And before you know it, it’s MPOL season again!
An MPOL is a mid-year presentation of learning. So basically, this post will be reflecting on the last half-year of my learning in PLP. I’ll be going over some work I struggled with along with what I think was some of my best work from the past few months. I’ll be summarizing the work we did in every subject in PLP as well.
Let’s start with some positives from the past few months and some projects I liked.
One of the projects I really liked doing was the live event video. I thought it showed some of my best work throughout the video. For this project, we had to document a live event and put it together in a video that was 2 minutes or less. I think making this video taught me perseverance, because it was hard to get the ideal live event. I ended up having three different live events that I recorded, and my last one was the best. Then, after making the video, I got some feedback and I felt like I made some really good changes to it. A positive for this video that I really liked was that there was no criteria, except that we had to film a live event. I liked it because live events are generally sports, and anything to do with sports is cool with me. To read about the full process that went into making this post, click here. If you’re interested, watch the live event video down below!
Another project in which I feel I put my best foot forward was the Student Blogging Challenge. Each week, there was a whole new unique challenge which we had to complete and write a blog post about. I really enjoyed the different challenges and how it kept you on your toes from week to week. I have to admit, at the beginning I was a bit of a sceptic, but towards the end, I was striving to have mine be the best and get shouted out. Although I never accomplished my goal, it was fun to have some motivation to work towards. I liked this a lot more than having to write huge blog posts at the end of every unit- just writing 400-500 word posts at the end of each week. Although the challenge may have been designed for younger blog writers, I still liked the whole experience. If you wanted to read about the challenges, just scroll down on my blog. Here’s a link for the SBC recap.
I didn’t necessarily hate any projects, but one project I wasn’t completely sold on was the metaphor machine project. I found that it was tough for me to get committed. I didn’t really have a role set out for me in the group and I felt I didn’t contribute as much as I could have. I think I strive when I have a specific role or assignment set for me like “do the blog post by Friday” or “ build the structure using ______ materials only.” Anyways, let’s move forward.
I’ve noticed some work habits for myself for the past term, some good, some bad.
In general, I’d say my work ethic is average. I’m always meeting deadlines and I’m on top of my work generally. However, I tend to leave projects such as blog posts with long deadlines to the last few days. I find it tough to commit to doing it before I actually have to.
Even with these traits, I still think I’ve improved drastically with my work ethic from last year. Last year, I used to procrastinate a lot and then not put my best work forward. I think that I’ve improved a lot last year with my writing skills and how I go about doing my work.
When I know I have to do work, I get down to business pretty fast. Like, if I have a a couple things due in 2 days, I’ll make sure to block off whatever I’m doing to do the work, however tempting it may be. I set time periods to work in things like “do the blog post from 4-7 after school”. I’m generally pretty good at estimating the time it takes me to do the work, which make it a bit easier to block off certain amounts of time to work. I know what I have to do and making space for it makes it a bit easier to actually do it- it relieves some pressure.
That being said, there are still lots of distractions. When I get working, I’m generally a quick worker, but it takes me a while to get into because of distractions like texting, YouTube and social media. It’s easy to get sucked into the apps and lose all your working momentum, which is something that’s held me back from working faster and putting down better work.
One thing that I felt I could have done better was just put more work into my videos. Video-making is the main idea of PLP 9. I’ve seen some amazing creators and their video editing and transitions skills on YouTube and I just got caught up on that. I felt like I didn’t have enough quality content to make my videos and I couldn’t make them very special on iMovie. It allows you to put videos together, and that’s pretty much it. I felt like my videos lacked a bit of touch or flair compared to video-makers or even some of my classmates. Although some of my videos were ok, I felt like I could have made a lot of them better. They were just solid, yet unspectacular. I think it’s a lesson learned that to create a great video, you have to have lots of B-roll and a lot of planning ahead. Looking back, I could have created my videos way better than I did at the time. Just putting more time and work into them could have made them just the little bit more better they needed to be.
I think I’ve improved a lot from last year as a learner. If I can keep up what I’m doing and add some better working habits, I think that I can do really well in school for this coming semester. I’m looking forward to what’s in the future.
Well, this is going to be my third presentation of learning as a PLP learner. I’ll see you guys in June for the TPOL!
Nik
