Hello ladies and germs! And of course I can’t forget about all the gentlemen out there. But really this is a lovely welcome to the newest edition in my life and the lives of billions of others, germs! Except these aren’t regular germs. There are the kind that carry a bad virus that caused a global pandemic resulting in the closing of schools and what feels like an eternal life of loneliness due to social distancing! This is me trying so very hard to be optimistic but as you can see I am struggling. One of the things that is getting me through this period of social distancing is online school. That may seem very weird as most students hate this new format, but as a proud member of PLP I’m kinda used to it. We do everything through iPads and technology so the learning itself hasn’t changed much. The weird part is not entering my classroom everyday and not seeing our teachers and learning from them in person. This entire situation has really made me think about how much I took getting up at 7am every morning for granted. It’s almost like when you get a cold and are stuffed up and you start to regret taking clear sinuses for granted. Anyways enough about my lonely existence and on to more important topics!
sumanley / Pixabay
On April 4th 2020 Gabe, Thomas, Felix, Brenton, and myself were set to present our revised version of our DI skit. But due to COVID-19 the provincial tournament was cancelled. When the news of school being closed all together came around we thought that we had put in all the hard work for nothing. Out of seemingly nowhere, our teachers decided to improvise! Although it wasn’t perfect, and we couldn’t show all of our work on the most important elements of the challenge, my team, and all the others, presented our skits over a Zoom call to an improvised panel of judges including one of our own, Zoe Wooles.
Before I dive into how this Zoom presentation went, I’d like to cover all of the improvement my team made after the regional tournament. At regionals, my team may have come first, but all in all, we didn’t really deserve the win and we definitely wouldn’t have gotten that far if we were in a different category. After our presentation, we immediately decided we needed to step things up to a whole new level. In class a few days later we had a discussion recalling all the things that went poorly and needed to be fixed. We made plans for a new and improved backdrop, designed possible improvements for our bridge, and edited our script to fit our missing group member, Felix.
Script page
When we were hit with a brand new challenge, my mindset was already in a delicate state. Not being able to socialize, go out, have fun, or learn in familiar and enjoyable environments was a difficult adaptation to make. Adding to that with a Zoom DI presentation, ouch. After we’d heard that school was cancelled, my team kind of gave up and stopped communicating overall. Obviously that was a mistake that we later made up for in what I thought to be a pretty good presentation, especially under the circumstances. As we couldn’t show the bridge, backdrop, or props that would’ve aided our skit, we depended heavily on the story, which I wrote. When preparing for regionals I felt that I should put my strengths to good use and write a creative story that was still realistic and met standards. In doing so I felt like I didn’t really help the team enough with the bigger elements. With the improvised skit, my hard work and “creative genius,” as I like to call it, came in handy and made for a fun and successful presentation! We also put together new backgrounds and utilized Zoom’s virtual background feature to set the scene.
MiroslavaChrienova / Pixabay
At the end of the day we were forced to drop everything and improvise. I personally think we were successful and to be honest, the online tournament was a fun kickstart to our new online schooling! After all my entire team was able to understand the new process, navigate the changes, and make adaptations in a time crunch, which I count as a win, especially with the competency we’re being assessed on.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk…and please, rember to stay home and wash your hands!
– Ciara
