On July 1. 1867, seven colonies came together to make what is now known as Canada. For our project, we had to use our understanding of nationalism and use it to learn about how Canada was created. To better understand how all of the colonies joined together, we were put into seven different groups. Each group was a colony and we had to put up our demands for joining confederation.
In our colonies, we had to work with a group to create a Campaign video for our certain colony. In the campaign video, we had to create our proposals and use them in our confederation commercial. To create this commercial, we had to follow the driving question which is “How and why did Canada develop into a Nation?” We had to complete a series of milestones to get to the final product. I was in a group with Matthew, Felix, and Brenton. We worked together as the colony PEI to show off our demands in hopes for them too all be heard. In the end, you’ll find out if we joined the confederation or not. Here’s how the project went!
Our first step in creating our commercial about confederation was to learn what exactly confederation is. We had to read up on the factors that led to the actual confederation. From doing this activity, I gained a basic understanding of how colonization came to be. It started in 1850 with the seven colonies in British North America. They all operated individually until the railway construction. From there the colonies imported and exported their crops and products between each other. This was the start of colonization
Reading this was a great way to help gain a better understanding of how to support certain facts and statements with evidence. Later on, this helped me better understand how I could organize my ideas to create a great commercial with my group.
Along with this, I also improved my writing skills. I made sure that the paragraphs I wrote were easy to read and understand by anyone. This was useful because in the future we had to write our screenplay for our confederation commercial. With the knowledge that I’d gained, I was able to better write a script that my peers, group, and the teacher would understand well.
Our group’s next step to completing our commercial was to decide our preliminary proposals. These are six proposals that we needed to include in our confederation video. I thought that one of the proposals should be that PEI needs a bigger port. I thought that this would help with import and export, with trade between Europe and Canada, and would boost the economy. The rest of my group members came out with simple ideas like we would like control of the anthem. We also came out with more radical demands such as to prohibit gun control. In the end, we were able to come to a consensus and chose all of our six proposals.
The preliminary proposals helped a lot with getting all of our ideas out. Some of the ideas we had that I didn’t list were insane. Some of them weren’t historically plausible and others were arguable plausible but in the end, we were able to organize all of our ideas down. Organizing the ideas and having the reasons for each idea helped us out when it came to putting the story together.
Below is a keynote presentation with our demands. Some of them were slightly changed in our confederation commercial but most of them stayed the same.
With all of the work we had done, it was time for us to create our final video. We had finished our screenplay and was ready to start recording. There were a lot of problems that we faced in the final day before the video was due. Most of these problems were technical issues but some were also time and planning. From all of these mistakes, I learned a big lesson which was not to dump all the work on yourself. I kept saying that I would do all of the work even though I had my group members there to help me. I should have used that to my advantage instead of pushing them away.
Besides all of the mistakes, we were able to create a great final product. We used the application “Imovie” to create our videos. Thanks to the new green screen feature in IMovie, we were able to take green screen clips and change the green to whatever photo we’d wanted. Anyways, these were our proposals if we were PEI, enjoy!
In the end, we got to decide if we wanted to join the confederation. PEI decided not to just because we felt like some of our main ideas were looked over. One big proposal that was made was that we would now get parliamentary representation not based on size. Nonetheless, PEI decided that we didn’t want to join the confederation and looked for other opportunities.
I took out a lot of great learning experiences from this project. I learned that staying organized will very much benefit you in the future. Our group was so organized with the preliminary proposals that for most of the other assignments, all we had to do was copy and slightly edit our proposals from before. Another lesson I learned was to never over complicate things. I was trying to use all of these different tools when that just made everything more complex for our group. In the end, I realized that sticking to something simple works better in terms of things like timing. The final thing I learned was to not take control of all the work. I had a lot of work already and I kept taking more on. This made it so some of the work was more rushed and not as neat. I should have used the help of my group members to my advantage.
I’m glad that I went through this project and was able to reflect on all of the mistakes. I’m now going to take these lessons and incorporate them into future group projects. That way, I can learn to force them into a daily habit to improve as a learner.
