For the past while in humanities we have been learning more about Canadian history. The main thing we focused on was were the things Louis Riel did and what happened around that time in Canadian history. The main concept we focused on was power and people who have power. The driving question was: How does power alter relationships between individuals and societies?
During this unit we also had a novel study, the book was: Louis Riel a comic strip bibliography by: Chester Brown. The book covered pretty much his whole life from when he first started to fight for the Métis rights to his death. To give you an idea over what happens in the book here are my summaries from all four parts:
In class we also learned more about Louis Riel and about some of the main events that happened in the story. Things like; if it wasn’t for him the CPR might not have been finished or about the Red River Rebellion or how he may or may not have been insane.
We also talked about how Louis Riel is very controversial in whether he was good or bad. In one of our classes we had a debate over whether he was a good guy or a bad guy. Some of the main points that the good side made were: he was doing what he did for the Métis, that the Canadian government started it, and that all the doctors said he was sane. Some of the main points for the bad side were: that he murdered Thomas Scott, that he was insane, and that he was obsessed with his power.
The other big thing we talked about was power. We looked at how people rise to power, some of the most common ways people rise to power are they are born into it which sometimes do not go well because they are not ready. Another way is they start doing something and people start to follow their lead. They could also gain power out of respect and their leadership. Once a person has power they will usually have influence over a certain group of people and they will use that influence to do what they want.
The main project for this unit was our animations. For this we first selected our person. This person had to be a powerful and significant in Canadian history and from before confederation. I chose Lord Selkirk. To create our animation we first had to research what made that person powerful and what they did with that power.
Here is my research:
Then we had to create a story board:
Then an initial script:
Then we had to do the actual animation which took quite a while, I used FlipaClip. When the animation was done I did the voice over and put it all together in IMovie.
This is the final product:
In reflection I think this project was really cool and fun. I thought the animation was an interesting way to show what we learned. One of the things that I would probably do differently though would be to put some more frames into some of the parts of the animation to make those parts a little longer.