I’m back with the second half of this post. We left off on the second draft of our final machine and video and since then we’ve revised our machines two more times with videos along with a large paragraph. We had to do this all in the span of one week which means creating one machine and it’s video in the same day. Leaving two days for the paragraph. With one extra day for the finishing touches. If none of this is making sense to you, you probably haven’t read my previous blog post on the first half of this project. You can get that HERE. 

In this blog post you’ll read on the machine builds, paragraph, competencies, what I learned from this project and reflection. First to the third machine build we left off on.

After we learned about the American Revolution, it was onto the French. Like the American, we had to take notes on what happened, but mainly the cause and consequence as this would come in handy later. Our third machine would be based on the French Revolution and as such, we would have to transform our metaphors to fit our new learnings. For this video we decided to focus more on the story side of things, incorporating our machine to support it. We used the app Puppetpals to depict our characters, their lines and their story. You can get the app on the App Store HERE. Fortunately this worked out well and it I think it showed the French Revolution pretty well. I learned a lot from this build, mostly on how to make the beginning, middle and end of the story obvious to the audience and to utilize the resources I had. 

You can watch the third draft here:

Once we had completed our third draft, we moved to milestone three. A paragraph on the cause and consequence (C&C) of the French Revolution. Luckily we already had this in our notes along with a photo of the white board linking all the events to the C&C. We all wrote our paragraphs leading back to the points our teacher taught us about a great paragraph including the topic sentence, spelling, point, evidence/explanation, structure and a conclusion. She read over a couple of our submissions when she realized we had to revise ours. So we reviewed the points mentioned and we revised them. Throughout milestone three I learned how to make a great paragraph, the C&C of the French Revolution and how to write notes I can come back too and remember what our teacher was explaining.

Unfortunately we were so bad in our paragraphs were so terriblé that we skipped the essay in milestone four and so we moved straight to milestone five, the final video. We had to create a character and tie in Crane Brintons theory, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, historical significance and C&C. Somehow we pulled this all together and got the video done. I mainly learned how to tie the whole story together while including lots of information; but also learned many video skills. It also helped me reflect on both revolutions and crane brintons theory which in turn furthered my understanding of the concepts.

Here’s our final video:

Now onto the competencies. Designing texts, creative communicator, discussing, listening and speaking, analyzing cause and consequence, and establish historical significance.

First let’s start with designing texts. In other words it means “I can use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create meaningful literary and informational texts for a variety of purposes and audiences. I can reflect, assess, and refine my text to improve clarity and effectiveness for purpose, audience, and message”. I showed my proficiency in this by creating drafts on both my videos and paragraphs, then reflecting on them and receiving feedback and finally developing it to refine the clarity and effectiveness towards the audience.

Creative communicator or that “I can communicate clearly and express myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to my goals” is shown in my video through the tools in the editing effects I used and the setting of my video, to communicate clearly towards my goals which were a great video and a clear story.

Discussing, listening and speaking was shown through my teamwork in my group. We worked together and exchanged ideas to achieve an end product and understanding of the concepts. I contributed my ideas and helped my group members understand my viewpoint while taking theirs into consideration showing my speaking and listening skills.

I achieved analyzing cause and consequence and establishing historical significance through the same means. Using my video and the paragraph. I analyzed and established it through the video, specifically the puppetpals reenactment of the French and American Revolution and showing it there, but also in our own story of the video and analyzing and establishing in the theoretical form.

Overall I learned many things throughout this project. How to take notes, story structure, video creation skills, historical significance, analyzing C&C, how to create a great paragraph, and how to tie a story together. Once I complete this blog post and this project this finally over I will have the experience to continue filmmaking and learning the history of the world in more projects.

See ya in the next post.