Maker 9

Nationalism Today and way Back when.

liame Humanities 9, Maker 9, PLP

Hello!

Today I will be writing about my latest project in my Humanities and Maker classes. This is the final project of this quarter of the year. Lets go over the project. In this project we would make a new kind of video each week. This project was also my first ever project in PLP with 10 Milestones, each with the common goal of improving video skills, and learning about history and nationalism, The difference between the videos were the styles of them. Nationalism and history was the Humanities portion of the project, in this part we learned about history, mainly Canadian history, and the effect nationalism and history have on today. The Maker portion was all about expanding our video skills. Here was the driving question that we have been working on answering throughout the project: How can a understanding of Nationalism help us understand today?

we started out with an interview. Our task was to interview one of our parents to see what they know about Nationalism. My dad was a History minor in university so he knew a lot about this topic. Here is the video of me interviewing my dad about nationalism:

There were a few more video styles that we had worked on, there was a few common things throughout all of the videos. The first one being that all of the videos past the interview all had to do with continuity and change, nationalism, and historical events. I think I did a pretty good job with these things being incorporated into the videos I made, I think that I was pretty good at identifying the different historical events through the videos. A good example of this was in the Louis Riel documentary style video, where I think I did a good job with explaining all the different things that happened throughout his life. I think I did a good job with identifying nationalism in the video about British North America and the final video that we made which brought all the different videos that we made together, I think that an example of this was explaining the part that nationalism took within British North America. 

The videos were all explainer type videos but with a few variations. One of which being a animatic video, which was our second video that we made. I didn’t completely finish the video, but that is ok because now I know how much time I will need to give myself the next time. On the other hand I think that I did a good job with getting information about the Crimean War for my video. I think that it was really effective to start by reading sources from museums and historians. Then look into the specific events with articles that focus on a certain aspect. Here is the video I made:

The next section of learning in this project was about British North America. In this section we had to make another video. This time the video was a tutorial style video, but not a regular tutorial video, in this tutorial video we had to teach 2 different things. For this, we had to take something that we were already able to teach, and use metaphors from it to explain how the British North America Act happened. For this I chose to teach how to backflip since I have thought multiple people in the past how to do it. I think that in this video I did a really good job at improving on editing. I think it was challenging to only have videos from the past for demonstrations of the backflip. Despite the challenge it helped with knowing how to take any clip and cut it down to show just what you want it to show. something that I really improved on was showing things that stayed the same and changed. I think I improved by telling a story and then pointing out what changed and what stayed the same. I also think I improved on camera work. It really helped me to have a layout of all the different angles I wanted and try all of them out with different scenes to see what worked best. Here is the video that I made:

The next big video that we made was a video about the freedom fighter and founder of Manitoba Louis Riel. For this video we had to make a documentary of his life. I think that this part of the project was the most up and down part. Sometimes it was really hard, and others it was very easy. A good example of this is the research part. It was pretty easy to find reliable sources of information, one of the more challenging parts was understanding some of the information, some of the information was easy to understand and some of it was a little confusing. Something that was hard to do was putting all your information into a screenplay. It was hard to come up with all of the information that you needed to tell the story of his life. But after doing the screenplay it was easy to talk about his life. I think that I improved my vocal parts of the film, it was really helpful to actually follow the screenplay and not just look at it a few times and then simplify it when your in front of the camera. I think another way I showed improvement was with storytelling. I really think I showed a lot of information in a short period of time. The video wasn’t finished because of the change of mind of how we were just going to hand in our rough draft. Here is the video:

Now it is time to move onto the last video that we made. This video was a video that would tell all the stories of the other videos. We had a few options for how we would do the video. The first choice we had to make was wether we were doing this project as an individual or a partnership. I decided to go with the partner option because it motivates me more to finish my parts when I have someone relying on me. The partner that I was with was my friend Dries. The second choice was what kind of video we were going to make, as a team we decided to make an explainer video. I think that this video was overall a pretty easy video. It was really useful to have prior knowledge of everything that you had to incorporate. And the execution of the video was not too bad. I think that it really showed all the video skills that I had learned over this quarter. I think that I improved on few different things. The first one being the way that I wrote a script. Before I would just write cues of what to say, this made it hard to speak in an engaging way and it made it hard to say everything that I wanted in one take. then when I started to write out exactly what to say and enlarge the key words, it made the process take less time. I think another thing that I showed improvement on was the editing. I think that I showed this by making the cuts as clean as possible with as little set movement and body movement. I think that I also did a good job with filming on different days and making them look as similar as possible. Here is the video:

Now I will talk about the final part of the project. For this part we were tasked with showing our last video to the person that we interviewed in the beginning, which was my dad. Overall the video was pretty easy. No need to make any script or anything. It was just setting up a camera and showing them the video that you already made and tell them to show reaction to it. I think the hardest part about the video was doing the editing. It was hard to show all there reactions in the editing, especially because there reactions don’t make any sense without context so I had to keep in some extra parts before his reaction. Here is the video:

Now lets answer the driving question which is: How can a understanding of Nationalism Help us understand today? Here is my answer to this: I believe that a understanding of nationalism can help us build an understanding of today because the past tends to repeat itself and when we see the way it effected us in the past then we can identify Nationalism and understand what effects it has on today.

The Revolutions

liame Humanities 9, Maker 9

Hello!

Today I will be writing a blog post on the latest project that we have finished in class called Storm the Barricades! In this project our driving question was “How do revolutions transform societies?” This project was all about revolutions. We started off the project with learning about Crane Brinton’s theory of the “anatomy of a revolution”. In this part we took notes on how revolutions work and how Crane Brinton compares a revolution to a fever or illness. When we were learning it was easy to remember the different stages because of the way the theory related to things that we learned about last year about diseases. One twist that we had with this project was that we had 4 groups that we would do work with, instead of just one group or by ourselves. Each group was called a direction so there were North, South, East, and West groups. Each of these groups had a different job in the entirety of the project. The main group that made most of the stuff throughout the project was my North group. In this group there were 4 people: me, Raymond, Annie and, Ethan. This group was responsible for doing most of the building for the project. Another really important group was our East group, this group was our video/history/creative skills group. The next group that we had was our South group and this group was responsible for our book that we were reading in class called Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. The final group was our West group which was our writing and critique group.

Now that I have explained the structure of the groups, I will talk about the different parts of this project. In the first big part we had to make a Rube Goldberg machine that would represent the different stages of a revolution following Crane Brinton’s Theory. for this part we had to use metaphors to show the different stages. Here is the video we made of our machine:

The next part of our project was to make modifications to adapt and make metaphors for the machine to represent the American Revolution. The change that we made to our machine was adding a white house at the very end that a marble would role into to represent the final stage of a revolution which is where there is a new leader and everything goes back to near normal. We also made a few changes with how we decorated our machine to represent the American Revolution more, such as how on the bucket there is an American flag and when the ball rolls down the American flag unrolls. We made a video to show off this part of our machine. Here is a video of our American Revolution machine:

After this we had to write a paragraph explaining the historical significance of the American Revolution  the paragraph that I wrote.

In the next segment of our project we adapted our machines to fit the French Revolution. For our modification on this machine we decided to add an extra ramp, and made it so that the bucket falling down would act as a guillotine to cut off the kings head. We also decorated to make it look French with flags and such. Here is the video that we made to show off the machine we built:

Then in the next part of the project we had to make a story with our machine and some other apps, mainly Puppet Pals. The idea of this part was for us to show a few different ways that societies are transformed by revolutions and what it would be like to be a French citizen in the French Revolution. My team and I started to brain storm and we came up with a character named Joseph who lived on a farm. Here is the final video that me and my team made:

Now that I have gone over everything we did in the project, I will answer the driving question “How do revolutions transform societies?” I think that revolutions transform societies in many ways that can be grouped into political, social and economic changes. Politically societies get transformed from a change in power and the structure of the government. A discontent with the ruler at the start of the revolution is usually one of the main causes of the revolution. For the French Revolution the political change was from a country ruled by monarchy and nobles to a republic. The social part of transformation results in people get to choose what happens more, the common people gain more power and control, and the important ideas and ideals of the society are solidified. An example of this from the American Revolution is the birth of a new country with its own identity. Economically, societies get transformed as the expense of items and the value of resources changes. At the end of the French Revolution, price and wage controls were lifted, and trade in the market was restored. Goods made to the market and a degree of prosperity was restored.

Now I will reflect on the core competencies of this project:

Creative Communicator: How might I use technology to create and communicate?

I believe that I demonstrated this competency when I was making a story in Puppet Pals. I think that I communicated my ideas well with this story presentation.

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

I feel that I met this while writing the paragraphs about both the French and American Revolutions. I feel that I showed it well specifically when I provided supporting evidence for my paragraphs.

Discussing, Listening, and Speaking: 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 feel I showed this when I was brainstorming with my peers about what we needed to do next with our machine and making storyboards.

Establishing Historical Significance: How do we make choices about what is worth remembering?

I feel I showed this with my paragraph about the American revolution as I feel that I did a good job showing what it means for an event to be significant.

Analyze Cause and Consequence: Who or what influenced events to occur and what were the consequences of those events?

I feel that I showed this well in my French Revolution paragraph as I feel I did a good job with making sure I explained what caused the events to happen and the consequences.

And that is what we learned about revolutions.

A Horror Remake

liame Maker 9

Hello!

Today I will be reflecting on my most recent project in my maker class. This was probably one of my quickest projects that I have ever done. From start to finish the project was completed in about 3 days with only 4 hours on one day making one horror short film. The horror film that we recreated called “RUN!”. Now I will show the steps of the project and how I completed them.

In the first stage of this project we had to introduce ourselves in a creative way with a video using the Clips app. In my video I chose to introduce myself using one of my favourite sports, golf. Here is my video:

The next thing that we did was analyze the film “RUN!” with the group that we were assigned. My group had 4 other people in it, Simon, Josh, Indira, Ryan. We established our roles in the film, editing and sound. Next, we planned out the different shots of the film and established what the story was. We did this by making a story mountain about the different events in the film. We also had to find a location for shooting the film, and plan out costumes recreate the characters in the film. Here is the story mountain:

 

The next step was to start filming our rough draft. Here is what our rough draft looks like:

For our team’s rough draft of the film, I feel we did a decent job of remaking the film. A few of the things that we needed to change include the location, the smoothness of transitions and the feel of the movie. We also needed to work on things like costumes to get them exact, mainly for the jogger in the video. The reason we needed to change the location was because we couldn’t find a good log to use for the last part when the jogger hides behind the log. We found a completely different location for that part of it. We needed to change the smoothness of the transitions because the actual video looked very choppy and not very natural.

After we were done this we presented it too our class so that our peers could tell us what we could do to change up the movie to make it match the actual film better. We combined our own critique of our work with the feedback from our peers and made a much better film which looked like this:

Now I will reflect on the competency for this project:

Innovative Designer: How might I design a solution to a problem, process, or challenge?

I demonstrated this competency by making a remake of the horror short film “RUN!” as close to the original as I could by making costumes, acting out a character and editing part of the film.