Whakanui was an event where students were divided into groups and each group was given a country. The theme was the royal wedding, so every country had to showcase how a wedding ceremony is held with the help of a range of text types that would be created by students. By doing this we would come to know about a different countries’ culture and it would help us expand our knowledge.

The country my group got was New Zealand under which we choose a very small tribe called the Maori tribe. We first discussed the text types we were going to use and divided the text types to each individual. As I am not very great with technology I collaborated with Vaishvi, where she not only helped me with creating the text types (that were an invitation card and a twitter post) but also taught me to do it by myself. By doing this LO-5 is covered as we took the benefit of working collaboratively and used each other’s skills to an optimal level. The reason it is important to work collaboratively is that when you work individually you do not grow and learn new things while collaboration helps you get out of your comfort zone. I think teamwork was very important during this activity as we both had our expertise in different areas and this collaboration helped us to make our work look at its best. I also used LO-2 as I spotted the challenge of not having up to the mark skills in technology and then worked upon it. I have done something like this before but not exactly the same, I had an idea of how I had to work my way through technology but required assistance. For me, it is important to undertake a new challenge as it is the only way I can evolve, learn and develop myself. After learning this skill I felt more equipped as there will be many more assignments where my technology skills will be required and then I won’t need to depend on anybody.

There were a lot of leadership problems that were faced by our group as our leader was unable to manage the group as well as communicate information to the group which somewhere made the group members less optimistic and also increased the work. That wasn’t the end and we did not give up, we spoke to the leader and told her that we should divide her work and give some more work to each individual. I and my friend Vrinda took a lead with decoration. We organize ourselves first by making a checklist of our work, making sure we had all the resources and decided on how were we going to decorate. I am generally very organized but in this case, as I was not informed about the work we had to do, it was all last minute work and impromptu. The activity became difficult because of lack of communication as I mentioned before. Thus, it was very necessary to be perseverant because if we did not be perseverant we wouldn’t have completed our work and we all would look very bad in front of the entire school. For me, it is easy to commit to things that I love and I believed in. I believed that a little bit more hard work will make the impossible possible. By doing this I completed LO-3 and LO-4 as I did not give up and brought the leader in me out.

While making a text type one can copy, use other information and take credits for it without citing the source. My school has always held a very important stand when it comes to plagiarism and citation. I think ethical issues affect me directly as for in this instance if I had just copied somebody else’s work completely, I wouldn’t learn anything new and neither would I learn how to appreciate and respect other work and so I feel citing is very important. My opinion remains very much the same wherein I strongly believe in citation and giving others the credit they deserve. So as a group from the very beginning we had decided not to copy but to take inspiration and to make sure to cite every inspiration, picture or video we use by doing this the LO-7 was completed.

By doing this event I learned that I am extremely calm and fast in solving sudden problems, I have also learned that it is not always necessary to have the leadership position to showcase one’s own leadership skills. For me, it is very important to know my own strengths as it helps me to know and learn more about myself and the skill can be utilized in other aspects of life as well. By doing this I completed LO-1.