MY PERSONAL PROJECT
by Daniel Moreno
WHAT IS A "PERSONAL PROJECT"?
As you certainly have heard of by now, you will soon be expected to begin planning the creation of a big project. The project's product may be whatever you wish, but it has to be challenging and you must have already worked on something similar in the past. For my project, I taught my dog 5 things. Videos to the results can be found when pressing the button below
MY MOTIVATION
Back in MYP4, I wanted to train my dog; but I lacked the knowledge necessary, the patience, and most importantly, the time. I have always been interested in psychology, and animal psychology fits into the branch. I researched, planned, and took action. I'm very glad I was given the opportunity to do this thing I have wanted to do for so long. That was my motivation to create this product.
THE PRODUCT
THE CRITERIA
From the many things you need to do for the Personal Project, you must also create a criteria; a way to deduct if your product was as good as you wanted it to be. My criteria is to get in contact with 5 people, and to get them to grade from 1-10 how good the performance is. I have not yet contacted the 5 people, but I am working on it :)
THE PROCESS
There are 4 parts to the personal project.
Investigating, where you decide on your project, research on the matter, and decide on your goals; Planning, where you make criteria and simply prepare to create the product; Action, where you create the product; and reflection; where you look back at everything you did and evaluate it.
PLANNING PROCESS
I will now explain further my personal experience with part 2 of the personal project.
In task 1, I had already researched all the information I needed; so for this part of the project, I only had to decide how and when this information would be used. I organized everything to make clear how all the information I found would help me reach my goal. I then had to develop a way to decide after task 3 how good my product was. Finally, I created a plan which showed what had to be completed by each week. This plan let me finish task 3 almost completely during the summer break! I highly recommend planning in order to attempt to finish task 3 during summer break.
PROCESS TAKING ACTION
Task 3 was to then do all that was planned to be done in task 2. It sounds rather simple, since it is only following the instructions of the plan, but this is not the case. Planning to do something is much easier than doing it, and you never know what challenges you will be faced with when you carry out your plan. Write your plan considering the fact that you will certainly run into at least one problem.
A FEW TIPS TO GET THROUGH THIS WHOLE THING WITH EASE
FINISH THE PRODUCT BY THE END OF SUMMER
I had my product almost finished by summer, and I basically sat back as I watched everyone else go to sleep late and be constantly panicking to finish theirs.
MAKE A DETAILED PLAN
Being able to follow a plan step by step makes the creating of the product much easier than having to make up steps on the go.
DO THE PROCESS JOURNAL
You will be expected to keep track of when you do what part of your project, such as when you look up all the information necessary to create it. This is a crucial part of the personal project, and is required. Don't just make things up a few days before the due date, it's much easier to create it as you go on creating your product.
DON'T AVOID IT
It feels easier to pretend you don't have to do this thing and ignore it, but it's not worth it. Just get it over with, and get on with your life. It may feel useless, and perhaps it will be to your personal future, but it is nevertheless a requirement to pass MYP, and therefore crucial to your development as a student :).
GET IN TOUCH
I have added two ways to contact me: One way is to email the email below, and another is to press the link below which will lead to a meeting I'll be in.
Find me here: https://meet.jit.si/D.morenoPPExhibition