My User Manual Project

My User Manual Project

For our first project in PLP grade 8 we had two main goals. We would make User Manuals. They are basically guides for how to operate people. It has tips, troubleshooting, accessibility, etc. The second thing we had to create for this project was a Memoji  laptop with stickers that we customized in Keynote.

Memoji Laptop With Stickers

This part of the project included two milestones, 2 and 4. Milestone 2 was a customization plan for what stickers we would put on our virtual laptops. They had to be things that represent us, not just random symbols. 

 

After we came up with our plan, Mr. Hughes showed us how to make stickers with Keynote. I used all the original ideas but it obviously needed more. Here is the first version of my Memoji laptop:

For Milestone 4 which is the other milestone involving the Memoji laptop, it  was a peer critique session. We looked around the classroom at the other kid’s Memoji laptops. We left sticky notes by the laptops we had critique for. Here are the sticky notes I got for a later version of the laptop, as I had updated it a bit since the first version.

So with the critique I revised the laptop lots of times. I made lots of subtle changes that made the overall aesthetic much better. Here is the finished version of my Memoji laptop:  

  As you can see, I kept all the original stickers I intended to be on the laptop. The finished laptop is a product of many revisions and I think it turned out great.

 

My User Manual

This was sort of the main part of the project. It included milestones 1,3,5, and 6.

 Milestone 1 was need to knows. Need to knows are things you need to know to to answer the driving question for the project (How do I creatively communicate who I am?). So we got in groups and brainstormed things on sticky notes. We then put them on the window under categories.

Milestone 3 was making an outline for the User Manual. For this we used the teacher’s User Manuals as references for the format. We put in the headings and notes for what we’d put under the headings. This milestone was generally shaping what our User Manuals will look like.  

Milestone 5 was a peer critique session. We were paired with one other student and we read parts of our User Manual to them and they would give critique to us and vice versa. I was paired with Aaron and here is some of the critique and feedback that was given:

1: feedback and questions I gave to Aaron

Questions:

-Did you include favorite stuff?

-What settings did you include?

Feedback I gave:

-I liked the part where you incorporated being deaf

-Maybe add favorite things or preferences 

-I liked that you included your contact information

2: Feedback and questions from Aaron:

Questions asked: 

– Why did you choose to write in third person?

Answer: I was referring to myself as a machine or software and it seemed like the thing to do

Question: What are the differences between the settings?

Pretty much the levels are levels of extrovert and introvert

Feedback from Aaron:

-Add which settings you spend the most time in?

– Add in the settings your attention span in each mode

-Add the reasons why I’m more introverted or extroverted in each setting

-Make the title a brighter red

Changes I need to make:

• Really fine-tune the settings, add reasons why I included the things I did, go over the grammar, conjunctions, capital letters, colors and the spacing between the categories is all wonky so fix that (fix formatting). Bolden the headings in the modes. Fine tune and edit.

That was the feedback given and received in the critique session.

Milestone 6, the final milestone was reflecting on the My User Manual Project, so here is my reflection:

In this project I learned many things. I learned what project based learning looks like. I learned the many steps to a finished project. I found out that it takes revision, and redoing lots of things. Looking back, I realize that I learned lots about myself and other people. It was a great project to learn about my peers, most of whom I wasn’t acquainted with before Seycove. This project helped me learn tons about others and I found out more things than I would have if we could choose our partners for all the revision sessions and the other activities. I learned that a project that was supposed to go on for four days can take a lot longer than that and taking the time to get things right is always the best decision. In this project I also learned tons about my iPad, (using the widgets, tips and tricks, etc.) and that lots of people also were pretty new to iPads and about half of us had an iPad for the first time. I learned that a lot of the time, PLP isn’t giving the students something to do and making them sit and do it the entire time. It’s usually noisy, friendly and you get up and move a lot. I feel like the many steps to this project really were a good demonstration as to what PLP is and what we’ll be doing this year. In conclusion, this project really showed what PLP is and will come in useful for future group projects.

 

Hope you enjoyed reading my post!

“Nobody but me is gonna change my story”

-Matilda the musical