Witnesses to history

 

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It’s no secret when I say that the great nations of the world have not seen a pandemic like this in many years. The infamous virus called covid 19, or Coronavirus, has spanned the globe and every nation has been affected. Even if the worst is past, we are still asked by the government to stay six feet away from a person who is not a member of your household. This is called physical distancing. Now, at this point, you might be thinking I’ve lost track about what I’m talking about. No. Physical distancing has prevented us from coming into face to face contact with our friends and colleagues. In most cases, our ties to the community have been partially severed if not completely. This brings me to my project. For my maker class, I had to make a photo essay about how a specific community has been affected.

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Here are some key terms that will be helpful for this blog post.

 

 

To elaborate on this project, I had to choose a community of which I was part of,  create a photo essay and story about what is happening to that community in these times. After we shot the photos, we had to use the app book creator to create our photo essay.


Now, let’s go over my milestones that helped me along the way. I had 5 milestones through my project, and I did struggle with a few of them, but the main ones that helped me are milestones 1-3.

For my milestone 1 I had 2 tasks. Task N°1: a themed photo walk. For my themed photo walk, I left off a Dorothy Linas elementary school, walked down to St. Pius X school, through parkgate to the exercise park near Mt Seymour United Church, Up to the Northland’s golf course and back down to parkgate. This was at the beginning of the epidemic when everybody was taking these precautions. My theme for that photo walk was physical changes in the community. I took pictures of barriers blocking off bike trails, caution tape strung around playgrounds and trees in bloom. Task N°2: add questions to the NTK document. I will admit, that I didn’t do this during milestone 1. Rather, I did it during a later milestone when our teachers were asking us to add more things to the NTK document. The competency: Be an empowered learner. Definition: how might I use technology to learn more? My answer. Using technology is an easy way to learn more, and one of those ways is asking questions. A prime example of this is the NTK document, which is all about asking questions to our teachers. Technology can also help you focus. When I was on my photo walk, I had to focus on what send the desired messages over, and I saw things I wouldn’t normally have seen. Instead of focusing on the emptiness of certain places, I tried focusing just as much on filled or blocked off spaces. On m photo walk, I used technology to learn not only how to take a decent string of pictures, I learnt how to convey messages through them.
For my milestone 2, I had a single task. “Step 1. Brainstorm a list of people you could contact (online) for an interview. Step 2. Contact the people and get commitments for a time for the interview and that they will consent to being recorded and a photo of themselves being used. When you contact the people, make sure you explain why you are contacting them (for a school project) and what types of questions you will be asking. Step 3. Make a good list of questions to ask in your interview. Step 4. Conduct the interview. Make sure you record it – at least on audio – so you can focus on asking good follow-up questions and not having to make notes. Remember to carefully record the person's name and get a photo of them for your essay. (They can always email you one!) Step 5. After you have completed the interview, brainstorm a list of 4-5 themes that your photoessay might focus on. What did the community member make you think of? Step 6. Hand in the audio recording (or video) to Showbie with your list of brainstorming and the name of the person you interviewed.” These are directly from basecamp. In my opinion, this milestone was an example, a way to get the ideas flowing. It was also there so that we could connect with other members of the community and learn their perspective and situation involving the epidemic. My competency: Be an active digital citizen. Description: how might I use technology to connect with the world. Well, if it weren’t for technology I would have had this chance to connect and delve deeper into other people’s situation. Technology allowed me to inform myself on the virus and the situation, thus being able to connect and conduct a better interview.
For milestone 3, I had a single task. I had to create a frost draft of a story which had to include a community and how to was directly affected by the pandemic. We also had to incorporate how we’d answer the driving question through our story. Competency: being an empowered learner. Definition: how could I use technology to learn more? Well, I can use technology to plot out a storyboard which teaches me that this is how my community reacts, even if I didn’t see it at first.

 

Here is my themed photo walk.

 

 

 

 

An answer to the driving question: how might we as photojournalists tell stories of our communities in this time of physical distancing?

 

Well, by analyzing your community and what’s happening in it right now, format that as a story by using the past as the once upon a time part, taking thematically appropriate and well shot pictures, editing them to give the desired feel (ex darker = sadder, lighter = happier) and formatting them on an easily reach platform where other people cane hear your story.

Here is my photo essay!