*In this post I will be covering four main projects from the Sins of the City unit.

1. The podcast
2. Non-Fiction Book Clubs
3. The essay and letter to M.P. Terry Beech
4. An overview of the iTunes U lessons.

For the majority of the first term of PLP Humanities, we’ve been learning about the growth of Vancouver. We focused on topics such as human rights, the change of culture over the years, and the importance of a name and a story. This unit was called: Sins of the City: Social Injustice in Vancouver, and it was one of the most interesting, action-packed, and difficult units I have ever experienced. I would say this is because throughout the whole unit we were introduced to many new concepts and ways to learn; the importance of a story, how to tell an informational meaningful story through a podcast, how to develop a proper essay from start to finish, how to make behind the scenes films, how to interview, the list goes on…

At the start of the unit, the whole class went on a field trip down to the Museum of Vancouver located near Granville Island. At the museum, we were asked to find topics about Vancouver that were meaningful and were interesting to us. The place was huge, and there was a lot of different topic throughout the whole museum, so we really had to concentrate on our task. By the end of our trip, we had to have chosen our top three topics that we would base our podcasts and final essays on. I chose City Development, Immigration, and Labour Rights, mostly because I found them all to be really interesting. When we came back from the museum and after we pitched our topic preferences we were put into groups with other people who had the same interests. I was together with Lucas and Alex; we focused on City Development. This was the project brief: In this project, you will be creating an entertaining and informative podcast in a group. Your podcast will include conversations, interviews, and research about a topic that interests you.

Each of us had our own ideas on what story we wanted to tell in our podcast, but we all had to do a lot of research before we finalized our topic.

This was the driving question for the project: Through the emergence and growth of Vancouver, was the experience for everyone?

Alex, Lucas, and I decided that we would be focusing on essentially what the plans were for the city, how the government did and didn’t accomplish the plans, and the impact the changes have had on the city. We started thinking about the goals and ideals of the city, and we found out an interesting new development idea, Passive House. We moved onto writing the script with Passive Housing being one of our main focuses.

After writing the script and going back for countless revisions, we moved onto recording the podcast. The recording was probably one of the most difficult parts of the podcast, mostly because of how hard it was to get together to record because of other commitments. We recorded in a storage room in our school, Lucas’s house, Alex’s house and pretty much any other weird convenient, quiet room we could find. The recording also took a long time. Each audio clip had to be perfect, meaning no background noises, no stuttering, and other reading mistakes, and we had to have a happy, interested tone of voice throughout the whole podcast. This was hard for me because I was sick with a cold for the majority of the project, my voice was quite grumbly. Then, we had to schedule an interview with a city development planner for Vancouver and Alex met up with him.

After recording the audio, we edited the podcast together with the music. This took a long time as well; we had to edit out all the “ums” and other mistakes from the audio. This was our first draft of the podcast:

Once we handed it in we received a lot of feedback:

Basically, all we had to do was change big parts of the script and re-record everything! This also took a very long time. Alex, Lucas, and I had to change the way we were going about recording, in the first draft it sounded too much like we were reading off a script (which we were). For our next draft, we added more expression to our tone and changed the script so it sounded more like a conversation.

This was the final draft of the podcast:

In the end, I think that the podcast turned out very well. I learned a lot about Vancouver, the goals of the city, and it’s future plans. Teamwork was a dominant factor that was necessary for our success throughout the unit. I have learned how to prioritize my work better, how to take on tasks for my group, and I learned how to be a better team member.

It took a lot of late night work to meet our deadlines, and I think this is because we had trouble with time management and prioritizing.  Drawing a detailed plan on a calendar would help us avoid this in the future.

Each group had to make a behind the scenes video of the creation of the podcast, this is mine:

Throughout the whole unit, my group and I have been doing a novel study on the book called International Bank of Bob. We did 4 reading reflections on the different sections of the book that challenged us to think about the meaning of the story. This book was interesting to read, as it talks about a lot of real serious life topics. The book is about a company called Kiva which gives $25 to persons with a growing business in a developing country. Bob (the protagonist and author) travels the world in search of candidates for the Kiva program, and to find out their stories.  Those stories of who got the micro loans in the book were touching and interesting but they were interrupted too much by Bob’s personal stories. In the end, though, I did learn a lot about Kiva and companies like it and how they can save so many people’s lives by small loans of 25$.

This is an example of one of my reading reflections:

After finishing our podcasts we moved on to writing the essay. This essay would be turned into a letter being sent to the MP Terry Beech that voiced a concern or a change that needs to be made in Metro Vancouver. We had to write about why this issue was important and what Mr. Beech can do about it. The class had 2 working blocks to write the essay with the help of an essay guide we had made earlier that week. Once the essays were finished my group and I merged our essays together and made a letter to Terry Beech. We have just sent it to him and are still waiting for a response. 

EDIT: We have just received a response! Terry Beech’s assistant answered back to us and told us how they think the Passive House plan is an important technological advancement! They are working now to implement the plan into all new buildings.

This unit has been action-packed. I have learned so much about Vancouver, development within the city, society, and culture. I now feel like I know a lot more about Vancouver and the places I always hang out at.

Thanks for reading.

Pictures:

https://www.tourismvancouver.com/

http://www.markendc.com/kelowna-passive-house.html

http://www.ach.edu/2017/07/making-the-most-of-your-interview/