For the first main topic in PLP humanities this year we’ve been focusing on World War One, and it’s impact on Canada’s identity. At the start of this unit we learned about how World War One started and the many different reasons that lead up to the war. We had to create a blogpost explaining how we personally thought the War started, we had to create a visual to go along with this that would add more to the post. We got into quite small groups and my group decided to make a comic explaining the arms race and how it started off the war, after making a little visual the teachers decided that we needed to include more. We were to get into groups again no bigger than 3-4 and create another visual, we had more time to spend on it this time and we could have literally done anything as long as it was historically accurate and showed our understanding of the unit. I got into a group including Kyle, Michael and I, we had an idea to make a historically accurate video about the “Arms Race”. We wanted to also make it comedic as it would be more fun to watch but also have valuable information about the arms race and how it lead up to World War One. Below is our video about the arms race and our comic sketch about the arms race.

The next “assignment” type thing we had in this unit was about the graphic novel called “Shattered Grounds”. The main idea of shattered grounds is that you follow the story of a soldier and witness him and other soldiers fight through World War One. The graphic novel is very interesting and full of little secrets to find such as Dog Tags and real images taken in World War One. Each day we read more of the book we would answer questions looking back on what we had just read. We would have to choose our favourite image from the section of reading and make a question for the class about the book. I really liked how we read a graphic novel as it was a nice change from a normal book an The added images in the book were very interesting.

We then started the main project of this unit, the “Soldier Podcast”. We had to create a podcast showing the life of a certain soldier we picked and had to explain how the overall life experiences of these soldier and how they impacted Canada and relate it to how Canada became a nation. First we were sent to a website that showed almost all the soldiers who went through World War One and who died during the war. We had to chose a Canadian soldier and there would have to enough information on this soldier to make a strong podcast out of. I started looking for a soldier with enough information but I wanted his story to be interesting. It was quiet hard to find a soldier as a lot of the ones I looked through didn’t have near as enough information as I was looking for. I would say at least half of this project was spent reasearching and planning the script for the podcasts as if the script is bad your overall podcast will be bad. As this being my first major podcast it was quite hated to write the script as I was more used to writing scripts when there is a visual on the screen. When writing a script for a podcast you have the make it flow very nicely and make it very descriptive so the listener doesn’t get bored. We did get critique on our podcast scripts. After looking at the feedback I started taking the critique into mind and started revising my script so that it was as close to perfect before I started recording. I added more facts about the battles that my soldier James Hogg Baillie has been through, I also added more facts about the time period which in he served in and made the script more descriptive and interesting. After making these revisions I started recording my first draft, it was quite hard as I was feeling very sick at this time. I composed all of my music on garage band and added all of the sound effects in from YouTube, after finishing this draft I got peer critique so I could make my next draft better.

The feedback I received was quite good, I did have to add more expression in my voice and at some points my audio went loud and then quiet. I had to make my sound more consistent and also add a better outro as my first one was quite week. The class was then taught about the importance of the intro of a podcast, at the beginning of all our podcasts it didn’t really interest anyone and we would need to change that so it would grip the listener and keep them listening and grip them right away. The final step would be to add that new intro into our final draft of our podcast and make the transition nice and flow nicely into the rest of the podcast. I added some battle noises into the intro and made the music very dramatic so that it would grip the listener.

This project was very fun and engaging, for me personally it was a bit of a challenge as I am more used to making content with a appealing visual but this was a nice change. We were given lots of time for this podcast and researching about a soldiers life was very interesting. James Hogg Baillie was one of thousands of soldiers to serve in the war and I’m so glad I got to honour him in this podcast, none of these soldiers will be forgotten they made Canada what it is today.