S.M.A.R.T Goals

SPECIFIC

Since this year’s Personal Project program was executed online, my project would have to adapt with conditions to create a easily accessible and virtually friendly product that can be connect and be accessed to reach the public easily. Seeming that the project was aimed mainly at school students, my targeted audience would accumulate congregations of middle school - high school students aged from 11 till 18 years old.

MEASURABLE

When designing the difficulty of the project, one of the most important factors that I need to consider is how trackable and manageable the project is. There are an abundance of methods that may be used to track my progress in this project, but the two main progress trackers would undoubtedly be the Personal Project timelines and my own personal process journal that I have created in a separate document to record the progress of the project paired with pointers of evaluation in reference to supervisor and parental comments, from the proposal presentation up till the public marketing of the product.

ACHIEVABLE

The project is demanding due to 3 conditions which are; requiring an in-depth & long-term investigation, learning new concepts in mathematics, and finding valid/professional interviewees to validate content of the product. After certain measurements, this project is deemed attainable with perseverance, commitment, confidence and prevalent attentiveness in doing my project. In my own thought, I believe that the product of this project would not be hard to make and is not too ambitious, though the investigation would take the most time out of this project. All of the project’s bases and premises still fit in the academic time frame, due to its simplicity of product and concept.

REALISTIC

Both this personal project and goal(s) are indubitably as well as utterly important for not only my personal and or/ academic development, but this goal could also potentially increase interests and open minds of other young minds who had the same perspectives of maths as me prior to the project. Ultimately, my product is to create a published and publicly accessed digital guidebook that hopefully will be shared to an extensive number of academic communities around the local, national, and potentially global audience. Since mathematics is known to be a subject that many students dislike in terms of its learning process as well as content-wise itself, through this project it has the potential to change the perception and or/ perspectives of mathematics itself further growing its readers’ interest and academic development.

TIME-BOUND

This project would have a high possibility to take much time and effort in researching and creation for the final product. However, it is kept in mind that this project is all fixed to one goal which is to create an educational (digital) guidebook for a number of students to read and learn from. This goal will be reached after I have published my publicly accessible ebook catered to school students of any grade, and have received feedback from the readers/audience. To keep track of my progress and punctuality in doing the project, my deadlines will be personalized in my own project timeline in reference to the time and schedules given in the general personal project timeline provided by teachers & supervisors.

There was one particular field of mathematics that came to be my personal favorite, recreational mathematics, otherwise known as math hacks/tricks. It is a territory often unrecognized by the general group of academic learners, not taught but used as entertainment (recreation) in remedies such as; magic, online videos, and mathematical shortcut series. Albeit the field was not taken as seriously as others in the world of mathematics, it still resonates as the most, personally, fascinating. According to a primary interview with mathematical expert Mr. Abhishek V.R, recreational mathematics can be defined as; simplifications of basic mathematical operations or compelling mathematical proofs created for a specific purpose.

It came to my realization that this was what changed my view, and this was what introduced me into a whole new world of mathematics eagerly waiting to be explored, sharing this insight was a prevalent find and using recreational maths as a solution to raise self-efficacy came up to be concrete and realistic, thus creating my product!

Expert & Professor Interviews

Click on the pictures for the links towards interview answers and interviewee descriptions! ^^

Product: Digital Guidebook

The digital guidebook withholds contents relating to different math hacks/tricks that are tailored and written for ages 11 and up. It consists of 3 - 4 chapters explaining and compiling a series of the wonders of what maths has to offer, especially regarding its favorable side of math hacks and tricks suitable for anyone who knows basic maths. The guidebook has a total of 218 pages including the cover, and teaches fundamental math topics including; arithmetics, algebra, geometry, and daily life maths to which can be applied realistically in your everyday activities! (For a more detailed explanation, scroll up to the section of "My Project: NYNM")

Process: In The Making!

In creating the final project product, I put most of my skills in critical thinking to create content, design, and promote every idea and knowledge built and/ or prevalently portrayed in the final digital guidebook (ebook). Of course, time management was a importantly ubiquitous skill, though it proved to not be deemed necessary as (at the time) I was already approaching my project report deadline as if time was accelerated 5x its usual pace. I could no longer have the time create, arrange, nor follow timelines/schedules deeming my time management skills to be nonfunctional for this case.

Consequently, I resorted to my critical thinking skills to solve this issue against time and came up with a multifarious amount of methods as well as plans to finish this project with sufficient time to spare for writing the report. Essentially in creating the product, I started with drafting the content recorded based from the investigation phase of this project, firstly by outlining chapters, then continuing with creating descriptions for each chosen trick (that are found to be most useful in applications towards daily life) along with designing trick illustrations (accordance with creating descriptions of content) using the Canva platform, in order for the readers to understand quite clearly what the descriptions provided are trying to convey.

In the process of editing and designing the concept of how the digital guidebook would look, I had to speedily search for concepts appealing enough for readers to catch their attention with the cover of the book, often quoted as one of the “leaving impression” of books in general. Since I was targeting students from middle till high school, it would be fitting to follow the trend of an 8-bit concept filled with primary colors to help gain focus and interest whilst reading for students to easily follow the contents of the book.

Revision in drafting towards creating the final draft of the book was fairly quick in gaining feedback from supervisors and teachers, thankfully providing enough time to promote the product towards an array of students and parents alike, to further share the guidebook with their friends and family.

Down The Road~ (Challenges & Meaningful Experiences)

Throughout the tedious investigation phase and swift product creation process of this whole project, overall I did a sufficient job of completing the project and sharing my knowledge gained throughout the process towards the local as well as general public . I am proud to say that my investigation phase was what I put most pride in, as it provided to be the whole backbone of the goal and project. Though the product creation was predominantly rushed, I was able to develop and eventually impress myself on how I was able to finish the product swiftly with satisfying quality, mainly with my critical thinking skills, though it did provide many casualties in revising the final draft and re-promote the product again due to a missed mistake seen in the draft.

Moreover, I am slightly disappointed in the fact that I was not to publish my book at an official publication company or site. Initially, I tried self-publishing on Amazon and Smash Words platforms, but the attempt spiraled to a chaos of disaster in the form of the book, regulations, and technical errors, making it hard to read and comprehend for the potential audience. I realized to myself that I could have made the product formally official by publishing at a local bookstore/publishing house if I had more time to finish the draft earlier. This mishap provided me with immense reflection and contemplation, mentally carving down that if I were to write another book or create another project, time is an undeniably important factor in making the project the best it can be.

Furthermore, though I was not able to publish my product to a larger global audience, I was given the chance to promote and submit my product (with the recommendation of my school) towards the KGB (Keguruan Besar), which is a large organization of academic professors in Jakarta. All in all, the project went fairly smoothly with a few bumps in terms its investigation and creation process, although there were a copious amount of activities hindering the project and its commitment, I was able to learn new meaningful skills, gain knowledge, build open-minded values, as well as be able to ultimately impress myself; that I was able to write 218 page ebook in the first place, about a subject that I was initially afraid of.

Next Step!

After gaining much meaningful experiences and beneficial skills, throughout this project, it really did teach me a lot in terms of every academic or personal aspects. It tested much of my abilities to be able to finish tasks, engage in professional activities, and try out a lot of new things that I have never done before; such as writing a book, let alone, a guidebook for countless students to learn from about a subject that I used to quote on quote "despise" or really was just afraid of. This project inspired me to try out more new things in life and (probably) start out new projects in the coming timespan, who knows? Hopefully there will be a great continuation stemming from this project, and I can't wait to face it! :D