Michelle's Portfolio

Critical thinker:

The most meaningful critical thinker activity was task #9, “how could…?” I did this activity with Janis, and I found this really interesting and memorable because we had a lot of fun doing it and this task also forced us to think outside of the box. The question we chose was how does someone unlock a locker with a pencil, a book, and some string? At first we were really confused because these things weren’t what we would use to pick open the locker, so we were stuck on this task for a bit. After a while though, we came up with the idea of smashing the locker open. Thinking of smashing the locker open, we came up with the idea of using the pencil as an arrow and the string and book as a bow to shoot the locker open. That’s how we designed the bow and arrow idea. This task really forced us to think outside of the box because this type of situation wouldn’t really happen in real life, so we had to think creatively and critically.

Creative learner:

The most meaningful creative learner activity was task 6, “create a new app”, and I worked with Janis to complete this activity. I found this activity the most meaningful because this really challenged me to think of ideas that haven’t been used before, which is kind of hard since there are all types of apps on app store now. Our original idea was to create a mindfulness meditation app, however we realized that there were lots of those in the market already. Then, we thought of combining it with a game, because games and rewards always incentivise people to actually do the task. This is how we came up with the idea of designing a cute mindfulness meditation app for teens and adults that gives them coins every time they finish a mindfulness task. Using these coins, they can decorate the mushroom (the thing that “guides” the meditations), decorate the mushroom’s house, or buy food for the mushroom and take care of the mushroom, etc. There will be professional mentors acting as the voice of the mushroom to guide the meditation and more.

Skillful communicator:

The most meaningful communication task for me was tutoring 9th graders in math. This was really meaningful for me because it was really satisfying and healing for me as a tutor when my tutees get the concept after I’ve explained it to them. It definitely wasn’t easy sometimes because some of the tutees just couldn’t understand what I’m saying, which is frustrating, but usually after explaining it more carefully and slowly on paper a few more times, or after hinting the answer at them a few more times, they usually got what I was trying to say. I also feel really happy and proud of myself after they have the ahhhhh moment, because at that moment I know that I have taught them something that they didn’t entirely get before, and I feel like I helped them improve in math. The hard thing about being a tutor is sometimes the tutee doesn’t know what they don’t know, so we as tutors have to help them figure out what they want to learn by repetitively doing problems with them, or by getting them to describe the concept. However, it was pretty fun to tutor them and I learned a lot from it.

Effective collaborator:

The most meaningful collaborator task for me was the exercise video I did with Maruko and Janis, which was task #9. Through doing this task, we went through lots of struggles, such as deciding which exercises we would do, how we would take the videos, if the demonstrations were accurate enough, and more. However, we always found a way to solve the problem. At first, I wanted to do one on flexibility, but then we soon found out that not all of us were flexible enough to do the movements we planned on, so then we switched to exercising the core. I knew some movements that exercised the core, but it clearly wasn’t enough to make a whole exercise video out of, so we had to search online for some ideas. After we found the exercises we were going to do, we found out that not all of us could do all of them, which meant that we had to logically work out who did which exercises. After that, we had to take the videos and merge them together to create an exercise video. But even though we went through a lot of challenges, we persevered and collaborated to get through this.

Resilience:

The most meaningful resilience task for me was doing wallball every day for about a week. This was a bit challenging for me because I get home pretty late sometimes and I’d feel very tired and I wouldn’t want to play, but I also really wanted to improve in lacrosse, so I kept on making myself do wallball. Through doing wallball daily, I could see significant improvements in my left handed and right handed passes and catches, and my offhand catches, including my posture as well. I also filmed myself every day, which made it more easy to see my improvement It also took lots of willpower and resilience to do it every day of the week, because it’s hard to start a new habit once you’ve kind of formed a daily schedule already. This task taught me that perseverance, willpower, and practice was really important if we wanted to improve in anything.