Tech Initiatives + Assignments

During this past term, I’ve participated in several volunteering opportunities. At the start of the year, I was involved in the Grade 9 Orientation as well as the Digital Bootcamp. At the Grade 9 Orientation, I spent 4 hours volunteering and helping with various things such as setting up the gym and handing out the packages to help the Grade 9s start their year. For the Digital Bootcamp, I assisted in helping the Grade 9s strengthen their communication, critical thinking, and collaborating skills through the spaghetti tower activity.

Throughout the year, I helped out at the Wave on Mondays at lunch, Fridays in the morning, and occasionally Wednesdays at lunch. I also took initiative to volunteer to make the library website for our school along with two other students. We would meet on Mondays, and plan out the layout, colours, and information for the website.

I gained skills and learned many things during this term so far. I learned how to use the Cricut machine for the first time, enhanced my social skills, and overall became more familiar with our school and its staff and students, allowing me to feel more confident in helping others and building a community. When making my Tech Team shirt, I faced a challenge trying to work the Cricut: my first trial resulted in my name not being mirrored. This was frustrating as I’ve already weeded it, but I knew I had to print it once more, this time ensuring that it’s mirrored. After fixing this small mistake, I was able to successfully make my Tech Team shirt!

Small wins I felt was when I was able to help others with my newly-learned knowledge. After figuring out how to work the Cricut machine myself, I was able to help my peer as well. I was also successful in assisting Grade 9 students at the beginning of year with their spaghetti towers during the Digital Bootcamp. After some advice on how to approach new Riverside students that was given by Mr. Gee to all Tech Team students, I was able to apply that advice and use it to make them feel more welcome.

Core Competency: Collaborating

My specific strengths include: being able to work collectively with my peers towards a common goal, having the ability to listen to others ideas while contributing my own, and overall knowing how to cooperate with others in a project. Regarding my stretches, occasionally there may be miscommunication between myself and my peers. This lack of clarity can cause a bit of conflict. An area that could use some growth is organization. My peers and I could work towards laying out a detailed and specific plan for the delivery of our ideas. Some goals I could implement in order to grow in this area is to practice strong communication by clearly emphasizing my ideas, then allowing my peers to emphasize theirs. After doing so, we can work together to decide our execution plan.