Hello everyone, this is my mPOL blog post. The mPOLs are a time for us PLP students to show our learning to our parents and teachers. What we have learned in the past half year. It is also a time to look forward to the remainder of the year and make goals for that part of the year. In this post I will show you what we learned and how the competencies helped us learn those ideas. I will also share my goal for the coming year With you.

Before we go into this blog I am going to tell you my goal. This year we have to make a goal to help us learn for the next half of the school year.  My goal for this coming half year is “my goal is to use things and calendar to the fullest extent to help me get all my assignment’s in on time. This includes using time blocking and breaking my work down into small portions.” I will do this by using all the features in things and calendar to help me break up what is priority and what is not. It will also help me with getting started on something as that is a weakness of mine.

Lets go back into the first term of PLP grade nine and see what we did. The first humanities project for grade nine was this land is us. Just to clarify the subjects will be listed in order but humanities and maker sometimes merge and when that happens I will make sure to specify. This project was mostly a joint humanities/maker project and it was a fun one. We followed the same process as always, launch, build knowledge, develop and critique and then present and reflect. Expect this project is based around the Alberta field school. Here is the link to my blog post on this unit if you want in depth coverage on the project.

The driving question for this project is “how does place impact who we are.” The end product for this project is a research based video on how a certain group is affected by the driving question. For my group I was wildlife. The competency that we where assess on for the final project was, SS: Compare and contrast continuities and change for different groups of people at the same time period. ENGL: Demonstrate speaking and listening skills in a variety of formal and informal contexts for a range of purposes. I feel I used those competencies by creating a meaningful video that reflected and answered the driving question.

The second humanities project we did was “Revolutions through the ages.” This was our second humanities unit. This project was just a humanities project and it followed a little bit of a different format then most of our other projects. It still had the same cycle of launch and so on and so forth but for most milestones we had to make a video. We had six milestones and four of them were videos. The driving question for this project was “how do ideas drive change.” Our final product would be four informative videos about specific revolutions that use evidence to show how ideas drive change. We used two competencies for each video. Assess the justification for competing historical accounts after investigating points of contention, reliability of sources, and adequacy of evidence. Assess how prevailing conditions and the actions of individuals or groups affect events, decisions, or developments. I feel for this project our group did not use the competencies enough to make four meaningful videos. Our group could have done better for each milestone and I feel that reflected and showed through out our work. Here is a link to my other post where you can watch all four videos and learn more on the subject.

The next and second last humanities project we did was the Star Wars exhibition project. This is another maker/humanities project but they have different end products. The driving question for this project was “how might we build an interactive exhibit which explains the hero’s journey.” The final product for this project was on December 19 a group would bring a room to life using designs and ideas from the Star Wars universe. Before December 19 we would also create a seven part story in our groups. Each story was to be a chapter in a larger story. We used many competencies to bring this amazing process to life and if you want full detail of this entire process here is a link to my blog on the project as a whole.

Now for the final humanities project that will be included in this post. This project that we have just completed is  a interesting one. This next project is called straight flowing while I’m scrolling. The driving question for this project is “How can we use current memes to comment on the significance and consequences of nationalism around the world?” the end product for this project is a blog post that includes three memes in it. We had to make three memes, two normal picture with a caption meme and then one tik tok video. Each of these memes had to be easy enough to understand but had to include a representation of nationalism in history. We used many different competencies for this project and I hope you will check out my blog post on the unit. This post will go into more detail about each competency and milestone we completed and used.

Now on to the maker section. Maker is a exclusive PLP subject and it is a mandatory course that takes over one of your electives. It is a course the takes over for ADST. Now enough background information about maker. Lets get into this post. I will be covering units that are just maker not humanities/maker.

The first maker unit we did was technically this land is us but that was a shared humanities maker unit. The first project we did for maker was the four shot video. This transitioned our way into the video year in maker. The first real unit was called running a remake. The driving question for this project was “what technology, tools, and strategies can we utilize to create a short film. The final product for this unit was a video made in a group that is a exact copy of another video made by external film makers. It has to include the process of storyboard call sheets and screen plays.  We used many different competencies to complete and create this fun project. If you want to know more about my process and our groups process in making this video here is a link to the blog post I made about it.

 

For the second maker unit we did the student blogging challenge. This is a challenge taken up by students all over the globe. This is a challenge that gives you a task every week and you have to complete it. Each task is completed in the form of a blog post. This is a bit of a different unit than most as it does not have a final draft of any sort and it does not have the same learning process as most PLP units and projects do. This project doesn’t use the competencies like most other projects do. There are eight weeks of this challenge and we have to complete five different posts. For the other three days we had to comment on other blogs and get a sense of who else is doing the challenge. As there are tons of different links and blogs that fall under this category I have decided not to link all of them. If you want to read them just go to the main page of my blog and look for student blogging challenge weeks 3 through 8.

The next project we did after the student blogging challenge was the Star Wars exhibition project. Because I explained most of the maker aspect in the humanities paragraph on the matter I will not go into great depth about it. The driving question was “ how might we build an interactive exhibit which explains the hero’s journey. The task was to use the launch cycle to create an artifact that supports our humanities story. If you want more information on the topic here is a link to my blog. The maker section of the post is down near the bottom.

And now the final maker project I will be talking about. The project we are currently doing is destination imagination. If you don’t know what that is, it is a global non-profit competition that schools all around the world take place in. There are five challenges and each one is a different subject. There are, improv, engineering, scientific, fine arts, and technical. Each one is its own category. For us I am in the engineering challenge. Here is a link about the challenge. This competition requires us to make a solution to our challenge and then show its to appraisers. They judge your solution and then the other teams solutions and then the best most creative most well done solution wins. If you want to know more about this process and how we did my blog post will be coming soon.

Now on to the Scimatics section. Scimatics is a term for math and science. This is used by PLP because both subjects are always taught by the same teacher. There is not much you need to know about Scimatics. It is just science and math. I my opinion this is the subject that is closest to real school. Anyway lets get into the units.

The first unit in Scimatics we did was a math one. This unit took place before and after the Alberta field school. The driving question for this project is “ how does math make games more complex, interesting and re playable?” The final product for this unit was a card game that uses math/ the exponent laws. The competencies used for this were “Applying and Innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through individual or collaborative approaches Reasoning and Analyzing: Use logic and patterns to solve puzzles and play games Demonstrate and apply mental math strategies.” And here is a link to my post that will tell you how I made the game and reflected on the competencies.

The second unit for Scimatics was the correlation and causation unit. This was another math unit. The driving question for this unit was “how are correlation and causation different?” For the final product we had to do a live presentation of our answer to this topic and driving question. We used three competencies to complete this project. Applying and Innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through individual or collaborative approaches, Communicating and Representing: Use mathematical vocabulary and language to contribute to mathematical discussion, Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms. Here is a link to blog post on the matter. The post includes how I completed this project and how I reflected on the driving question and the competencies.

 

For the one of the final Scimatics projects. The final project is the chemistry unit. This unit was a fun unit that we did for the winter exhibition. The driving question for this project was “how do atoms and ion act like characters?”  The final product for this unit was a animated video showing the process of chemical bonding. The competencies being assessed were “ Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest, Communicating: Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon, Processing and Analyzing: Construct, analyze and interpret graphs (including interpolation and extrapolation), models and/or diagrams.” I feel like I could have focused on these competencies and the driving question to create a better product. I feel that I could have showed my knowledge of the topic to a fuller extent in my final product.

 

Now we are done my reflections of the PLP subjects. Now I will talk a little about myself and my work ethic and work habits. I feel looking back on this year that my work habits are some thing that I need to work on. I personally have trouble starting my work. I think that it’s I can use my goal in the rest of the year I can use the tools and resources such as things and calendar to make better work habits for myself. I also think that I need to try and be less distracted by my iPad. I think I will try and use different tools such as screen time limits   To limit the amount of distractions on my screen. I will try and make better work habits for myself in the rest of the year. For the rest of the year I will also try and raise my work ethic. I will try my best to make myself fully involved and into the project that I have been assigned. I feel if I try my best to be more involved in my projects then I will get better habits and get a more positive frame of mind towards work.

Thank you for listening to this presentation of learning and I hope you have a great day. If you have any questions comments concerns just drop a comment. Thank you for listening.