Once again welcome to T-pols ( if you have no idea what I am talking about go check thisLink). Today I have prepared many examples from many different projects that I have done over the years with the hopes of answering the questions of whether or not I should move onto the next grade. It sounds kind of weird but I assure you that the work with this post reflects the highlights for this year. That’s about all I have to say to lets go right in.

1. What am I most proud of? Why? Star Wars Exhibition.

The project I am most proud of this year is of course my Blue Sky/ Winter Exhibition project. To start off I want to talk about the story which my group wrote together, this was a story from the perspective of a side character in the movie Star Wars that had seven parts which each had to connect together to form one story. Not to mention that we had to go and find information about a character that almost nobody knows, which takes an incredible amount of time and patience. Adding on to that we had to work as one team to find specific details about an imaginary city where our story took place and then share that information amongst the whole group so that our stories all flow together. I can’t really explain how frustrating that task was and looking back I know there could have been some better way to find all the information we needed, but once it was all done it felt so good to have a story where all the information is consistent and flows nicely.

 

Although the story was a nice victory for our team the main success was the final presentation and for me personally I though my own Blue Sky project was a major success as well. What made the presentation a proud moment for me was the fact that me only had one hour and thirty minutes to set up the whole thing. Other groups had been setting up since the morning, but since our planet was Tatooine, we had to set up in the halls, which was great for space but not so great because we had to wait for all the student to leave before setting up. Although we had a huge time constraint, my team still managed to work together to completely transform the entire hall way into an imaginary planet in almost no time at all. In the end it looked amazing and really reflected what we had put into our stories as well which made it that much better.

Then of course the final moment of pride for me was my Blue Sky project which was creating a hologram. I had ideas for this when starting but other than that I knew nothing about how to create a hologram or if it was even possible. There were others doing the same type of idea and together we all pitched in ideas for possible solutions to the hologram problem, and even though we were from different planet groups, we worked as a team to come up with many different solutions.

 I put many hours of work into researching the topic and then also finding materials to build the actual thing as well. In the end it looked pretty awesome and actually projected an image in mid air. This was a huge risk for me but doing it made me use different methods of solving the problem which I had not used in a while or ever, and when I took everything I did to create this project into account, I was very proud of the work I did and also the work my group did during the Exhibition. Our hard work resulted in a really nice looking exhibition with many incredible projects from not only Gr.9s but also some Gr.8s.

When looking over this project, what makes me so proud was not the just the research, and the time we spent on detailing our projects, it was the fact that we were able to work as a team including the Gr.8s to create a giant presentation of what we had made to reflect our learning. Then to top it off the fact that I people enjoyed looking and learning about how and why we created what we did really made all of the hard work worth it.

2. What have you learned about yourself? Story of The Elements, Chemestry

During our science unit on chemistry I learned a lot about not only things like electrons, protons, neutrons, but also that I quite enjoyed learning and studying about these almost invisible forces that make up our entire world. I did not have have the greatest understanding of what chemistry was all about, but as we moved through the unit I started to get more and more interested in this topic.

 

When we started learning all about chemical bonding I starting realizing how interesting this topic actually was. At the point when we had to creating an animated video showing chemical bonding was when I was really into designing and drawing the atoms. 

This whole experience not only made me enjoy the class a bit more but also encouraged me to keep and open mind to new topics and ideas. I had no idea I would enjoy chemistry so keeping an open mind help me hind parts of it I really enjoyed which overall made the topic and final project way more fun. Not to mention that by finding the fun parts of chemistry I was able to produce some very good pieces of work because I was fully engaged in the subject. 

3. What do you want people to see in your work? Minecraft Polynomials .

The thing I want people to see the most is the amount of effort and time that me and my group mates put into every aspect of our projects, and a really good example of this is out math project completely based around Minecraft. 

During this project, Thomas,  Anthony and I collaborated to created a small demonstration of what we had learned about polynomials in Minecraft. At first our project just looks like some random buildings in the middle of a huge area, and that’s exactly what I don’t want people to see. The reason I really want to people to see the time and effort we put in is because I hope then they will admire the project I bit more. 

For this project we spent many hours just constructing the building grounds, this was necessary to show the teams in our game along with the buildings that each player would make. Each part of the game was though out very carefully to make sure we were able to communicate not only our work but also the polynomials within every part of our project.

The buildings we constructed were not much to look at but my team spent quite a bit of time calculating the results and then putting them into an equation. As a team we worked extremely well together and completed these tasks quite quickly, while also remembering we had to show math as we constructed. 

Overall I want people to see every little detail and effort that went into the final product of out presentation, it not only make you appreciate the work that has been done, but also makes the people who made the work feel some sort of acknowledgment for all the hard work they put into a simple project.

4. How have I been able to navigate through online schooling? Why? Has it been challenging? Why? DI But Online.

For the last three months I have had to navigate my way through this complex maze which is COVID-19. It has effected myself, my family, my community, but mostly my schooling and how I learned virtually so that the virus could not spread. All of the online learning has been a new and exciting new opportunity for me to test my skills as a individual learner as well as a teammate in projects because as I found out quite quickly nothing is tougher than working with people you can’t actually physically meet with. Although this has been an interesting experience the part that stands out the most to be was the DI Online Tournament that was held by the teachers in PLP.

As if working with a team to present a solution for DI wasn’t hard enough already ( previous DI post HERE ) my team had to present an improv skit with sound effects made by myself live. This most definitely threw my team off for a little while, we had a lot of questions about how this would work. Eventually we just started practicing what we already had and planned to somehow work together to act as a team instead of awkwardly waiting for the next person to say line after line. 

The preparation was probably the most fun I have had with improv before. Learning how to cue lines after someone was done acting was very fun to watch, along with that trying to make sound effects right next to the mic so everyone could hear them added to the list of things I need to work on.

As the sound effect maker I had to take responsibility for all of the sounds effects that we now lacked as they were all back in school and we had to access to them. To make up for those lost ones I had to search my entire house from top to bottom to look for any type of object that could potentially make sounds close to what we had been planning for the last month. This was not a very easy task because I had to start and improvise with what every I could find which was mostly just some instruments. I was able to use my creative skills to use things like voice changing microphone mixed with a ukulele and harmonica to create some really interesting sounds. Once I had everything I needed then I was able to really contribute to my team.

About one week into our practice we had it just about down. Our performances were close to normal and despite the separation we work very well together to come up with many good skits that we could use. Then when our time to perform our skit came we did very well, we used everything we had worked on to produce a high quality skit minutes after we got our topic from the teacher, which if you ask me is pretty good. We knew we could to really well if we tried and we also knew there was not way we were going to lose to the Gr.8s, and thats why we made a skit that we think could have even beat Gr.10s. for the whole story go and check out THIS blog post.

Even though working through COVID-19 has been tough at some points there is always little good things that make up for the negative effects. For instance work times are not separated from block to block which allows me to work on whatever whenever which I really like. 

To conclude, even though these times are different and sometimes tough, as long as we look for the small positives during the day, we can easily over come this challenge.

5. Time management.

As I might have mentioned before, my time management is most definitely one of my weaker skills, until COVID-19 came around. During this pandemic I have had to manage all of my classes at once and not being at school definitely does not help me remember what is due and when. The solution was simple and of course it was the app Things. As mentioned in my M-pols things is a very helpful app allowing me to keep track of everything I have due at once, and during the time I have been stuck at home I have figured out what has made it so hard for me to use the app. 

When first introduced to the app we were taught to use every single function to be as alert as possible and know when anything was due. The reason it was difficult for me to use is because all these different functions were not only sometimes tough to use, they were also frustrating to keep on setting such complex reminders. So I started just putting the things I had to get done as notes in Things, this way I could check in regularly to the app and see what I had to get done and when. I found this much more effective and from then on I started using Things for every little thing that came up. It may be just me being to lazy to keep on using complex functions but the technique I started using works and I am glad I am now able to keep track of all my assignments.

That concludes this years T-pols. I will say that I think from last year to this year I have most definitely improved and many of my skills in order to create higher quality work at a more advanced level. All the pieces of I have included in this post are ones that I believe reflect my best work and work efforts. I hope you enjoyed this presentation of my learning this year.

Question: How can I take advantage of online learning to continually develop skills in all areas of learning?

That’s all for now