Every Object Tells a Story

Posted on by rydero

As you probably know from my other posts, The last term or our year was spent at home. Due to the COVID pandemic schools have been shut down since the end of march. I originally thought that we would have just a much longer summer but that was not the case for long. By the second week after spring break all schools announced that we would be doing online schooling for the remainder of the year. In PLP we do our work on iPads which should make it much easier, although for me it took nearly an entire project to get used to. It was a hard couple of weeks but after many un-productive days I had found a way to succeed.

luckily I had learned how to be productive before our first project was finished. This allowed our second project, Every Object Tells a Story to be a much smoother process. For this project I found myself learning more and really absorbing the knowledge that we were provided. It may have been that I was really intrigued by what we were learning or maybe it was because I was just getting more sleep. For this project we were lead by the driving question: What can artifacts teach us about settlement, peoples, and life in New France?

The competencies in this Every Object tells a story were:

Communicate: How do I share my own ideas when I write, speak, and represent?

For this particular project, the two competencies guided us through each and every milestone we completed. I enjoyed that because I was able to grow my understanding of the two through the entire project. The first milestone for this competency was one of my favourite. Not only was it relevant to the pandemic we are facing today, but it was a great start to the project. This milestone was all about showing evidence how an object has significance to you during the pandemic. It would be something that you would remember the pandemic by. For me the basket ball had been my main source of entertainment and exercise so I decided that the basket ball would be my artifact. I found that I communicate best through video format, as showed in this milestone.  This was the first milestone of the project and I thought that it was my best evidence to show my understanding of the communicate competency.

 

Evidence: How do we evaluate evidence to decide if it is adequate to support a historical conclusion?
In this project our final product used the previous milestone. Since our end result was a book creator book we were asked to create a series of things that we would put in the book. The first thing we need to to do was our story. After days of artifact research and learning about what life was like in New France, we were asked to create a short story  that follows a character  in New France and the artifact that we researched.
Since I like to be descriptive in my writing, I created a creative writing piece that took place in the Fortress of Louisbourg in what we now call Nova Scotia. Francois is a French soldier during the Seven Years War that works the mortar at the fort. The story explained how difficult it was to operate a mortar and how François’s bravery and determination impacted the Seven Years War. Since I had a lot  knowledge behind my story, I found it incredibly difficult to compact it into our three page limit. After I had completed the short story it was time to start the final Book Creator Book. All we had to do after this milestone was compact our research into a paragraph, add the story, and create an all about me page. The design and aesthetics were completely up to us. Although François was not a real person, the story dose follow factual knowledge of what life in New France was like for a soldier like himself. After I had completed my book I realized that I had answered the driving question. The mortar had taught me so much about that time period and what life in New France was like than I would have ever thought.
I enjoyed this project not only because I learned tons, but because I was able to express how I best learn multiple times.  Whether it be my creative writing or making a video or even plotting down quick notes, I thought that I was able thoroughly complete each piece of work. Overall, this project was a great way to end the year and my time in online schooling. Make sure that you comment any thoughts or questions you have on this post.
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