Learning to be Happy

For my visual tool, I decided to use Canva. After reading the articles linked this week, I felt that this was the most user friendly and appropriate for what I wanted to make. I looked at a few different websites before I decided, but in the end I stuck with my original instinct that Canva would be the easiest for what I wanted to make. The site was extreme easy to figure out and had many tutorials after you log in for the first time to give you an idea of how it works. This was really beneficial to me because it helped make the learning curve much smaller.

Since my project is all about Personal Growth, I decided to create a poster that illustrated what I’ve spent the last few weeks doing. The majority of my project is about positivity and attitude. This is kind of hard to emulate within a picture because it’s easy to smile for the camera when needed. Instead, I had multiple pictures of me from the last few weeks taking hikes, playing soccer, working on remodeling, etc. Although these pictures don’t deal with positivity itself, it does deal with exercising, being grateful, and not being a perfectionist.

The picture on the top left is from one of my many walks from the past few weeks. This particular hike was taken while hiking on a camping trip with my family. We were up in the mountains. While I’m not sure what made this day different than any other, but I was extremely taken aback by the beauty that faced me this day. I was extremely grateful not only for the view that was around me, but by the people that surrounded me too. The bottom two pictures are also from different hikes/exercising I’ve done through the duration of the project.

On the top right, there is a picture of me using a drill while helping my dad put up a new fence in our yard. As I mentioned in a past blog, part of my ILP was working on not being such a perfectionist. We decided to do a lot of DIY home renovations this summer and these projects really helped with this. Remodeling is hard, and perfection is even harder! But honestly, most people don’t pay attention to the little imperfections in a house. In addition to working on not being a perfectionist, the remodeling also helped with the personal growth because I was learning how to do new things. I like being independent, so learning new things such as texturing a wall, laying wood flooring, or building fence is always a great way to work on improving my abilities.

I think in a classroom, tools such as this could be extremely beneficial. It provides an opportunity for students to share information or learning in a creative, individual way. Like we’ve talked about before, students are much more likely to participate in a project when they have the opportunity to have a say in their learning. This combines teaching students about technology while assessing and allowing creativity at the same time.