This year was interesting to say the least, our learning was split between online and in class. I liked the hybrid system this year, I got to put more thought into each subject which helped me retain more information. However, some of my electives had absolutely nothing for me to do at home, for example, Culinary Arts. 3 days a week I do nothing in the morning, which is good for me but, it seems kind of weird just having school for 2 hours a day. Technology played a huge part in our learning this year, I used my laptop more than in any year partly for homework but also for meetings and online classes. Without Teams I’m not sure what would be happening this year, maybe we would be fully in class which probably wouldn’t be good for Covid. The other option would’ve been that we got a ton of homework at the start of the week which wouldn’t suit my style of learning and I think I would’ve gotten a lot less from this year and I probably wouldn’t have done as well. I think that technology also made learning harder because I was doing so much on my laptop which has google and my phone was often close by as well.

I wish that the quarter system could stay because I find that I have an easier time focusing when there are fewer subjects even if there’s less time to learn them. However, I don’t like online learning. It is nice when there’s no online class but in science, the two-and-a-half-hour science classes are way too long and it’s so hard to stay focused. So, I want the online part to be gone, but I did like the quarter system even though it probably will not come back. The other thing that I liked was being able to bring my backpack into class. I know most people liked lockers more, but I liked having my bag beside me even if it meant having a 30-pound backpack in science. Even though I hope those will happen, I doubt anything will stay from this system and it will just go back to the old ways of learning,

One project where technology came to my benefit was eminent. I had to do a ton of research on Jigme Singye Wangchuck, and he hardly exists on the internet which made my project tricky. But, I can’t imagine doing that through books if it was that hard online so I’m really glad I had those great resources that I found. I also filmed myself explaining everything which I had to use a camera for and editing software. The learning centre can be found on my blog.

The project where I used the most technology this year was by far In-Depth. First, all of my meetings with my mentor were on zoom which had a ton of technical difficulties, but it worked out in the end and I got a recording of each meeting. I had a great editing software called Davinci which was free but still better than most of the paid ones. Without it, In-Depth either would’ve been very expensive or not gone well at all. I used a lot of camera gear from my house and from my friends which was a huge part of my project as well and using good quality cameras made a huge difference in the video quality. In the end, I put it all together by making a website which was a lot of fun to learn how to use. The final post for In-Depth is also on my blog already.