Hello and welcome to my tPOL blog post. In this post, I will be talking about why I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade level. The skills I have learned this year are skills that I will carry with me throughout my whole life. Before joining plp in grade 8 I had my own personal iPad, and I never understood the potential of this device and how much it can accomplish until now. I have learned how to write, script, and direct movies, how to work in a team, how to use a huge variety of editing apps and softwares, how to go through the launch cycle with projects such as Blue Sky, and I have become a more mature and open-minded human being.
My learning:
1.Humanities: This year we did a ton of unique, different, sometimes stressful, and most of the time fun humanities projects. I feel like some of the best work I have done this year is represented by the Frankenstuffy project, Florida video project, and the Cray Cray person video. I think these successful projects are only thanks to the failures I have had earlier in the year that has helped me learn from my mistakes. Such as the Metaphor Machine project. Peer critic has helped me revise my work and I have become more accustomed to hearing their thoughts as well as mine.
2.Maker: This block has really helped me come outside of my comfort zone with presentations being one of its key elements. At the start of the year, I didn’t really know anyone in plp, and I was scared to death to present and show my thoughts in front of them. Maker time has given me the opportunity to become more confident with my work in front of others, and it’s made me not afraid to showcase my work. I feel like I have done a lot of good work in maker this year such as Blue Sky, and the HCE projects.
3.Scimathics: I have always found that science and math are pretty easy to do well at once you understand the concept that’s being taught to you. At the beginning of the year, Scimathics was very easy. We did a lot of projects that mostly covered the whole unit, which meant we didn’t have very many test and worksheets. Now, later into the year, our units consist of mostly worksheets and test, which isn’t as fun and is more challenging. I have sure learned a lot during this past year. Big humanities project sometimes even overlap with science and math units, such as the Frankenstuffy project where we built the antagonist monster in math. I like this because I work better if I can focus on one project at a time.
This year I had a hard time balancing downtime, school (homework), and friends. I feel like this year I have made a lot of strong friendships, some in plp and some outside of it, and it’s sometimes hard to decide whether it’s the right decision to stay home and do homework or go out with friends. Most of my friends out of plp usually have more free time than I do, and it’s been my own personal goal to learn to understand that homework comes first (most of the time). Instead of ignoring my homework and pushing it to do later, I have been trying to stay more on top of. But sometimes still I mess up and choose to go out with friends, and that’s totally my own fault. I still need to improve on this especially if I’m going into grade 10 next year.
I have learned that a big part in PLP is revising your work, it is so big that the class has even made a joke about it, “revision required”. The revision allows us to look back over our work, see what we did wrong, and then fix it and improve it. This is a very valuable skill, and I now understand why plp is so based around it. I use revision every week in class, especially when we do big group projects. Destination Imagination is an example of a project where my group and I had countless times where we had to revise our work and perfect it before moving forward.
This year has had its ups and down, but overall it has been amazing. I have gotten so many opportunities to do stuff I would never imagine myself doing, I have learned so many valuable skills that I will for sure be using in my future, and I’m really excited about the journey my life will take next year!
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