Hello everyone, welcome back. Luckily I have not managed to die over the last 4ish months since I have written a blog post, so I’m here writing to you yet again! As you have probably guessed a new blog post means a finished project. This project was pretty interesting, it was video that answered the driving question “How Does Place Impact Who We Are?”. After we were asked that question we were then separated into groups of people to narrow down the question. I was placed into the student people group, this meant my question changed from “how does place impact who we are “ to “How Does Place Impact Education?”. After we had started to formulate the answer to the question we then received the places where we were going to interview people (. As our final task before we left on our trip to Alberta we created a plan. We researched all the places we were going to stop at, planned who we were going to interview, planned what pictures we wanted to take, and in general just made a rough outline for our video. After we had finished all of our planning and learning about the project we set off on a nine day trip to Alberta where we would stop at many different places to answer the driving question.

First stop…

The first stop we went to that started to really open my eyes to the answer to the driving question was the Northern Lights Wildlife Centre. The wildlife centre is an amazing place that houses 6 wolves. They family run centre that has a mission to educate the public on the importance of wolves. At this centre I had the privilege of getting to interview one of the workers at the centre. We asked her many questions about the wolves and how they educate children, but the most important part that the centre played was it really started turning the cogs in my brain to figure out how to answer the question. It was at this location where I decided I was going to focus in on opportunities. I was going to make the thesis of my video “How does place impact one’s educational opportunities?”. The wolf centre was the launching point for my project and made me really start to think about the answer and what sort of questions I would need to ask in order to answer it.

Stop nùmero 2…

Our next stop was the Lake Minnewanka boat cruise. Although this wasn’t technically one of our stops it provided strong evidence for the answer that place impacts our opportunities, because opportunities like a boat cruise on a stunning lake are pretty rare. I had googled the prices beforehand and they are pretty expensive as well as the fact they the cruise is very hard to get to. I wanted to ask A staff member named Sean on the cruise if he thought opportunities like these should be more available to more children. The idea that place can give you very incredible opportunities (like the boat cruise), but there are lots of obstacles in the way to people actually being able to access these opportunities was really interesting to me, and provided some very strong evidence for my thesis.

Final stop…

For my last stop I went to the Glenbow museum. Here I got what I think may have been my most valuable interview. I got to talk to a employee of the Glenbow museum named Cory and ask him some questions. I asked him about the wonderful opportunities that the museum students, and how accessible they are to the average students. As it turns out the museum’s opportunities are really quite accessible. They offer funding to help students pay for trips,and  they are very close to local schools so the travel is easy, unfortunately because their programs are so accessible it means they are often fully booked and it’s very hard to even get a spot in one of the programs. In their busier times of the year they cannot take any more schools and turn down almost everyone who tries to book! This I found very interesting, because the idea some opportunities are so sought after they become almost impossible to have is a very odd thing, but in my opinion it has everything to do with place. If this museum was farther away from the city in a more rural area it would be much more available for people. It would be less booked because it’s harder to get to. That would of course meant that less children would get to have this opportunity though. Overall the interview at the Glenbow museum was very interesting to me and helped me finish my answer to the driving question.

Let’s start the video…

Once we got back from Alberta we started on our video. This was the video that answered the driving question using some of the interviews and photos that we had collected over the trip. We then did a voiceover or recorded ourselves talking about our answer to the driving question. We did one draft of these videos before handing in our final product. My first draft was OK. It was in my opinion a good answer to the driving question but was not made very well. I had very bad audio and some badly edited footage. When Ms. Maxwell gave me feedback (she said to change the audio and may trim some of the clips so I could finish speaking) I agreed with her completely, and made a real effort to improve on what she had suggested for my final video.

Daily note…

Before I talk about the driving question, final product, and wrap this post up (I’m sorry if I’m boring you dear reader) I just wanted to mention one other side project we were doing at the same time, the 𝓓𝓪𝓲𝓵𝔂 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓮. The daily note was a compilation of the answers to the daily questions our teacher gave us. These were prompts our teachers gave us so that we could start to think about some of the key parts of our project and some of the things we had learned. We were asked our ideas about what Canadian identity is or what our opinion on how we think place impacts who we are. These were really fun as the the trip went by and gave us the opportunity to think about some of the other stops we went to even if they weren’t specifically assigned to us. This was a fun side project that I really enjoyed and definitely helped me to sort out my thoughts and opinions on things we had learned.

The big conclusion…

Finally we’re at the end (truly I’m sorry if I bored you) and this is where I answer I the driving question (I can tell you’re feeling the suspense), unfortunately there is a plot twist. I’ve already answered it! In my final draft of my video (below this paragraph) I fully answer the question (and you can listen to the audio without cringing). So instead of repeating what I’ve already said lest me tell you what this project taught me. This project was the first solo project I’ve had since the beginning of last year and I’ve learned a lot from it. It’s taught me a lot more about taking responsibility for my work because I don’t have a group to help me but it’s also taught me a lot about formulating my own ideas plans. Typically when you work in a group you do this all together and people can help you critique your ideas or pick better ones, but when you’re all by yourself it’s up to you you have to learn to be a lot more critical about your own ideas and also to figure out ways to come up with more ideas. when I’m in a group are usually don’t have to make up as many ideas cause there’s lots people pitching ideas all the time, but when I’m by myself I have to come up with a lot more ideas and be able to them and chose good ones all by myself.

The big conclusion cnd… (because I probably wrote to much)

I also learned a lot about interviewing from this project. It can sometimes be really Weird to go up to strangers and ask them questions but luckily this project has help me a lot with overcoming that fear. As well as being able to ask people questions this project is also help me learn how to ask better questions. When you’re looking for evidence or trying to support an idea you need to ask specific questions that you know will help your project. If you’re looking for evidence that opportunities are impacted by place and you want to ask questions that will help you find that evidence then don’t ask questions like “do you like your job?” Or “what is special about your job” because they will not help you answer your question or fin your evidence. Lastly I I learned a lot about video making. I learned so much about editing a video, planning a video, and how to take footage and audio that you need to make a video good. I had no idea how much planning goes into a video before you make it, there’s research to be done, lists of people that you need to talk to, and just lists upon lists of shots that you need to take in order for your video to look good. And even after you planned everything perfectly you still have to be flexible because not everything will always go exactly to that plan. I also learned a lot about editing after you captured all of that footage. I learn things like you need to use a proper mic in order to get good sound, and that it’s very important you trim clips to the right lengths or they didn’t match up to the things you’re saying, and I even learned things just as simple as how to properly work iMovie so that I can actually make a video. Overall I’ve learned so much from this incredible project, I’ve learned important video skills that will definitely come in handy this year, i’ve learned how to properly interview people and ask good questions so I can get good answers, and I’ve learned how to come up with ideas and critique them without the help of many other people. I’ve had so much fun on this project and I think I’ve learned quite a lot too! Thanks for putting up with this incredibly long blog post I’ll almost definitely see you soon!

Adios amigos,

                      𝓗𝓸𝓵𝓵𝔂