For the very first humanities unit we learned about World War One. We started off by looking at Canada before the war and how it was doing socially and economically. After doing a short project on that we looked at how the war began. We did a project on that which is the subject of a past blog post.
After all of that prelude to war we actually went into what actually happened during the war. More specifically what Canada did during the war.
We looked at the four key battles that Canadians participated in; The second battle of Ypres, Vimy Ridge, the Somme and Passchendaele. We spent a few classes watching videos and filling out tables and charts on what happened in those battles.
We also also looked at what was going on at the home front and we put together key notes to discuss them. I was in a group with Kate, aiden, Simon and Ruby and we researched and presented about enlistment and conscription.
Through this mini project I learned a lot about how conscription works and how the voluntary enlistment went during World War One.
During all of this we bagan our final project. The soldier podcast. We were given a website that gives us access to every Canadian soldier that fought in World War One. We had to research a soldier that fought in the war and create a podcast that conveys the story of soldier and answered the essential question; How did WW1 impact Canada’s identity.
I decided to do research on my great-great Grandfather, Roy Phillip Hutchison. He was a sergeant with the engineer corps. I found his enlistment files and I have one of his medals and a photo of him after he was wounded at the front.
We all spent a fair bit of time crafting our scripts. With multiple drafts and critique.
We also also had to include music in the podcast so we did a workshop with Ms. Willemse on how to use GarageBand.
When the first draft was complete we apparently missed the mark a little. So, Mr. Hughes and Ms. Willemse made us listen to actual podcasts to get a feel for the different styles and how we might use those styles to make our podcasts better. We looked at seven different styles; Solo, multi-host, expert interview, non fiction story, fiction story, round table and documentary.
I took my own initiative and downloaded and subscribed to a handleful of podcasts. My favourites are Lore, Someone Knows Something and Tim and Sid.
After brainstorming a bunch of ideas to make my podcast better I came to the conclusion that adding another host would make it more effective. So, I talked with Ryan and he had the same ideas. So, we decided to create a podcast where we would compare both of our soldiers and talk about their different tales and how they relate back to the driving question.
We put together a master script which included some other components other than the soldier stories. We also created a name for our podcast; The Flo and The Blond.
We first first had to record the first 30 seconds of our podcast to make sure we had a solid intro and we listened to them all in class one day. From the feedback we received we realized some things about the script and how we had to record the audio. We had to record side by side an make it more of a conversation if it was going to work. We were also told that it would have to by double the length that everyone else was required. So, we had to fix the script and make it longer so it made it around 10 minutes.
Since I was going over to Vancouver Island on the weekend we had to get it done on. We recorded early Friday morning (we had a Pro-d day) before I left. I spent the ferry ride over putting together the music and Ryan spent some time putting it all together.
I really enjoyed doing the research for this project. I’m a bit of a history nerd and I have a really big fascination with World War Two and a little bit of World War One. I also have a lot of family ties to both wars. ( My great grandfather was a major fighting in Italy with the PPCLI) I am also really interested in podcasts and I have really started to like listening an dmaking them. I look forward to making more in the future.