“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner”
Improvements: Enthusiasm 📈
These year has had many ups and downs but overall I feel like I made a great amount of progress, be it by improving some of my skills (mostly things I struggled with before), asking for help, following guidelines and most importantly handing in things which I can proudly showcase to the world. This was all made possible as throughout the year I often was engaged with the topic at hand and even if I wasn’t I found an aspect of it that would keep me engaged and interested in the topic.
Detailed Sketching:
When I first got into PLP my i-pad my first instinct was to draw but if I’m being completely honest with myself I wasn’t great. Time passed and all my other tech skills improved but my drawing skills never really improved. There maybe was the occasional instance where I would draw a half decent sketch for science class but I never drew something with real detail and depth, or at least this was the case until pretty recently. About two weeks ago we started a project called “WWl Con” where the whole point was to draw potrayals of different battles with as much detail as possible and present it to a crowd during the exhibition. I’ll be completely transparent, when this project was first announced I didn’t really prioritize it and thought that it would be a pretty quick and easy proccess, I was sorely mistaken. I only really started the project three days before it was due so I had to finish it as quick as possible. During this process I spent many hours drawing every details of soldier’s uniforms + backrounds. Spending this much time on that actually helped me improved drastically which I noticed a lot when drawing outside of school (as I drew something for father’s day). Overall I feel like I improved a lot because of this opportunity and even though it took me way longer than expected and I wasn’t even close to being the best, I feel like I learnt a skill that I’ll be able to continue to use and improve upon in grade 10.
Editing:
I still remember the first time I made a video for PLP, I was assigned with making a book review for my favourite book, at the time I was reading the Harry Potter series so I chose the one I was currently on, wrote a script and recorded my video. I uploaded it and got my first re-do symbol. I had apparently forgotten to read the part of the criteria where it said I had to edit the video. I quickly displayed a couple of images and called it a day not knowing that in about a year and a half from then I would have to spend hours on the same thing I had so quickly dismissed that day. Until pretty recently my editing had consisted of adding a couple of images on top of a video and images until I had to make one in our Nationalism project. Here I feel like I put a good amount of effort into using different techniques to get the viewers attention as I had a lot of time to experiment and practice them. These included filters, matching the transitions to the backround music, adding creative transitions that fit the theme and even learning how to use a green screen. In the future I feel like this will help me get the attention of my viewer no matter the intention or the target audience as it helps keep my videos entertaining while adding to what I’m trying to explain.
Room for Improvement: Completing evidence 🔄
Even though I feel like this year was pretty successful in terms of quality of work there is still things that need urgent improvement, all of these relating to the main issue in my recent academics, timely completion.
Balancing work from all classes:
Recently I feel like the work load in school has been much more than in the past which has lead to multiple instances were I compromised completion of one project for another, which therefore made most of my assignments late. This also affects other classes outside of PLP. This has also affected the quality of my work in many different projects, even ones which I am proud of as I felt like I could’ve done a much better job if I hadn’t rushed to complete them. A recent example of this is WWl Con. At the time I had multiple projects going on at once and didn’t really pay attention to hummanities (I was also constantly getting distracted) as I didn’t really realize how long hummanities would take me. Thanks to this I had to work until pretty late during the last three days to even get the work done. To avoid the predicament I too often get myself into I feel like I should start assignments as soon as I get them. I constantly dismiss an assignment until a couple of days before it’s due but instead of that I should get to it A.S.A.P as this will give me more time to brainstorm (which will help me get more insightful ideas) and actually get feedback (as I often miss it because I’m not done with my work yet).
Distractions: Focus
As I stated earlier I often get distracted which adds on to balancing work from my other classes and makes finishing everything on time an impossible task. As the already tight frame of time I have to finish all of my work becomes even tighter when I waste all of my time with social media and video games and just like I stated earlier forces me to rush my work to finish on time and deliver work that doesn’t reach my own standards and is therefore not something I take pride in showcasing to the world (which is a good portion of what PLP is). To avoid distractions I feel like the only real way to effectively do it is to better manage my time as I’ll always find a way to get distracted but if I shedule everything I’ll include breaks which will make it much more unlikely for me to get distracted. This would also make the process of finishing work much more efficient as I feel like if I schedule breaks and schedule work blocks I’ll be far more productive overall.
Following Criteria:
This may not be as prominent as my other areas that need improvement but I still think it’s worth discussion, simply because of how much it may affect me in grade 10 and beyond. All throughout PLP I never really focused on the criteria as I thought it was rather pointless and so I didn’t really think much of it. In reality I’ve slowly begun to notice how it’s affected my grade which may not be the main purpose of school but it’s still pretty important to me. To fix this I simply proposed myself to look for it and check it every single time we start a project as I feel like it could boost my grade and make me more aware about the task at hand.
Examples of work I’m proud of 🏆
This year may not have been my best but work wise I feel like I’ve show tons of improvement and in my opinion there’s nothing better to display this than talking about some of my most successful work, work that I feel resembles what it means to be a PLP learner and that I’m proud displaying for the world.
Probably the strongest example of a strong essay and vast improvement during a project was my Multi-Paragraph response. At the start of the project I had pretty negative feelings towards this project as even if I enjoyed writing, making it the whole point of a project felt like too much, but as the project advanced I found myself using vocabulary I hadn’t used before, improving my grammar and doing a pretty decent job at comparing different portrayals of Louis Riel. All because of just how much I was writing. I feel like this project also helped me add tons of detail to my writing and showed just how much as single project can affect a person’s ability.
Examples of Work I could’ve done better:
This year I honestly made some work that I’m not really proud of be it because of the wasted potential it had or the overall lack of effort put into it.
The best example in my opinion of wasted potential is my Frankenstuffie video. At the time I thought I had a lot of time to do it so I slowly moved along with my project and experimented with multiple ideas at a time. At one point the project was supposed to be stop motion and I actually filmed a lot of footage in that style but by the end you couldn’t really understand the narrative or what was going on in general so I had to give up on it as it was due soon and it probably would’ve taken me forever to fix it. So inspired by some of my other peers I decided to do it on keynote there it felt really rushed (no voice acting) and I felt like I could’ve done a far better job if I would’ve simply chosen a topic from the begining. On the other hand though I feel like I got a lesson out of it, it frankly helped me how to adapt to rough situations which is something which I feel like I’ll use more often than not inside of PLP and in life outside of it.
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About the future…
Overall I feel like throughout the year I’ve made huge improvements in the quality of my work, my vocabulary and my tech skills and other things that will help me throughout my academic life but I still feel like there is plenty of room for improvement and if I simply listen to my own advice and stop leaving most of the workload for the last minute I’ll be able to deliver much stronger work and maybe even get an Extending (which is my goal for the next school year). This won’t only help me inside of PLP or even school in general but my website and my youtube channel also help paint a picture of who I am as a learner and will eventually help me when I try to apply to college.