Hello and welcome to this blog post! This is my last post for a grade 11 Humanities project. The last project I complete was called “Cat and Maus”. It dove into the heavy topic of the holocaust. Throughout this project I was able to understand the concept of learning about the past to work towards building a better future. The driving question for this project is “How can multi-modal communication enhance our ability to humanize and understand complex issues?”.

This project started off with a building knowledge stage where I worked on reflecting on different concepts witnessed. For example, I listened to a lecture from a granddaughter of a holocaust survivor. I took notes on various videos and articles based on the content of the historical event. These notes were a great way to piece away at answering the driving question.

 

In learning about the multitude of the holocaust I created a reflection that included what I learned and why it was significant. I covered how certain learning activities resonated with me as well as future reason to why I chose those activities. To actually write this reflection I created a brainstorming document. When doing this I was able to organize my thoughts and use my agency to move forward with my learning. 

I got feedback from peers on my reflection, before moving forward with its finalization. In doing this I feel I used good communication with others to promote my success. 

After the learning reflection I used my reflection mindset to move into the next activity, Maus book analysis. We were tasked with reading a book and doing an analysis on it. Based on previous project such as Lord of the Files, I feel I was able to understand the significant notes to take. When reading I was looking at the book through a psychological lens. 

With my reading complete I worked on creating drafts of my literary criticism. I started with a brainstorm then a thesis to construct my knowledge. 

I wrote many drafts and sought for feedback from my peers. I feel like I was able to embrace the feedback and constantly improve my writing. In doing this I feel I really honed in on my engagement success behaviours. 

In addition to this I also went to a holocaust symposium, where I listened to the testimonies of a holocaust survivors. In doing this I really was able to feel how the difference in how things are presented, and how that multi-modal communication impacts viewers in different ways.

To conclude this project I created a humanities multi-modal exhibition piece with my peer, Dana. We worked to tell the story of an upstander, Leymah Gbowee. We went through many different ideas, but eventually settled on telling her story of rights through a box display.

In conclusion this project has taught me the meaning of how varieties of text puts forwards a different tone and contributes to the overall story in different ways. To answer the driving question, “How can multi-modal communication enhance our ability to humanize and understand complex issues?”, I think multi-modal communication can be used to enhance our ability to our ability to humanize and understand complex issues, through providing a perspective that’s more easy to relate to. I think humanizing something is simply the act of making something relatable, and through making something multi-module it opens up new perspectives. These new perspectives also us to relate and make sense of complex topics. 

Thank you for reading this post. I hope to see you again,  

Alicia 🙂