Weekly Reflection #2

     This past week, I was away in Ottawa for a program called Encounters with Canada. Although it was an amazing experience, it meant that I was not in class to work on my project with Andrew. Obviously, the separation can present an issue when it comes to the progress that is made, as it is a group project. Before I left, Andrew and I did make some plans as to how we would communicate. We stayed in touch via Facebook during the week. As mentioned in my previous reflection, we decided that Andrew would work on the Powerpoint for our presentation and we would then start filming once I got back.

      During the week, I tried my best to stay in touch and get updates on whatever was going on. My week was pretty busy, so our conversations were rather brief and didn't happen often. Because we didn't talk to often, I think that we should've made the conversations more efficient, as I feel that the updates were a little bit vague and too general. I think that this is partially to do with the fact that I often didn't think about talking to Andrew until I had minimal free time left, thus making our conversations rushed with not too much thought put into it. 

       Our conversations mainly consisted of a rough status update on our project and a list of what needed to be done from that point. Over the week, Andrew gathered and organised points for our presentation. He had planned to put it on a Powerpoint, but didn't have time to do it. Unfortunately, we haven't made as much progress as we thought we would last week. Thankfully, because we were ahead of schedule before, we aren't behind schedule from this setback. However, I would have rather seen our extra time spent on putting extra details into our project rather than making up missed work. 

      Another thing that we encountered upon our conversation when I came back to school was a miscommunication. I was under the impression that we were planning to present our project to another class as well as our own, while Andrew thought that we were just presenting to our class. I think that the source of error was not really from a lack of communication, but more of an unclear communication of details. I am glad that we caught this mix up early rather than later, as it could have lead to bigger issues down the road. In the end, we decided that presenting to our class only wouldn't be the best idea because they already have a rough idea of the topic of our project- which would make trying to convince them that our video is legitimate more difficult. We also decided that it may be too much of a disruption to present to another class, as it would take up class time and interrupt the class. So, we would like to ask Ms Lees if she could send out a link to our project via twitter and then have the recipients fill out a brief survey that would give us an idea of how much the audience believed. 

     Upon seeing the previous miscommunication, it made us wonder if any other details had been missed or confused. So we went through our plan again, to make sure that we were both on the same page (which we were) . In the future, I will be sure to confirm what I am understanding with Andrew and not just make assumptions that what I think is right. This issue something that has occured in previous projects, though not too often. This situation has made me more aware of it and will help me in the future; not only in school projects, but in other situations when I am talking with groups as well. 

     Our plan for this week is to start filming, as previously discussed. I am excited about some of the details that we have added into our video, which will make our video more fun to create, but also more believable. Of course, I am a little bit anxious to see how the video turns out and to see how the audience will react to it, as it is not something that I've done before. However, I think that trying new things and stepping out of your comfort zone is how you can learn more about yourself and how you can grow yourself in different areas. Once we are done the project, I am curious to see what other unexpected things that I will have gained from doing this project and working with Andrew. 

Weekly Reflection #1

     I am very excited that we are now starting our personal projects! As we have begun to make progress in our project, we have already had to make some changes and adjustments to our original proposal idea. Very early on in the project, Andrew and I realized that presenting our video to our class may not be too effective, as many people in the class know the topic of our project. This awareness might bring some bias while we are showing the video to the class. We made the decision to present to another class instead, as they will not have the previous knowledge that may make them more easily aware that the video is a propaganda. To recap on our progress thus far, we have completed our research and have moved on to the planning stage of the video that we will be creating.
   
     We are currently ahead of schedule, as the research on propaganda did not take the 7 days that we had planned for. We did allow seven days to leave room for error as well as to make sure our research is thorough and extensive. However, I think that the main reason why we are ahead is mostly because of the overestimation of how long it would take for us to research rather than our own efficiency. In the future, I will take more care to make more realistic projections of a timeline for my projects. Nonetheless, we do have more time than we had thought we would. This is allowing us to put further care and details into the planning of our video.
   
     When Andrew and I first started planning our video, we didn't have many concrete ideas as to what we were going to do. The ideas that we had were pretty vague and broad.  We had ideas such as "make a commercial" or "make a documentary", so although we did have ideas, they weren't very concrete or complete. In retrospect though, I am glad that we got some ideas down instead of waiting for the perfect one to come, as I have done in the past. My frame of mind that tells me that everything needs to be perfect is something that I have been working on overcoming. Not to say that having high standards is a bad thing, but not progressing because I am too focused on the tiny details can hinder my performance in the long run.
   
     During the brainstorming days, some lack of focus occurred for various reasons. Sometimes, I find that I can be easily distracted, especially when I have other things going on in my life (eg. tests, clubs etc.) . It can be difficult to focus when I have other things to think about, but I need to remember to remind myself that thinking about upcoming things too much can keep me from getting things done in the present.

     Once we had a little bit more time to think about what we wanted to do with the video, we were able to narrow it down some more. We have decided to do a documentary-style video based on a fake news article that we read. We plan to utilize some of the techniques that are used in propaganda in our video. One of these techniques is getting a testimony fro a "trustworthy" source. In today's media, these sources are generally celebrities, but we are planning on using a teacher for our video. This will hopefully help us to demonstrate that even the things that "trustworthy" people say aren't always completely true.

      Our current plans are to finalize the details of the video, such as the software that we will use to create it and finding appropriate places to film. We have already talked to some teachers about being in our video and presenting to their class when the video is finished. So far, the teachers have been very willing to help.  We have discussed the fact that I will not be in class next week and have decided that Andrew will work on our presentation after the video and we will start filming when I get back. We have found ways to communicate while I am away as well so that I can be updated on the progress of the project and I can have some input as well.

     In general, I am pleased with how our project is going. There were some challenges that we had to overcome, but they help us to not make the same mistakes in the future. I am looking forward to filming our video and am excited to see the outcome of it.

     

Comments On Mr Solarz' Class Projects

1. Jack and Justin's Slot Machine
http://psolarz.weebly.com/156/post/2014/03/can-we-research-the-history-of-slot-machine-and-build-one.html#comments

2.Sam and Luke's John Hancock Building
http://psolarz.weebly.com/156/post/2014/02/can-we-create-the-john-hancock-and-make-a-google-presentation-with-facts-luke-d-and-sam-k.html#comments

Problem Based Project Reflection

     For my problem based project, I , like the majority of the class, decided to work on promoting the course in an effort to get its numbers up for next year.  At the beginning of the project, the team was a little bit unfocused, which lead to not a lot of work being done before spring break. However, once the tight timeline caught up to us after spring break, we began to work more efficiently on the project.

     I was mainly involved in 2 components of the  project: poster making and presenting to classes. During the poster making project, I am proud to say that the drafting of the poster went quite smoothly and efficiently. The efficiency was something that I feel was important, especially given our timeline, though the posters did feel unfinished to me. Had we been given more time, then I would have done them differently, but again with the time we had they turned out okay. I enjoyed being able to work well with someone that I didn't know too well, as I have occasionally found this to be a struggle for me in the past. I was happy to see that a lot of other people came in on their lunch time to help colour posters and hang them up later. The willingness for our class to go above and beyond what was expected of them is something that I think to be crucial for the project to have a chance at being successful.

    However, there were a few complications and mis-communications that occurred during the hanging of the posters. The first complication was the course change deadline. As the course promotion happened "last minute", the deadline for changing courses came at an earlier date than we had hoped. Due to this, we had to change the date of our lunchtime info-session to an earlier date to accommodate this. Unfortunately, the posters had already been printed with the original date on them. We came up with the solution to simply manually change all of the dates on the posters. However, due to a mis-communication on my part, some of the posters ended up being changed to the wrong date. This reminded me to be very clear about what I am saying when I am giving out information in the future. Once this mistake was discovered, we went back and double checked all the posters for the right date and changed the dates that were incorrect. Although this part of the project didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped, we had the benefit of being able to see the mistakes that we made and to learn from them in the future. This series of challenges also helped us to develop skills in problem solving, particularly when we had to decide how to fix our information session.

     The second part of the project that I was involved in was presenting our course to classes in the school. I am not going to lie, I was definitely nervous. This was mostly because I had to present in front of so many people, but I felt that it was important to take part in this aspect of the project and to push myself when I'm uncomfortable. During group discussion, I felt that I was definitely quieter than I should have been. I feel that this was mainly because I wasn't 100% confident in my ideas and the perfectionist in me made me feel that I needed to be absolutely sure of what I was saying. As the project continued, I did speak more, but not to the level that I would have hoped. This experience encourages me to try and speak more in the future and helps to remind me to let my ideas out without always having all the details worked out. It is something that I am working on and will continue to work on in the future.

     In terms of the actual presentation, I think that it went better than I had expected. When I say this, I mean that I ended up being less nervous than I had felt in the previous days. During our first presentation, I was nervous, but as we progressed in our presentation and had done it a few times, I felt that I had a better idea of what to say and I felt more comfortable doing it. Perhaps if I were to practice my presentation more, then the nervousness would be lessened even more. I found that not all of the classes were interested in the course, as was expected, but I was glad to see that some classes took the opportunity to ask questions and found an interest in what the course had to offer. I noticed that there seemed to be more interest in the younger grades than the older grades.
   

PDD Project Rubric

Here is a link to the google doc with our rubric.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ynvIrXb-qXKxCMYIaft0Puq9wqMf13wbN-bR2dC645w/edit?usp=sharing