Great Learning on Display at the IB MYP Personal Project Exhibition

On February 24, the Grade 10 students shared the results of their hard work from the last six months through the annual Grade 10 IB MYP Personal Project Exhibition. The Personal Project provides students with an opportunity to showcase all the analytical, research, writing and self-management skills the Grade 10s have developed throughout the IB Middle Years Programme.

Each student undergoes a unique journey as they complete their Personal Project, and all learned a great deal about themselves and their learning styles from their experiences.

What was the best thing about creating your product?

• “I would say that the most satisfying part of my personal project experience was seeing the culmination of my hard work at the end of the project. Completing my final rendering and planning around my creation felt really validating at the end of the project. I wasn’t sure was going to work!” – Emmett Anctil, whose project was creating the “ideal backyard.”
• “I think the coolest thing about my search engine is how despite giving huge amounts of results, it doesn’t give up your information or location and delivers complete, total privacy. This shows that privacy is available and anyone can grasp for it if they make their own search engine.” – Ibrahim Khurram, who created his own search engine named SearXNG.
• “The coolest thing about creating my product was how others wanted to see it and use the workout plan. I had lots of people asking for copies of the workout plan.” — Jagger Johal, whose project was creating a body-building workout plan.

What’s the biggest thing you learned?

• “The biggest thing I learned about film photography was how to adjust the lighting to the camera. Since I had no prior knowledge about film photography and how to set up the lighting to complement the film it was difficult to know how the photos would turn out. Due to this, I started my project by taking trial photos to see what adjustments I would have to make to the lighting to get the photos to turn out how I wanted them. This was the most helpful part of my process because it made a huge difference to my final product.” – Neeve Unger, whose project revolved around studio film photography.
• “I learned a lot about the traditions and history portrayed in the art form of pottery in Tunisia.” – Zeinab Guitouni, whose project was exploring her culture through ceramics.
• “Animation takes a really long time. Especially if each frame is hand-drawn like mine. Thirty seconds of animation took four to five hours. Animation mainly takes more experience and involves lots of practice and you need to manage time really well and give yourself some wiggle room just in case.” – Allen Jiang, whose project was learning about animation.

Did you enjoy presenting your project at the exhibition?

• “Exhibition was by far my favourite part of the personal project process. After all that hard work I expected it to be hard and stressful. It was the opposite. I found it very satisfying to speak to others in the community about my hard work and progress. I enjoyed listening to people’s suggestions and reactions to my project as I presented it to those who wandered over. My advice would be not to worry about the presentation part of the Exhibition. It is in fact the most enjoyable and satisfying part of what is a relatively difficult project.” – Emmett

• “It was really fun with everyone finding the search engine creation very interesting and having questions about it and how it manages to do what it does. Consistently, people were interested in the creation of the search engine and found it something that was worth looking at.” – Ibrahim
• “The exhibition was fun because you got to see all the different products that your friends made and you got to see what the experience was like for others.” – Jagger

Do you have some words of wisdom for the younger students when they embark on their Personal Project?

• “The biggest point of advice I would give to future Personal Project students is to choose something that you know you will have fun doing. Picking something that I would have wanted to do outside of school made the whole process seem more like an experience I got to do instead of it being something I had to do.” – Neeve
• “My advice would be to follow the recommended deadlines because it makes things a lot easier. Also, choose a project that you actually find interesting because it makes the process a lot more fun.” – Zeinab
• “Do not choose a project to make unless you are really passionate about it and want to try it out. Or, use it as a good kick starter for more projects you want to do on your own time.” – Allen

The Grade 10 Personal Project is a capstone project for IB MYP students, that encourages them to step outside of their comfort zones and learn new skills. This student-led project is also a key stepping stone in preparing students for being successful in the Internal Assessments and Extended Essay of the IB Diploma Programme in Grades 11 and 12. Following the exhibition, students create a report to document their reflections on the process they followed and the lessons that were learned, which can provide them with material to draw from for their university applications.

The ripple effect can even be seen when Neeve, and fellow classmate Jacob Tam, made a presentation to the Photography Club about their projects, and then answered questions and shared their learning in the fields of film and digital photography.