This project was a bit different than most because we got to create our own personal inquiry question that connected back to the concept of how fear influences the world. I created a Smart Brevity website about the history, present and future of Canadian Arctic defence plans. Click the card below to see my final product and answer to my inquiry question “How has fear, the Cold War, conflict and climate change shaped Canada’s decisions about Arctic defence plans?”
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In order to create this product, we first began by reading John Hersey’s Hiroshima, a book about the lives of six individuals who survived the denotation of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan.
In order to build meaningful knowledge from reading Hiroshima, we were introduced to the Zettlekasten system. This system uses short notes, called “zettles,” and longer notes, called literature notes, in order to organize ideas. You can learn more about the Zettlekasten system here. See my literature note for Hersey’s Hiroshima below:
From this literature note, I then created “permanent notes,” which is a short document with a single idea and references to literature notes in which this idea is supported. Here are some of the permanent notes I created:
Using an idea from my permanent note “Nuclear warfare has profound, long-lasting impacts on individuals,” I wrote this theme analysis on Hiroshima:
I’m still adjusting to using the Zettlekasten system, but I really enjoy the level of organization it provides and literature notes in particular make information very quick and easy to understand. It allowed me to organize my research on the Arctic as well as in-class materials such as the Netflix series Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War.
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At this point in the project, half our class left for two weeks on a field study to Arizona and Nevada, while the other half of our class stayed behind. Read this post to understand why I don’t go on long distance field studies: ✈️ My Thoughts On Field Studies.
Those of us that stayed behind began researching our inquiry questions. I read A LOT of articles and created literature notes for them.
I also created a schedule for what I was going to accomplish each day which was really helpful to stay organized and finish my drafts on time. I’m particularly proud of my “status” column which allowed me to see what I’d accomplished and what I still had to do.
After researching, I then designed my Smart Brevity website, inspired by Axios.com. Click here to learn more about Smart Brevity. Writing each page took a long time to organize and decide what to keep and what wasn’t important enough. Thankfully the literature notes saved me from it taking even longer then it did.
This project, especially wrapping my head around the incredibly complex topic of Arctic defence, made me do what school wants us to do most: think. I’m going to share how I pushed my thinking in the form of a Star, Wish and a Think.
⭐️ Stars
- I’m really happy with the way my final product turned out and I enjoyed using Smart Brevity as a way to share information about such a complex topic.
- I was very pleased at how quickly I was able to write my introduction!
☄️ Wishes
- I wish I would have managed my research a bit better as I got quite overwhelmed with the amount of information I had to synthesize into six pages.
- I wish I would have had more time to write my conclusion, however that was somewhat out of my control since I got sick 🙁
💭 Thoughts
- One thought I had during the project was why school topics are so focused on negative history and would it not be equally as beneficial to learn what in history TO repeat instead of just what NOT to repeat? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
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Overall this project allowed me to gain a better understanding of the complexities of conflict and fear in shaping government decisions and the impacts on society. It also gave me the opportunity to use my decision making skills to decide what information to share, how to organize my project path and how to create a personal Zettlekasten.
If you haven’t read my finished Smart Brevity website above make sure to do so now! I hope you learned a lot about Canada’s arctic defence through the ages, and take the time to consider the questions posed on the last page:
🤔 Things to think about: Our generation is the one that will have to experience the consequence of Arctic decision making: it could lead to peace or a new Cold War… or worse.
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- Should we be investing more money in defence to fulfil our commitments to do our part as members of NATO instead of relying so much on other countries?
- Despite our fears, how can we enhance collaboration in the Arctic to mitigate climate change?
- How important is Canada’s sovereignty vs. collaboration to protect the Arctic’s fragile ecosystems and global peace?
- How can we involve the Arctic’s Indigenous people as true partners in Arctic security and fulfill our commitments to Truth and Reconciliation?
- Is demilitarization or nuclear disarmament ever going to be a realistic possibility?
Feel free to share any thoughts in the comments below. Thanks for reading! 🐻❄️🧊