To end off our unit of World War 1, we have had many assignments and small projects leading up to one big project, the Soldier research project. This project involved making a podcast that answered the question, how did WW1 shape Canada’s identity as a nation? Before I talk more about the podcast, I will talk you through the steps leading up to this point.

Right at the beginning of this unit we had to get a good understanding on what happened and what life was like during the war. One of the first things we did was read a short novel/comic, called shattered ground. It was written by Leif Kaldor. Shattered ground was about a boy named Kevin who found his Grandpa’s diary and pictures from WW1. In the novel/comic I thought the pictures were very detailed and told a lot of the story.

Throughout the story there were primary sources from the war that I found so interesting, because they gave you a better picture of what the war was actually like. One of the primary sources that stood out to me, was the picture of the soldiers playing cards in the trench. The soldiers weren’t  fighting, they were just being people playing cards.

 

Shattered ground really helped me understand more about what the war was like. I also learned about some of the key battles.

To learn about each war, we read a passage and filled in a chart. We read about the Battle of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele , Ypres and the Somme. Our main focus was the battle of Vimy Ridge, because it was the Canadians most significant battle.

Here is the chart with all the battles:

To go into more depth about Vimy Ridge, in class we watched a video about the battle. The video was very helpful because it explained the key events, and also included some primary sources. Primary sources are useful because they give you a better understanding on what the war was like. The video had a lot of information so we had to make notes about what stood out to us.

A fact that stood out to me was, the fact that 60,000 Canadian soldiers were killed during the battle. So many Canadians sacrificed their lives to win. After the war was over 60,000 trees were planted at Vimy Ridge in memory for all the soldiers that died. A specific primary source I remember was when the soldiers were loading and firing the cannons. To be the person loading them must have been terrifying, you could easier get your finger stuck, drop the bomb on your foot, also their ears would have hurt from the noise. The explosions were ginormous. In the video it showed that even today there are indents in the ground from the shells. You can also still see where the trenches were, it’s amazing how they are still (sort of) there.

 

Life on the home front:

Moving along, we read about life on the home front. One of the sections was about changing the roles of the women. Since most of the men were out fighting, the women took on some of the roles of the men. Women worked as bankers, police officers, teachers, accountants, factory workers, and labourers. Some even worked to bring in the harvests from farms. Also during the war the women got the right to vote.

To get into more depth about life of the home front, our teacher split the subject up into five sections, Voice for Peace, Recruitment and Conscription, The war economy, Enemy aliens and government intervention. Each person got assigned a group and had to read the passages of text and create a keynote with 3-5 slides. Sofia, Kyle, Adam and Willa
 were in my group and we were assigned, The war economy. Sofia and I, were in charge of making the keynote and the rest of the group members wrote the script. In our slide we decided to split it up into four slides, before, during and after. I learned that even before the war Canada was already in a recession, and they didn’t have a budget for the war. During the war there was a economic crisis because the war was so expensive. Canada had to use war bond to raise money. After the war it didn’t get much better, the country’s dept reached to 1.6million dollars, and it took them 10 years to recover from the unemployment and dept since they were out of jobs after the war. We presented our keynote to the class and took notes from the other groups.

Here is my groups presentation:

While were doing these activities we were starting to think about a soldier to research from World War 1. For the World War 1 podcast, as I mentioned earlier we had to answer the driving question, How did World War 1 impact Canada’s identity? For the project there were many steps leading to the final product.
Step #1
Using the Government of Canada’s website we were able to find a list of all the soldier that died or lived in the war. I think finding the soldier was one of the hardest parts of the project. It took a lot of time looking through all the names and finding one with a lot of information about them, so I could tell a story in our podcast. For each soldier there was a picture of the form they used to get in the army.

My soldiers forms:

I researched soldiers with my family names but I couldn’t find one, so in the end I used one that I wasn’t related to. However, he had a really interesting story and had a lot of information about him. His name was Elmer McKenzie and he had written diaries while he was in the was. His diary was posted by his son, Paul on CBC news. Elmer fought in the battle of Vimy Ridge. That was another reason I chose him because I believe Vimy Ridge helped shape Canada’s identity, since it was Canada’s most significant battle.

The picture on the left is Elmer McKenzie (the soldier I researched) and his brother Doug McKenzie. The other image is a picture of Elmer, Doug and five other Toronto teens they signed up with. All seven of them were considered the Sunday school boys because they didn’t drink, smoke, or swear. A devistating story that Elmer recorded in his diary was, all of Elmer’s friends were killed because a shell hit the group directly. Elmer, however didn’t get hit because he was informing his soldier about how he saw the Germans planning a counter attack. In my podcast I go into more depth about that devastating story.

 

This picture (the one above) is one of the many pictures of the diaries that were posted on the CBC news. It is really hard to read the writing in the diary, so below someone had translated the writing so you could read it. The diary entries were mostly what he did each day or the big events that occurred.

 

Step #2
After we found our soldier we wanted to research we needed to start writing a script. The script took me a long time because I needed to think how I could make my story interesting, as well as relate my soldier to the driving question, how did World War 1 impact Canada’s identity. In class we talked about what a story structure should look like, they should include a, beginning, climax, falling climax and finally, the end. That is the structure our scripts should follow.

Also, to help write the script we listened to a few podcasts in class. One of my favourites was, ‘Sometimes the rain just doesn’t stop’ by Jay Barnes. The podcast was about the  Hurricane in Florida. It followed the story structure, as well as include the five senses, it made you want to hear more and gave you a picture in your head what it would have been like to be in the hurricane. While we were listening to the podcast we made note on what we liked and didn’t like to help us with our own podcasts.

This is the cover photo for the podcast, Sometimes the rain just doesn’t stop. 

My notes from the podcast:

Another podcast we listened to was, called McDonald’s broke my heart, by Malcolm Gladnell.

The podcast was about McDonald’s french fries and how they betrayed him (Malcom Gladnell). Over the years the french fries had become more unhealthier than the original fries. It was an odd topic, however surprising was very interesting and made me very hungry. I recommend the podcast!

This podcast we listened to follow Dan Harmon’s story structure, and was inspired by Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. There are eight steps for this structure. Many hero movies follow this structure. Here are the eight steps. While we were listening the podcast, we had to take notes on how the Malcom Gladnell’s podcast followed the Hero’s journey.

#3 THE PROJECT

After to listening to many podcasts and talking about story structures, we were ready to write our first draft of the script. Here is my first draft:

As you can proberbly tell, my script was way too long. The time limit for out podcast was around 5-6 minutes. Making the script was very difficult because we had to make it into a interesting story that would make someone actually want to keep listening. In class, we did a peer edit, and they gave us some feedback.

From looking at the feedback there were things that I needed to improve on. For example, I needed to make my story more clear and explain more about the war. I also had to talk more about the driving question, How did WW1 impact Canada’s identity.

Step #4 recording our first draft

Now that I had revised my sctript, it was time to start recording our podcast. To record I borrowed a small microphone to make the sound quality better. To record, I had to find a quiet place so there was no background noises. Not only did we have to record, we needed to add music to set the tone of the podcast. We were told that we weren’t allowed to copy song, so we had to compose our own music, using Garage Band. Here is my first draft of my podcast:

Once we had finished our first drafts, in class we did another peer edit. We were given another chart to fill out for feedback. For mine, I needed to revise and maybe use different music to set the tone. Also voice pacing and the audio. Another aspect the whole class need to work on was, speaking with passion and not sound like we are reading right off a script.

Step #5 The HOOK

Have you ever realized that when you listen to a podcast, you listen from the beginning to the end. The reason for that is because you are interested in the topic and the speaker draws you in right at the beginning. The speakers use a hook, to draw in the listener. The hook can either be a question or just a unique way to start the podcast. After we listened to our peers podcasts, everyone agreed that we all needed to work on our hooks. To help us get some inspiration we did an activity. The activity was to listen to the first 30 seconds of ten podcasts and write what the hook was.

 

While talking about hooks, I needed to decide what type of podcast I wanted to make. For example, an expert interview, round table, non fiction narrative storytelling, solo, multi-host,  fictional storytelling and documentary.
This chart shows all the different options that we could use. The class added some examples of podcasts. In the end I decided to tell a non fiction/ documentary podcast.

Everyone in the class needed to make their first 30 seconds of their podcast. We listened to them all in class. The feedback for me was to make my pauses shorter, and turn up the music.

Step #6 Voices

To practice our speaking skills, the whole class made a podcast. The podcast was about the Halifax explosion on December 6th in 1917. All the sections in the readings were split into nine groups. Although one member of the class was responsible for the intro and another responsible for the editing and adding music. My group was assigned to read about the explosion and tsunami.

For the podcast we just had to read our section out loud and record our voices. Since our section had a lot of paragraphs, each member of the group read one aloud. It was pretty hard to find a quiet place in the school to record. We ended up recording in the back room. After three of us had recorded and we found out that microphone wasn’t plugged in properly, and had to re-record the script. We also decided to change locations because the class next to us were getting too loud. So that we finished faster, the group split up. Me and Isobel went outside and Sam and Ethan went somewhere else. It was a bad idea to go outside because it was raining and you could hear the rain in the audio, however we had no time to re-film. When we listened to the podcast in class you could tell if the group had a good place to film and which groups didn’t. It was also interesting to hear all the different types of voices and different paces.

Here is our class podcast.

Step #7 good copies…

Now that we had done so much leading up to this point, it was time to start recording our good copies of our podcasts. I kept some of my script the same, however the intro was completely different to my very first draft.

This concludes my blog on World War 1. This whole experience has improved my knowledge of the war, skills in podcast making, and writing blogs. I hope you enjoyed reading about my soldier and the World War 1.