As we’re nearing the end of the quarter semester, that also means our first round of PLP classes are coming to an end, I am very excited to present to you our ten milestone mega project. It’s called Case for a Nation. It’s another video-based project, this time centred around Nationalism.

So what even was this project? Well, we had to create 4 different types of videos to answer essential questions, which were basically subdivisions of the driving question “how can an understanding of nationalism in the past, help us make sense of today?” I will answer that at the end after I’ve proven my learning through competencies and milestones. I will use the milestones that directly helped me answer the driving question while connecting the competencies. After, I will directly talk about the competencies and fully answer the driving question. Hope you enjoy it!

Milestone 1 was an interview of our parents on nationalism. Our task was to ask questions gaining a sense of their knowledge of the topic to further our creation skills on the videos that would come. My mum knew quite a bit about Nationalism and even mentioned a few examples of it in our world today. This helped me understand and answer the driving question as the knowledge I gained from the interview helped me expect what was to come in the project, preparing me for the answer. I showed my designing texts competency through the questions I asked and the full beginning, middle and end of my video. You can see my interview below.

Milestone 2 was one of the most important pieces of the puzzle in this project to answer the driving question. It was the know your story tab for our first real video, the animatic. We had to learn all about historical nationalism, choosing our events. I chose German Nationalism. In creating the know your story tab, I learned all the events in German Nationalism. It was the first time in this project where I gained a further understanding of what nationalism is through examples. Overall, this milestone greatly helped me get a better understanding of what nationalism is, therefore helping me to answer the driving question. This milestone showed my best example of the competency using resources. I dug deep to find my sources and utilized them to create accompanying notes on the topic showing my understanding. Here is my know your story tab.

Milestone 3 was the animatic itself which was what milestone 2 was leading up to. We had to show our understanding of our nationalism topic using the essential question “how significant was nationalism, around the world?” But first, what even is an animatic? An animatic is the last step to creating a film. It’s an animated storyboard. Its main purpose is to communicate to the director exactly how to tell the story. My animatic was on German nationalism, telling the story of Otto Avon Bismarck and how Germany was created. This was my greatest example of showing continuity and change. I communicated the message through a voiceover and used animated visuals to support it. The continuity was how all the German speakers thought of themselves as a nation and promoted nationalism throughout the whole story. My change was how Germany unified and became one country. I believe this was my greatest example of C&C. This helped my understanding of the driving question as I got to put the examples of nationalism into a live, moving video. Clearing up the doubts and ideas I previously had about the answer. You can watch my animatic below.

Milestone 6 was all about nationalism in British North America (BNA). This video would be based on a tutorial and we had to tell the story of the Canadian Confederation through a metaphor. The essential question we had to guide us was “how did nationalism change BNA in the 1800s?” The tutorial metaphor I chose was how to create O’ Canada in garage band. I planned to use different layers and instruments to portray different characters and parts of the story, then use the volume to convey power and emotion. This milestone showcased my proficiency in the empowered learner competency the best. I used different angles and Picture in Picture to tell my story. I used my GarageBand to effectively show the steps of creation and used captions to create easy to follow instructions. This milestone also helped me greatly in my final answer to the driving question. As a second example of Nationalism, I now had different perspectives and different types of nationalism to compare and further my understanding. You can watch my tutorial video below.

Next, I wanna touch on our third video, the oppression video. We did work hard on this but it was left behind to focus more on the final video. We left in on the rough cut. It doesn’t stand out in any competencies nor did it help my final answer to the driving question so that’s all I will say. You can watch it below.

Milestone 9 was our culmination of all our previous videos put together (including the rough cut) to answer the driving question itself. I worked with a partner JOSH LIEBERT, to create it. We decided to use Canadian Confederation, German Nationalism and Nationalism in the red River Rebellion as evidence to our answer. The answer to the driving question is in this video if you want to watch it but I will talk about it more at the end of the post. This milestone was another great example of my designing texts competency. We created a clear beginning middle and end using each different nationalism story to tie the whole idea and answer together with supporting evidence. We answered the driving question by stating our points and using photos to narrow down the idea to a specific example seen today. This helped us answer the driving question as during the creation, it helped us reflect on what we learnt and brought the idea of nationalism together. Furthering our comprehension of the question making it easier to answer. You can watch the cumulative video below.

For milestone 10, we needed to get the reaction of our previous interviewee on the cumulative video, then ask them a couple of questions. My interviewee said it helped them understand nationalism better and said the video was well made. This video shined in the empowered learner competency. I used a Picture in Picture to show what the viewer was seeing and kept the interviewee in frame at all times to get a full view of the reaction. I edited out all the boring bits to keep the viewer engaged and used visuals to enhance the introduction. You can watch my reaction video below.

Now focusing directly on the competencies. We were assessed on four of them. Empowered learner, designing texts, identifying continuity + change, and using resources.

My best example of empowered learner was in milestone 6, the tutorial video. I used simple, easy to follow steps using captioned instructions to further the ease of understanding. I used different angles including a Picture in Picture for the viewers to get multiple ways to see the steps to follow. Another example was the reaction video, I used my editing skills to create an engaging video showing the viewers reaction while using Picture in Picture to show what the viewer was seeing.

Designing texts was shown best in my parent interview and cumulative video. In the parent interview, I asked meaningful questions that reflected the topic at hand. I used captions to communicate to the viewer what was being asked. In the cumulative video, I had a clear beginning middle and end, answering the driving question with supporting evidence.

My nationalism animatic showcased continuity and change the best out of all the milestones. I identified the clear C&C while using animation to get the point across. I showed the C&C relative to the time period to show how quickly things changed and what stayed the same throughout the story. At the end, I clearly stated my answer to this competency.

Using resources was shown best through the know your story tab of German Nationalism. I used diverse sources to gain the information I needed for the final animatic. I created notes accompanying the sources to show my accurate understanding of the events and relevance to the topic.

Finally, my answer to the driving question. Putting together all the previous milestones and videos, I can up with this. “Understanding nationalism in the past can help us make sense of today, by understanding how the nations we know came together and what makes them a nation, it helps people understand who they are and what they stand for. It guides them when making choices. It connects people through their love for a place and people.” What I mean by this is it can influence people’s decisions, and what they stand for. An example of this would be the 2020 US election and Joe Biden’s speech to bring together a divided nation. People chose what they stand for and stuck with it.

Overall, this project helped me with a greater understanding of how nations are created and what makes them a nation. Even what is a nation itself? The end of this project marks the end of the first of two PLP quarters so I will be back in a few months.
See ya.