We completed the second podcast episode! As you can tell I’m very excited. I put a lot of time and effort in to this. Struggled with overcome lots of challenges. In the end I got a podcast that not only shows everything our teachers wanted to see, but also uncovered a piece of history that I didn’t know about, and very few people know about around the globe. For this podcast we focused on WWII as a class and I of course had to connect mountain biking to it. Let me take you on a journey of the challenges I had to overcome, the discoveries I made and then finally answer the driving question for the project.

Japanese soldiers

At the start of the project is when we learned that WWII would be our topic. I love learning about WWII. The technology, people and decisions made really fascinate me and I think there’s so much to be learned from them. I can tell you though, I never connected mountain biking with WWII. In the begging I couldn’t think of a way to connect these two topics. Mountain Biking was created in the 1970s, well after VE Day and the end of the pacific war. Luckily one of the skills we have been using consistently in ms. Maxwells class is researching. I got on my IPad and started to search, focusing on finding relevant sources that were accurate and a trusted or well known source. I discovered that bicycles had been used all over the second war. I even found a movie made about the use of bicycles in Denmark, called April 9th. There weren’t many sources about the bicycles but that made me feel like a historian. I was discovering something that was almost lost in history. Of course the next step would be more challenging.

Canadian soldiers using bicycles during the second wave of D-day.

I had to find a storyteller for my podcast episode. Somebody who had used bicycles in the war, a historian with knowledge about bicycles, something like that. My skills as a global collaborator would be put to the test. i reached out to countless museums. First around BC and Vancouver, then eventually in Denmark, Germany and the USA. I reached out to websites like the memory project. Talked to the 4th engineering division of Canada. Talked with old family friends who lived in the UK. I never managed to find anyone but I got so many responses from all these people who were trying to lend me a hand. The author of over 20 non fiction books and an expert on WWII history even agreed to be interviewed but unfortunately only after New Year’s Eve which was out of my timeline. So it was to my shock that my next door neighbour, Gary Bourne, said that he might have a story to share. his father served as part of a mobile filed hospital during WWII and he use bicycles to get around the country side. I was thrilled because with this incredible story and all the research I had done I knew I had a great story to tell.

The final thing I had to do was construct my podcast. This meant writing a script, designing music and of course recording it. I also had to make sure I could show ms. maxwell that I could connect myself and my ideas to big world topics. I also had to be able to use my technology effectively. I think personally I had one of the best connections to text for this whole project. In my podcast I connected mountain biking to the bicycles in the war because of many similarities. Like the first mountain bikers in the seventies, the bicycles soldiers in WWII rode on gravel and dirt roads. There bikes were also more over built to survive war time conditions just like MTBs today. I am also getting way better at editing and mixing my podcast episodes. although I still didn’t get my podcast approved the first time around, I had much less revisions to do. I had several cross fades, bed music, intro and outro music. I even used visual EQ to balance the audio on my interview as the mic I was using wasn’t working well.

Overall this was I great project and I am feeling much more comfortable with making podcasts. I fell like a demonstrated many of the competency’s of this project to an extending level. If there’s one thing I still need to work on its handing things in on time and not procrastinating. Your all probably waiting for my answer to the driving question, “How might we use stories to understand the causes and consequences of WWII?”. Me and ms. Maxwell changed this question a bit for me to “How might we use stories to understand the use of bicycles during WWII. I would say that the stories I had to share and the story of Walter Bourne helped me understand the reasons why bicycles were used, where they were uses and what kind of impact they had on the war by connecting me to real events and people. Thanks for reading my blog and I’ll see you guys later.