After watching my POL, I’ve noticed both good and bad things about it. First, lets start off with the good. The first thing I noticed about my presentation is that I had a very good script. The audio part of my presentation was very good. From the way I talked, to the way I was very good at my flow and presentation. I also noticed that even though I was looking at my script a lot, I still connected with my audience very well. I thought my strengths were my confidence and my flow throughout my whole presentation. However, i also had many things that i still needed to work on. for example, I was not as prepared as i should have been, and my visual was a little lacking. being prepared is one of the best things when you present infront of a large crowd. being prepared gives you confidence, which then makes it a lot easier to talk from the top of your head, an also eliminated the use of a script. for my POL, i took the abstract approach and did not just state what i learned and how i learned it. my project was a little hard for people to understand, so i used visuals to give the listeners hints to push them in the right direction. my content was not specific when you listened to it, but after you looked at the visuals and put the two together, it made it a lot easier to figure out. my artifacts were actually not the main part of the project. the script and the storyline made the project what it was. The artifacts were good tie ins for transitioning to the next part of the story. even though my POL did not have the best visuals, i think that i partly made it up by making my script very abstract and also gave it a story that corresponded to the struggles i had to face throughout the year.
After looking at several of my classmates POL’s, I came the the conclusion that Justin Davis’s POL was almost perfect. Many people had either better visuals, or better scripts than him, but his was overall the best. I thought that his was overall the best because he never used any script, and had a very good visual which made it easy to follow what he was saying and what topic he was going to talk about next. He was talking from the heart and using his experiences from MPX to give examples of what he learned and what helped him to learn it. He also talked about how he felt like he was directly influencing his further learning by making and maintaining the hydroponics system. he also did very good when he was asked questions by the adults who had listened to his project. some other people who i though had very good presentations were Mahina, Kendall, and Chris. Mahina had very good visuals and story, but she was lacking on the presentation side of it. Kendall had a very unique approach to the project, but did not have a concrete presentation or story. Chris made the best use of prezi by making a very good and interesting visual, but did not have the best script. As i said before, all of them were very good at some part of the presentation, but because it was so good, it kind of overshadowed other parts of their projects. Even though some peoples were not as good as others, I thought that everyone did a very good job on preparing and making their presentations.
I thought that the MPX program was a very good and unique way to make school fun and interesting while still learning the same things as traditional students. For me, there were very good things about this project and very bad things about this project. The best thing was defiantly no tests and the actual word of the year for MPX, sustainability. From planning our system, going out and buying the supplies, trying to build the system, failing multiple times, learning the hard way that water flow makes a big difference, to finally finishing the system, growing the plants, to the cooking. All of those memories will defiantly help me in the future. I think that overall the bet thing about the MPX program was that instead of just learning things from a textbook, we actually tried them in real life. Im sure that if we were just learning about sustainability from books, I would have no interest in them. The other thing that I really thought was good about MPX was the growing of our plants. I had never really grown plants before, especially in a Hydroponics system. Since i was a newbie at growing plants, i had to learn everything from scratch. growing the plants showed me directly that the work you put into taking care of the plants and making sure they have the best nutrients will either reward, or give you nothing. Now moving on to the next part of the review, the bad of MPX, i will be talking about mostly the work ethic and homework. I as a student and person have very bad organization and time management. Even now, the last project of the year I'm turing in with minutes left. THe one thing i did not benefit from was the fact that we had a very relaxed schedule. most of the work and studying was done by yourself, and at your own pace. This was both good and bad for me. It was good because I had full control over my work habits and ethics. even though this was good, it was also my worst enemy. After a little, i became lazy about doing my work, always putting it off for later. This eventually piled up all of the homework i had and made me dangerously behind. THis then led to me always getting behind and having to catch up, then get dragged down on the way by another looming project. I also feel like not having as many tests has made me a horrible studier. Ive noticed that i have not been anywhere as good at studying or paying attention as last year. Not talking tests and having no set in stone schedule has made me very lazy and disorganized as a student. other than that, i have really enjoyed MPX as a whole.
