Alright, we are back with another project done, another reflection in the making. So for this project, we were learning all about the Cold War and fear. This was kind of a continuation of the Manhattan Project 2, the project where we went to New Mexico, etc., etc. Another group of kids from our class went on an Arizona/Nevada field study, but I did not go on that trip, so that doesn’t really matter anyways. So, the project was called Fear Factor, and it was all about the fear during the Cold War. This project was unique in the way that we could present our learning; we could do it in any format we wanted, and we could make an inquiry question based on the Driving Question, which was: “How has fear been used as a political, defensive, and cultural tool to shape our society?” So, I

chose to make a podcast with my friend Declan called “Behind the Iron Curtain.” Anyways, our narrowed inquiry question was “How did extreme fear of the other influence global politics and foster advancements in espionage?” which is a pretty open-ended question, but that was done on purpose because we wanted to be able to include lots of things and topics. So, let’s take a look at the success criteria for this project.

Another part of this project was developing a Zettelkasten note collection. I personally am not a fan of this note-making system. I can see its uses, but overall, I just didn’t enjoy it because of all the organization you have to do and how it develops into different stages all in different places. I like to keep them all in one spot so I don’t have to click back and forth between everything. But I made one nonetheless. If you don’t know, a Zettelkasten is a collection of notes that are thoughts at the same time. First, you make what are known as fleeting notes, sort of like your base understanding of something. Then you go to a literature note, which is some more advanced idea with a quote to serve as evidence. Finally, you go to a permanent note, which is a one consolidated thought each on individual cards.

 

 

So, we were learning all about the Cold War and the Atomic Bomb. So we covered multiple forms of media, reading books like Hiroshima, Fallout, and we even watched the new Netflix series called Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War. All of this, plus additional research we did on our own time, gave us all the information we needed to make our final product.

 

Declan and I were excited to make our podcast. We were trying to model another podcast called “The Makeshift Project,” and it sort of worked. We sectioned our info into three episodes, each one building on the other (or at least that was the idea), starting with a foundation, zooming in, and then the conclusion. Now here’s where it gets tricky: after recording, we realized that our episodes were WAY too long, reaching 25 minutes plus. So, we chopped up each episode into shorter clips, about 6-8 minutes, and sectioned them via YouTube playlist, matching the criteria of the project

Behind the Iron Curtain 

So that’s the YouTube channel. I had a lot of fun making the thumbnails for the videos. My personal favorite are the two spy ring ones, as I think they look like a professional YouTube channel’s work.

Alright to answer the driving question of how fear is used to shape society: Fear influences everything almost every decision comes from fear. If you know people are afraid of something you can weaponize that fear and exploit it. This exploitation leads to that influence of those political, defensive, and cultural influence. Whether that be using a tactic like McCarthyism to gain more political influence, or using it as justification for increased military budget. Fear is the deep down controlling action of everything we do the basic fight or flight instinct is triggered by fear.

So now the reflection:

Overall, I really liked this project from start to finish. I like learning about history and think the Cold War is a very interesting time period to study. In terms of project execution, Declan and I could have done a bit better as we didn’t make as many YouTube Shorts like we wanted to because we ran out of time. What went well was the podcast. Overall, we had good ideas, good research, good synergy. We even had good ideas planned but… failed to realize the semi-tight schedule we were on. In the future, we should definitely double-check both the learning guide and with a teacher to make sure our goals are achievable. I liked how in this project we had freedom of choice in terms of presentation and even topic while it still had to relate to fear; you could do really anything you wanted, which is always cool.

So that’s my reflection, thank you for reading. (Buy an egg noodle)