Hey guys, I’m back and I am talking about Alberta again. If you have been keeping up with my blog posts you would know that my class recently went to Alberta last September as part of a project to figure out “How Place Affects a Certain Group or People”. This blog post is a reflection on how I managed to keep up with all the work we had and all the little projects along the way.

I’m going to start with talking about how I managed to stay on track and stay focused during this trip. I’m going to be honest here. It wasn’t easy to stay focused and at times I feel like I lost my focus and could have stayed on track better. It is tough to stay focused when you are surrounded by friends on a school trip that is overnight. We had a lot of mini projects in Alberta, and I am going to be addressing those projects and how I managed to stay focused and leave with a good product.

PLP 9’s focus is making and editing videos. Whether it be remaking a video or creating one of our own, we are learning about how to film, edit, and plan for making a video. Our first example of this in Alberta was the a Ghost Town Video. One of our first educational stops in the trip was at the Three Lake Valley Chateau. At the Three Valley slake Chateau there is a ghost town made up of old buildings brought from old settlements or built there. It is a replica of a settlement over 100 years ago and it includes a barbershop, a saloon, a sheriffs office, and a hotel. We were split into groups and we went to make a silent film using the buildings around us. My group, Ryan, Finn, Julia, and Matthew, decided to make a action thriller type movie. I won’t go into detail of what happens as the video is just below and you will be able to watch for yourself. As for managing and keeping on track of the work, I think my group did fairly well. We weren’t the best group for this, as we all were easily distracted and didn’t get along totally well, but after about 10 minutes of arguing over the first shot, we managed to get along and we finished filming with time to spare and all the shots were pretty good. For me personally, I think I did well for managing impulsivity to just give up and explore the area. I think I kind of took it upon myself to be the DRI and make sure we finished on time. I think I did well for this particular project.

I think the next big project that could show how I managed impulsivity would be the video we made at the Royal Tyrell Museum. I think we had just under 40 minutes to make and edit a video about a certain exhibit or display in the museum. I decided to do my video on a mosasaur exhibit. Again, you can watch the video itself to learn more about that. As for managing impulsivity, again I think I did fairly well. On the other hand though, I did it manage my time and lost track of it at the end. I was a little too focused on a couple shots and I forgot about the tight schedule I had to make the video. Next time, I really want to manage my time better so I can have more time to interview an employee at the museum. One way I could do this would be to make decisions quicker. I did spend a long time picking out something to film and if I had figured that out quicker I would have more time to interview someone, edit, and maybe redo or add more shots that would greatly enhance the video.

I think one last example of me either managing impulsivity or keeping track of time would be actually creating data and footage for the big video of the project. I was part of the tourists group with Gabe, and together we were pretty on top of interviewing people and gathering stuff to use for our videos. We would figure out beforehand if we were going to try to interview somebody and what group or type of person we were going to interview, whether that be a worker or an actual tourist. Our first priority in those spots where we would interview someone was to interview someone. That way we would have time to learn about the place and enjoy ourselves without having to worry about interviewing somebody. We did have good communication which helped us quickly set up to interview somebody and if we wanted to interview someone at a place where originally didn’t plan to interview someone, we could quickly adapt and start preparing for an interview. We would think of questions to ask before we interviewed them and sometimes before we even arrived at the place. This helped us maximize productivity and gather as much data as possible. All this really helped us create a good final product as we had a lot of quotes and footage to pick from when we got home. 

So all in all, I think my focus and impulsivity on this trip was pretty good. There were a few mess ups and mistakes, but overall I managed to stay calm and remember that even though we weren’t in school, we still needed to do schoolwork. I managed to keep my behaviour in check and I think I did well on staying involved in the activities at the different places we visited. I think it was a pretty successful trip for me because I managed to finish the projects in time and they were good quality and something I could be proud of. Thank you door reading and I will see you in the next blog post.