into later in their life.

The first type of learning I’m going to focus on is my technological learning and advancements. This year more than ever I feel like my actual learning with production, editing and general iPad skills have improved greatly. I don’t think there is a single project to exemplify this. Instead, I think there is a spectrum. At the beginning of the year we can look at things like the Seattle change video I made. Standard transitions, low quality voiceover, etc. Now let’s look to the middle of the year, this is where my skills in podcasting are starting to develop. I’m using mics, homemade music, and my podcasts are starting to have a more natural flow to them. Now if we fast forward to the end of the year we can take my circle bc podcast. In my opinion, this podcast is well written, has good audio, self composed music, and a generally conversational flow and style to it. Podcasts and audio aren’t the only thing that I’ve improved this year. I feel like the whole cycle of improvement throughout the year goes for other things to like videos, keynotes and other forms of media.

 

Now that we’ve looked at a more physical, technological side of my learning this year, I’d like to look at something more personal. This is my PGP and more specifically learning goal setting. Now let me start off by saying throughout this year goal setting has been my least favorite part PGP. I always thought it just complicated everything to be honest. It’s just in the last three months or so that I really started setting smart and helpful goals for myself. I feel like it’s often what you want to do the least that will help you the most and for goal setting that was the truth. After my Mpol meeting I wasn’t feeling too hot and I decided I should probably change something. I began to set goals. Doubtfully, at first I set small goals every once and a while and I slowly worked my up to bigger goals, goals that have no end and goals that will help me in my personal and educational life forever. My PGP time machine video  and post go into this at a higher level of detail.

Lastly I’m going to look at how I learned this year and how I learned to learn better. I think that this year I really became more of a self starter. I feel like this shows because I learned how to take initiative and step up for a role in a group or for myself. In a group, a great example of this would be D.I. Where I covered Jessie’s lead role and learned 40 something lines and learned how to juggle in two days. There was an gap in our group and it wasn’t going to be easy to cover it but I feel like I stepped up and did the part. I think another example of this in a solo project is my time machine. In this project, I did a great job of taking interest and making sure I DID start the project earlier than a week before it was due, I made sure that it was meaningful to me and I put a lot of work into it. I think it does a great job of demonstrating initiative a lot of effort in a project.

Looking back on an entire year of school and summing into one blog post isn’t easy. Selecting what I did well and didn’t do well on is also difficult.  After looking back on my school year and my year of education, I can honestly say I’m proud. I’m proud of what I’ve done this year. I’m proud of the effort I put in and I’m proud of the work I created but most importantly, I’m proud of the challenges that I overcame and what I’ve gone through to get where I am right now.