The second, and what feels like the biggest, unit of the year is finally coming to a close. We spent two months creating a podcast, reading a book, writing an essay and doing a ton of research and learning.

The topic was the emergence of Vancouver, how it was made and how it got to where it is today. We were split into seven groups each with their own sub topic. There was; First Nations rights, Immigration rights, Labour rights, Human rights, City Development, City Growth and Environmental. I was City Devlopment with Michael and Lucas.

Now City Devlopment and City Growth sounds pretty similar right? That’s true but City Devlopment worked on city planning and overall growth while City Growth did technology in the city planning and how it has progressed the city into the future.

Now since this is year of podcasts you should be able to tell what our end product would be. We made over three drafts of the podcast and for each new draft we re-recorded close to everything. I should also add that the podcast was just over 10 minutes long. So we spent a lot of time recording in my room and a tiny storage area in our school library.

 

Let’s start at the very beginning.

We first began by going to the Museum of Vancouver  where we looked at an exhibit that gave a full run down of the City of Vancouver, where it started and how it got to where it is now. We spent half of the school day at the museum and when we left we had to have an idea in our heads about what topic we wanted to do and an idea we had for the story we wanted to convey.

I really wanted to do either Environmental or City Devlopment. The overall idea I had was to do with the environmental aspects of the city looking at green solutions to buildings and surrounding areas.

We did an online survey to convey how our interests and later that week we were given our groups.

Like I said earlier I was paired up with Lucas and Michael doing City Devlopment.

We started by doing a fair bit of research on the City of Vancouver and its environmental goals as well as any contemporary issues pertaining to the city. After talking with my dad, who is working on building developments in the city, I learned about a building standard.

Passive House is a building standard first developed in Northern Europe and it is designed to bring carbon emissions to an ultra low standard. Although it took over a decade to get the ball rolling, countries in Europe and North America have started adjusting their building standards and began constructing passive house buildings.

After doing reasearch on Passive House I brought it to my group and we decided to go down the road of using that as our main topic. The theme we went with, though, was goals. We wanted to look at how Vancouver used goals to achieve what the public wanted to achieve and how, because of those goals, Vancouver has become the place it was yesterday, is today, and will be in the future.

Now while we were doing this we started learning about the history and origin of Vancouver through a bunch of power points and videos. We watched this one really interesting one called “8th Fire” it was about First Nations rights and how people are fighting for them today.

 

Lucas decided to undertake script. Which was pretty good. We spent a class doing a peer critique and then we set to work making the first draft of the podcast. We spent about 2 hours in my room using a mic, I found next to my PS4, to record.

It turned out pretty good, for a mic that came with a gaming console and looks like a pair of headphones.

During the week of podcast production I had also done an interview. Thanks to my dad, I was able to interview Ian Robertson, an architectural intern at ABBARCH Architecture, who is currently working on a Passive House project in the city.

On top of that I also had been making a few music tracks for the podcast and other future projects.

Using the interview, audio and music we had recorded Lucas used his computer to edit it all together.

https://soundcloud.com/user-457614921/best-coast-west-coast-podcast

During this time we began reading a book, “The International Bank of Bob”. It was and interesting bookbut I found it really repetitive. We did 4 reading reflections were I discussed some of the philosophy covered by the book. It was mainly about this company called Kiva. It’s a website that lets anyone around the world loan $25 to a person with a growing business in an impoverished country. What the author does is go around the world visiting some of the countries that loans are going to and he visits some of the people asking for loans. He learns about their businesses and lives and comes away with some very interesting philosophies about the world. He talks about the birth lottery and how people move on from tragic wars or conflicts.

 

Now back to the podcast.

After the first draft we made couple more. Each with small tweaks here and there. The second draft was probably the biggest change from the first with a more conversational script that kept things going.

https://soundcloud.com/user-457614921/best-coast-west-coast-podcast-final

After we had reached our final draft we sent it to Ian for his feedback.

A few days later we heard back from him and made a few small changes to get our fully final draft.

https://soundcloud.com/user-457614921/best-coast-west-coast-podcast-final-1

In the last week we have also done an essay. The first purpose of it was to do a reflection on the books we read but Ms. Maxwell decided it would be better to create an essay based on what we learned brought the podcast. We would also merge our groups essays and send a letter/email to Terry Beech, our MP.

We spent two classes writing the essay after doing some prep work earlier in the week. In the first class I did the first three paragraphs and then did the remainder in the second. I received feedback from Ms. Maxwell and created a second draft.

In case you were wondering my topic was asking the MP to bring up the idea of encouraging other countries to implement passive housing as Vancouver and the rest of Canada has begun doing.

After handing in my second draft we were told to begin creating the letter. My group decided to go with asking the MP to encourage a speedy implementation process for the rest of Canada as Vancouver is the national leader in implementing. Hopefully we hear back from him soon.

 

We also created a video remembering our project process. Now we were quite caught up in making the podcast so we did forget to film and take photos at some times but we did have a time lapse and some photos of the multiple recording and work sessions we did. Michael put it all together and added some background music.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XAznkScX6Kc&feature=youtu.be

I had some fun in this project. I really learned a lot about the different things going on in the city and the history of Vancouver. Although it did bring some long nights and stressful days I am happy with our final product. I now feel like I know the city a whole lot better.