So. Hi. A lot has changed since the last time I was here. We are kinda sorta living through a global pandemic which was definitely really scary at first, but then I realized……. we are living through history and making it!! When I’m all grown up and have my own kids, they will probably learn about the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic that overrun our little planet we call earth, they will probably ask me questions like, “What was it like?” Or “Was it scary?” And you know what I will say? Listen to my podcast!

Which, of course, brings me to the topic of this blog post today! Over the past month (at home of course) my Humanities 10 class has been working on yet another, podcast focusing on how government and ideologies effects how a country is being run during a pandemic. If you recall my last blog post, ADHD in Colour, a podcast takes a lot of steps and different skills to develop, which is what I will be talking about today! In the podcast that I wrote and researched, I talk about Iceland’s current situation and the research coming out of that country because, here’s a little sneak peek, they had tested over 13% of their population by May 4th! That’s more than any other country in the whole world! And because of this they are able to trace cases across the country and people are actually recovering way faster!

Some other awesome podcasts to check out from my friends are about Finland and the leadership of women, Ukraine vs. Russia, and COVID in America. Ok, this is probably the longest intro in the history of intros so I’m gonna start wrapping this up. First Core Competencies for this project. 1) Create: What literacy skills am I using to write, speak, and represent in the texts I create? 2) Cause + Consequence: Who or what influenced events to occur and what were the consequences of those events? I will reflect on these competencies through out my post but now it is time for the driving question:

How has the world handled the COVID-19 pandemic? What will be the consequences of those actions?

Well we will have to wait and see. Hi there, I am your host Jordyn Eyton, and welcome to Casting a Line to Iceland!

So basically government and politics is confusing, I don’t know if that’s just me but it is. So I’m here to help those of you that find it confusing too! I will be using words in here such as ideology and political system which are both important and complex. I thought I would define them for those of you that need it because I share would if I wasn’t the one writing this post. An ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. For the purpose of this post, an Ideology will be the ideas and values that a government in power has that they impose on the people they reign. Ok, now for a political system. This could be anything from a democracy or republic, to an anarchy or oligarchy. A political system is a system of politics and government. I would say that it is the way a country is run. There ya go! That is Jordyn’s little government lesson for the day!

 

I am no scientist but for those of you who maybe are aliens from another planet or have lived underground for the past 4 months, this is Coronavirus. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses found mostly in animals. In humans, they can cause diseases ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as SARS and MERS. The disease caused by the new coronavirus has been named COVID-19.

 

HIGHLIGHTS OF MY LEARNING

Podcast Listen and Mind-map

I don’t really know if anyone else experiences this but, government and politics makes zip, zero, zilch sense to me and my brain.

Click on the image to listen to the podcast!

It is just so complex and has so many different levels and systems to understand and work through, it is one of the only things that I don’t find interesting, therefore, I didn’t really enjoy learning about it. (Also thank you Ms. Maxwell and Izzy for helping me so much and trying to help me understand!) That was until I listened to this podcast.

This podcast, that I listened to on the Podcast App, is an hour and 9 minutes of explaining different ideologies and, although I didn’t get a chance to listen to the whole thing, it helped me so so much. I was really struggling at the beginning of this unit but after listening to “The Science of Everything – Episode 71: Political Ideologies” podcast, everything became a bit clearer so I created this image or mind-map to represent what I heard.

I think this is a really good representation of the Create Competency. I listened to the information that was being given to me and then interpreted it it my own way and took note of the important points. I wanted to do something a bit different than what I normally do and change up the way I take notes, I usually just create a document and take bullet points but this time, I represented what I listened to differently and more creatively.

Zoom Meetings

Because we are all stuck at home, there is no possible way for my class to see each other in real life, but zoom meetings are the closest thing to it. They are great because we actually get to see each other and talk and we can even do lessons. Being away from school has taught me how important it is and how much I do really love school. It’s so different not just being able to come up to your teacher in class to ask a question but I think we are all slowly getting used to it. We all get to choose super cool virtual backgrounds:

My Virtual Background

That is mine because I miss skiing at Whistler 🙁 And here is a photo of us having a pet parade!

MY ACTUAL PODCAST AND HOW I CREATED IT

Research and Script Writing

These two milestones are probably the most important of all and let me tell you, they take a whole lot of time. Here is my research and script document if you want to check it out!

Click here to see research!

Click here to see Script!

As I was researching and organizing my thoughts in the script writing stage, I learned so much about government and COVID, but I think one of the most important things I learned about was the curricular competency, Cause + Consequence. I began to realize a trend as I wrote, that the government actually does effect the way a country handles huge events such as this one, whether it’s a democracy or republic where the people have power, or a dictatorship where the leader has all the power. I learned that the system of government or the government’s ideologies, is actually the cause for how well a country is doing right now, good or bad. And the country has to deal with the consequences of that governments action, which will also either be good or bad. I explain this more in my podcast so I definitely recommend you listen to it for more information

Recording

Here is me recording my podcast

The recording stage includes everything from recording the actual informational part of your podcast, to interviewing important people. It’s very necessary to get this stage right and I learned that in my last podcast. You want sound confident and conversational but concise, and don’t forget to talk slowly! I think recording is definitely my strongest part of creating a podcast as I speak quite conversationally in general, so I write my script they exact way I will read it so the product is smooth and (mostly) unflawed. Also I would like to thank my wonderful interviewees, Gabby Legault and Billy Riekert for their input.

Music

As I may have mentioned in my last podcast, creating music in GarageBand is not my specialty but I may have actually pulled it off this time!

Music is very important through out your podcast to set the tone right from the beginning, but also to make the podcast more casual. Music and sound effects can also be used for humour and to break your podcast up so it is not just all talking. I set a more upbeat but still serious tone by adding guitar, piano, and violin with a nice bass drum in the background.

The Finished Podcast

Click here to listen!

I am so so proud with how this turned out and I really hope you take the time to listen to it. I learned so much about Iceland, a country I have always wanted to travel to and their system of government and I think you will to.

 

CONCLUSION

It was definitely very difficult to research, write, record, and edit this podcast alone at home but I think it really showed me what I am capable of. It turned out even better than I expected but I guess that is what happens when you put hours and hours into something you are actually interested in. To answer our driving question, “How has the world handled the COVID-19 pandemic? What will be the consequences of those actions?”, I think the world has handled this pandemic in many different ways. If we look more specifically at Iceland, I think they handled it very well! In my opinion after research, this is because they trust a government that gives them freedom of choice. Thousand up on thousands voluntarily went into quarantine, therefore the consequences were for the better. They had zero new cases on April 24 and have already started opening up schools again. I hope that when I am older and when a new generation is born, they will be able to look at podcasts like mine and begin to understand what the situation was like. Alright folks, that’s it for today! I really hope you enjoy my podcast and I will see you next time on… My Dog Ate My Blog!

Jordyn Eyton, signing off.