Hello world!

I’m back to continue my tale of the project “Storming the Barricades. This is part two so if you would like to check out the first part, click here.

Our Next Milestones and tasks:

If you have read the past part, you would know that my group (Julien, Nate, Simon and me) has already completed 2 mods of our machine and video while studying the significance of the American Revolution. This week, we began milestone three and in it, we studied the causes and consequences of the French Revolution. We then made edits to our machine again while making a new video based on our new knowledge of the French Revolution. After we finished that, we were going to start milestone four which was to write an essay about how Revolutions transforms societies; however, we did not have enough time or Mrs. Willems approval to do it. We ended up skipping milestone four and immediately starting milestone five. Milestone five required us to combine all our knowledge from the past milestones to create a draft of the final video. Here is the draft:

We had to critique this draft so we would be ready to begin the final video for milestone six and the end of our project. Here are the things we thought we could improve on:

1) Our audio at times don’t match the movements of the puppets.

2) There are people who are not in our group that are in our video.

3) It was not very entertaining nor captivating.

4) Hello Mrs. Willems.

5) We did not follow our storyboard very faithfully and ended up improving quite a bit.

Based on our critique, we planned, filmed and edited our final video. Here is the video if you would like to see it:

On the first part of this “Storming the Barricades” blog post duo, I mentioned what I think we could have done to improve the second draft. Here are the things:

1. Labelled the video so the viewer knew exactly which part we were talking about in the voice over.
2. We could have better decorated our machine. For example, we did not have any of the actual ramps or board decorated.
3. Although the video was much better, Julien ended up doing most of it. We should find a way to balance out the editing so we can all contribute ideas rather than it being one person’s work.
4. The big marbles were not coloured so the effect of having them associated with a regime did not work.
5. The war scene would consistently be flipped outside down and it was too discreet.

I believe that apart from the second critique, we have achieved all these things along with our critique from the first draft. The videos through this project have definitely developed over each mod and through this process, we were able to produce a gold standard video that lived up to our expectations.

My Overall Reflection of this Project:

In this project, we have modded our machine 4 times, created 5 different videos and learnt things about societies and revolutions. Here are the competencies and how I believe through my contributions in this project, I have achieved them:

1) Have I used writing and design processes to plan, develop, create, and refine engaging and meaningful texts considering purpose, audience, and message? 

– I have achieved this competency by using the knowledge from the paragraphs I wrote about the revolutions to help build the script along with the storyboard for our video.

2) How might I use technology to create and communicate?

– I have achieved this competency from my contributions in using puppet pals and combining it with Julien’s editing in Luma fusion to create funny and informative scenes.

3) Have I respectfully exchanged diverse ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking using appropriate speaking and listening skills for the context and purpose?

– I have achieved this competency by combining my ideas for machine mechanisms like the elevator or the weighted see saw with my groups knowledge and their machine ideas.

Well that is it for the Storming the Barricades project.

Bye world.