Month: January 2023

MPOLS 2023

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am an expert of 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 offering feedback I can use to improve as a learner. 

Over the past few months, I’ve grown a lot as a PLP learner, and also a person. PLP is a program that allows us to take responsibility for our own learning, while also creating work that we can be proud of. I’ve gained a lot of new skills from the projects that we have done, and a lot of valuable experiences. This is not to say that I haven’t made any mistakes, of course, seeing as revision is part of the learning process. 

In our first project, we looked at the book The Outsiders, and examined worldview as an idea. While working on this project, we were advised to think about how the things that we’ve seen and experienced affect our own personality and worldview. We learned to see the world through the perspectives of the main characters, which allowed us to take a closer look at our own worldview, and the worldview of those around us. After we had finished reading the book, we were assigned the task of creating movie posters for The Outsiders, which allowed us to recreate our favourite scene from the book. This not only let us to get creative with it, but it also meant that we got to think like the characters, and take on a new worldview, which was basically the main goal of the entire project. I believe that I did a rather good job of examining different worldviews, but if I had to go back and do a better job, I would have added more detail to the littler things, and payed closer attention to the story. 

In Maker, we began work on our big life journal, which was a learning resource that was created for the purpose of letting us express our hopes and dreams for the future, as well as the progress we plan to make towards them, and what we are doing now. This project gave us the chance to create a plan for our future, but also explore things that we never would have thought about normally. I think that I learned a lot about PLP and about myself through this project, which was a huge goal for me in school. 

Another project that we’ve done ( and possibly my favourite) has to be the project that we did on the Crusades in humanities. In this project we spent a lot of time learning about the history of religions, why sparks flew between them, and how the crusades played out. We got to make slideshows about the crusades which allowed us to add animations and personalize them, which might’ve been my favourite part of the whole project. This was very important to my learning experience because it let me get creative, while still sticking the the guidelines and making a historically accurate resource. 

When we’re in PLP, I feel like I can get things done easier than I can in normal classes. This form of learning is better suited to my needs, and which is why I have been able to make so much progress as a learner. Every project that we have done has brought me a little bit closer to becoming a sophisticated learner.

I know that I’ve been talking a bit formally about my learning so far, so I apologize about that. This has been a lot of fun for me, which is something that I think is an important part of the learning experience. Through the courses that I have taken this semester, I have been able to enjoy school more than I would have through normal classes, because of the performance based learning. 

When I first started with PLP, I was still a little bit confused about how the program worked. I was very behind and confused, and I wasn’t getting the best marks. But after a little while, I started to understand a little more about the programs, and I started to get better grades. I was able to go from suns to rainbows because I started to understand the projects that we were doing. I grew a lot more because I had a slow start than if I had understood immediately. 

Despite having originally the chosen accomplished proficiency for humanities, I soon understood that I could go beyond and aim for extending instead. I had originally thought that I would only be able to reach accomplished, but it seems that I was wrong to assume that. I instead revised my learning plan to show accomplished in all of my PLP classes.

Now that we re halfway through grade eight, I think that I have fallen into the rhythm of PLP. I am more used to the layout of the projects and how we work in groups, as well as how to ask for help when I need it. Even though I am not always satisfied with my work, I always put lots of effort in, and I think that’s what counts. 

If there is one thing that I would like to accomplish in the rest of the school year, that would be to get extending marks inn all of my PLP classes. This may seem ambitious, but if I strive for all extending, then I will have to work hard to achieve that, which is something that really matters to me. 

A FAIL that I had this year would have been our triptychs. I am not the best at using photoshop, so my first drafts were horrendous. However, after many many tries, I was able to create decent work.  Next time, instead of just trying to wing it, I will ask for help or watch a tutorial instead.

Right now, we are looking at TikToks that show how difficult life is for a teacher, but we have to spin them to show what a pain teachers can be. I am a little bit worried about this one, because I’m not completely sure if they are ready for what I have, but I still think that it’ll be an amazing learning opportunity! To summarize everything that I have said, I have grown a lot from when I first started PLP to where I am right now, and it’s all thanks to PLP. Thank you for listening!  

Ideas From The Radical Renaissance

Hello, and welcome to another blog post! In our latest project we worked learned about how ideas from Europe and Asia changed the world during the Renaissance. I learned how to use different photo apps to edit our images. We were working on creating triptychs, a popular form of storytelling at the time. In these triptychs, we had to include the new innovations that were popular during the renaissance (left), what they have evolved into during the modern era (middle), and the original ideas that were common before the Renaissance (right)

We started by creating drafts of our triptych, which were just sketches. These were meant to show the evolution of the ideas from the Renaissance, and answer the driving question. Below is a slideshow showing the evolution of my drafts.

Here is my finished triptych, and below is my explanation of my triptych.

Thesis: The innovations from Europe and Asia have had a much bigger impact on the world than just adding new gadgets to our arsenal of new tools by changing the social structure of the world and paving the way for even more new ideas.

During the renaissance, many new innovations and ideas were introduced to the world. These ideas changed the world and allowed us to be the society that we are today. However, there was a lot of trial and error in these inventions, and many of them were discredited at the time. In this historical explanation I will discuss the way that innovations from Europe and Asia changed the world.

New ideas in the Renaissance changed the Renaissance world by introducing new ways to create music, new ways of keeping time, and new theories about outer space. The Renaissance, which took place from the 14th to the 17th century, was a time when a lot of new ideas were introduced to the world from Europe and Asia, which have evolved into the gadgets and theories that we know today. These were incredibly important because without them, I wouldn’t be able to tell what time it was right now, and I would be late for school. We might not have a music program at our school, and the songs that I so often take for granted might not even exist if it wasn’t for the renaissance. If we still believed that the sun and the moon revolved around the earth, then we wouldn’t be able to explore space or understanding anything about what is happening outside of earth. To conclude, these original ideas are what drove the world to change, and are the reason that it was called the renaissance (renaissance translates to rebirth in English).

The origin of the innovations from the rennaisance sprang from the original ideas that were used before the renaissance, such as the idea that all of the planets orbited around the earth, the sundial, or even the basic instruments that were made by hand. Many new innovations may have started off as just ideas, but eventually grew into things that we use today. When a polish astronomer by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus first introduced the concept of how the sun was at the centre of the solar system, he was widely mocked, but this is an idea that is common knowledge now. Before the renaissance, there was no reason to measure exact hours, as the sun rising and setting could mark the days, and its position in the sky marked a more specific time. Even though instruments and music were a huge part of almost every culture before the renaissance, live performances became incredibly popular at that time, and still are today. To summarize, simple ideas that might not seem like much can become so much more if they are allowed to be tested.

The ideas from the Renaissance gave us a lot of inventions that we use today, such as the theory about the planets, which has evolved into the theory that we have today about the solar system, or how we now have digital clocks on basically everything, or even modern instruments like pianos and guitars. Today I can go onto my phone and see the exact time, anywhere. I can go onto the internet and look at different diagrams of the solar system. I can even go to a store and buy any kind of instrument that I want, if I have enough money. I can do all of these things because of the ideas from the renaissance, which evolved into the innovations that we have today.

To conclude, the evolution of these ideas is why we are able to do all of the things that we can do today. We only have these inventions because of the renaissance, which is why it is such an important time in history.

The Amazing Artbook!

Hello and thank you for coming to my blog! Today I have crated an artbook to show all of the new skills that I have gained in sketches pro! Below is my artbook, which I made through book creator.

I hope that you have learned something new things about sketches pro, and that you have learned a little bit about our PLP projects. Thank you for reading my book, and have a great day!

Winter Exhibition: Pandora’s box

Hello, and welcome to my blog post about the PLP winter exhibition! In this project we extracted themes from the movie Avatar, which were then turned into projects that we presented to the Seycove community. Alright, lets dive in!

When we first began our project, we were tasked with watching the movie Avatar, and were told to pay close attention to the theme of the movie. This was difficult because of how long and complicated the movie is, but in the end, we all decided on our themes. 

Next, we brainstormed ways that we could incorporate our themes, and the driving question (which was what does James Cameron’s fantasy world of Avatar teach us about our own world), into a project that could be presented at our Winter Exhibition. 

The theme that I chose to portray in my project was the disrespect of the culture and beliefs of the Na’vi. My original design included a box with one of their sacred trees on top of it growing down into the inside of the box, symbolizing how important it was to the Na’vi, and how the humans just took a huge bulldozer and killed it in the movie. I found it difficult to explain my work when I was asked about it, because it didn’t clearly show what I wanted it to. But after a lot of time spent creating, and a lot of mental preparation, was finally ready to present at the exhibition.

                                 

The winter exhibition is a time when all of the learners in the PLP program get to showcase what they have learned throughout the past semester to other students, parents, and community members. We all had to bring out own supplies and decorate the rooms ourselves. It was incredibly stressful and difficult, but in the end, it was worth it for the final result. I had to do a lot of explaining, and after a full day of school it was a lot, but it was still a lot of fun to do with my friends!

After the exhibition, we had to clean the school so that classes could continue normally the next day. The next day went about as normal, which was a relief. However, on the last day of school, we got to do something really fun. It had been over a decade since the first Avatar movie was released, and the second movie was finally coming out! We all got to watch it together which was really fun, and our semester ended on a happy note! Thank you so much for reading, and have a great day!