As our final project of quarter two is coming to an end itβs time to reflect on the learning weβve done. Over the course of four weeks, we created six videos with an essential question for each. However, the driving question for this project, The Case For A Nation was βhow can an understanding of nationalism in the past, help us make sense of today?β After weeks of looking at this question the answer Iβve come up with an answer; an understanding of nationalism in the past can help us make sense of today by recognizing that nationalism created the countries we live in, the things we do on a daily basis, and defines why we are Canadian. We also need to recognize that nationalism can go too far so we need to learn from the past and not repeat it. So itβs time to take a look back and see how I got to the point where I could confidently answer this question.
Nationalism Definition
The new year rolled in and we had a brand new project to go with it, and as you can tell from the driving question, itβs all about nationalism and the impacts it has on today. To kick us off we looked at nationalism all around the world and different understandings of a nation. At this point, I didnβt really know much about nationalism so this was a good starter and helped me in the project later on. Although I now knew a little bit about nationalism, it would be best if there was another view on the word from someone with a different mind than myself so thatβs exactly what we did. For our first milestone of the new year, an interview was arranged with myself and my dad, I came up with some questions that I think he might know the answer to but that I would also benefit from. I found it quite interesting when my dad brought up a current situation in his home country England and how he thinks Brexit ties in with nationalism, he also mentioned sports which was something I could relate to. Throughout the interview I realized that my dad is quite similar to me in the fact that we both hate interviews and questions that are super vague such as, what do you know about nationalism? Even though the interview wasnβt very interesting it did help me understand nationalism a bit more and would help me in the end when it came time to answer the driving question.
The next step in understanding nationalism would be to go deep and research a specific case study and in my case, that was the Italian Unification. We had the choice of investigating five different case studies such as Manifest Destiny, the Crimean War, Indian Nationalism, German Nationalism, but after seeing these options I knew Italy was the one for me. Following the hours of research, it was time to tell the story of how Italy came together showing this in a screenplay. In our project before winter break I was introduced to screenplays and I really didnβt enjoy writing them and felt like they had no purpose, but as the new year came so did a new me and I kept a growth mindset, I put my head down and just let my fingers write. Now that I had my story in text form it was time to take that and make it visual which would ultimately make the finished product much easier to complete. Since our final product was an animatic video I thought that it would be the best idea if I put hours into my storyboard so when it came to animating it would make my life easier. However, this was not the case, I spent about 2 and a half hours on my storyboard and another couple hours in the animation process. After a lot of perseverance, dedication, and many playlists later milestone three was complete and I felt fairly good about it, although if I put another hour into it and added a voiceover I think it wouldβve been a really strong video to start the year with. The three competencies for this week’s video were designing texts, identify continuity and change, and empowered learner, along with these competencies the essential question for this week was βhow significant was nationalism around the world?β I think nationalism in Italy was significant because it brought together a variety of states and united them because of their religion, values, and culture. I showed an understanding of the designing text competency by adding a lot of detail into my storyboard and telling a story in just simple drawings. My addition of continuity and change wasnβt the best and if I did it again I would make sure to make it more clear when the continuity and change were present. For the final competency, I showed that I am an empowered learner by citing all my sources in proper MLA format and adding them into my YouTube description. I think that this was a great introduction to nationalism as well as video skills but when I heard our teacher say this would be the easiest video I knew this was going to be a long project.
The next week arrived and I was working on a poor sleep schedule, I already felt drained out so I knew I needed to get some rest in order to complete this week to the best of my ability. Instead of focusing on the whole world’s nationalism we looked into our own country and concentrated on Confederation in Canada. Surprisingly Iβd never actually learnt about Canadaβs history and how it became the country it is today so I found a lot of the information interesting. If I was going to make this tutorial video great a large amount of research would have to go into it so like always, thatβs how I started. Once I knew my facts and could tell a person with no knowledge whatsoever it was time to move one step forward and start thinking about how I was going to make this video. I would be lying if I said I knew exactly how I was going to tell the story of Confederation in a tutorial video but after some consideration, I chose to create a pizza with each ingredient representing something in Canadaβs Unification. Now that I knew what my final product would look like it was time to do the tedious part and write my script. While writing I had to take the competencies into consideration and once again those were designing texts, identifying continuity and change and empowered learner. I also had to mention the essential question which was βhow did nationalism change British North America in the 1800s?β Throughout the writing process, I found myself going back and forth adding other details and taking some out that didnβt have any importance to my story. By this point, the due date seemed to be coming very quickly and time was running out but I still had to complete a storyboard. I created a pretty rough storyboard but it would do the job and would help me enough in filming my final tutorial video. I finally got to the filming part and this week I recorded my audio before because I learnt the hard way from the previous that it makes it easier. It was a Thursday night when I started filming the hardest part was figuring out how I was going to film a POV of me making my pizza, eventually, the best way I came up with was to attach my phone to a helmet. I knew a looked like an idiot but I was home alone so there was nobody to see me. The whole creation of the pizza went really well and I didnβt expect it, I thought there would be a huge mess after and I would forget a step by everything went to plan. When I took the pizza out of the oven it honestly didnβt look as bad as I was thinking it would, when I was finished filming and started eating my pizza, thatβs when my expectations turned to reality. Although the pizza didnβt taste great my video skills improved and I was more time-efficient in the editing process. Last week my continuity and change didnβt appear very clearly in the video so I learnt from my mistakes and made sure that anyone could understand what stayed the same and what changed. I felt that is video was a step up from my previous video because I added more character into it but if I was to do it again I would go more in-depth about nationalism in both the English and French side of Canada.
We officially made it halfway through our four-week project and this week’s focus was the First Nations, more specifically the MΓ©tis. If Iβm being truthful this was probably my worst week of the project, I was getting a bit tired of creating videos and my perseverance started to deteriorate, it also didnβt help that I found this topic the hardest to comprehend. The essential question for this week wasnβt really about nationalism but instead, it was βwhat ethical judgments were made to justify oppression in Canada?β This question was super blurry to me and I had absolutely no idea how I was going to answer it. We had two choices for this video, the story of the MΓ©tis and Louis Riel or the harder option of the Indian Act, since I had no previous knowledge of First Nations and topics relating to that I decided it would be best if I just stuck with the easier option and tried my best to understand it. Luckily for me, this was an explainer video so it suits my style of learning a bit better. I found that my screenplay was the most important part of this video because it gives me an exact idea of what my video would look like. Once again I recorded my audio first because it helps me in the long run and that was what I came prepared to show in our rough cut that was due a day before the final deadline. However, our teacher realized that we were doing too much and decided to draw the line here. To me this was good and bad, I was relieved that I wasnβt going to have to stay up until 12 am but I also wanted to finish the video so my emotions were all over the place.
The final week came and we had two last videos to create, the first one being a cumulative video that uses evidence from all of our previous videos. After three long weeks of creating videos, I had enough of myself and my own ideas so I decided to do this video with Nate. During the process of creating this video, we had to remember what our audience from our interview talked about and weβd tailor it towards that. It was quite the challenge to connect examples from Nate and Iβs videos to Brexit but eventually, we got there and created this last video. With our driving question from the start in mind, we got creating and got to a finished product in the end. After I had finished editing the video and submitted it I was super glad that my final late-night had passed and I went to sleep with a clear mind and being proud of my work. Although this wasnβt officially the last video in my eyes it was as I knew it was only a reaction video left that I could do with ease.
The time has come where the project was nearing the end and we had a final reaction video to go along with it. To cap off our second quarter the final video was a reaction from my audience from the interview we did at the start. As I learnt from the interview my dad doesnβt show much emotion so I knew this interview would be quite hard to make entertaining, so I tried my best to get him in the mood and he tried his best to give a good reaction. I felt like this was a good way to end our project because who is going to criticize your work more than your parent.
This was quite the project to start the year on, I learnt everything from nationalism, to my dadβs lack of enjoyment for interviews but it was eventful, to say the least. Although itβs sad to see our second quarter pass I am also thankful for being able to participate in it and see my growth in video skills, and understanding of nationalism.
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