— Image by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS
The War to End All Wars… A war that managed to trump all other battles in history at the time and permanently change the world as people knew it. WWI has been our focus in school since the beginning of 10th grade and closing in on our third month of school, we have finally finished our journey through WWI and the many aspects of it. In this post, I’ll be summarizing our WWI unit and the work/learning we did, so without further adieu, I’ll just get started!
Identity is going to be an underlying theme for everything that we’ll be doing in humanities this year. Following that theme of identity in WWI, we actually didn’t start with WWI right off the bat. Instead, we learned about the The Laurier Era in pre-war Canada and how Canada was being shaped at the time. Starting in 1896, Laurier was elected as prime minister in Canada. Being the first French-Canadian prime minister for Canada, Laurier wanted to appeal to both the French and English sides of Canada equally. Although he introduced an economic boom for some time, he also contributed to a strong tension between the English and French Canadians.
Following up on the learning we did for the Laurier Era, we were tasked to make a quick Keynote about an assigned topic of the Laurier Era. I was grouped up with Ryan, Mimi, Izzy, and Adam, and we presented our Keynote to the class. Here’s what it looked like…
We then transitioned from Canada before the war to pre-war Europe. We started to focus a lot more on the relationships between countries in Europe and the build-up towards WWI. We learned about the events that were happening in Europe and the effects they had on other countries. We then started to look at various theories of why WWI began, and trust me, there’s a lot of different opinions. In this little segment of WWI, we would be creating two things; the first being a visual mindmap of the events leading up to WWI in Europe…
And the second being a group visual where we showed our own theories on why the war started based on the information we learned…
For a more in-depth view on those visuals, the creative process, and why the war started, check out this post here!
So WWI begins and we know why the countries in Europe joined the war, but why did Canada participate in WWI? It’s not even a European country! Well, in the process of Britain joining WWI, Canada essentially had to follow as it was under the Queen’s rule. The fact that Canada decided to contribute as much as they did for the war is a completely different story. Canada didn’t have to send 620,000 soldiers, they didn’t have to risk as much as they did on the field, and they didn’t have to contribute resources, but they did, and that really sticks out for me. More on the subject of Canadian soldiers and their contributions to the war, what did life in the war look like?
To give us a better idea on what living on the battlefield looked like, we looked at an online comic called Shattered Ground. As it isn’t very easy to access this comic, I’ll give a brief description about it. Shattered Ground follows the story of a group of young Canadian soldiers fighting in WWI and their journey through the war. They slowly become whittled down by the war and the bleak reality of the war begins to shine when they start dying.
Reading this comic was really interesting for me and although it was brief, I feel like I have a whole new perspective on the war now as the mix of visuals from primary sources along with the comic itself gave me a lot of insight on life in the war. To make sure we were telling the truth when we said we learned something from that comic, we also did chapter reports for each chapter which would answer a series of questions specific to each chapter. If you want to check that out, it can be found right here.
After finishing up with the Shattered Ground work, we moved on to a similar topic for WWI. This time, we would be researching a soldier of our choice and making a five to six minute podcast about them. The driving question is how WWI shaped Canada’s identity and how our soldier relates to it. To find our soldiers, we were given a link that showed thousands of Canadian soldiers and some information about each of them. Ideally, the soldier you pick would have enough information to make a five to six minute podcast on.
I was fortunate enough to randomly stumble upon a man named Conn Smythe on the site who I immediately recognized for the Conn Smythe Trophy in the NHL. I quickly searched him up and it turned out the man named after the trophy on the website was THE Conn Smythe! I started doing research and taking notes right away and found a lot of information about his life and his experience in the war.
The whole project started with a script. After all, it’s probably the most important part of any video or podcast. Knowing that, I made sure I was writing with purpose when making my script. When I was finished writing it, I went through two stages of critique; teacher reviews and peer reviews.
Here’s the teacher review
And here’s the peer review by Aiden.
After I redid my script according to the critique, I got started on recording my podcast. Thats where I struggled…
It wasn’t so much that I had difficulties with the technical aspect of making a podcast. I feel like I struggled a lot with tone and trying to have a consistently interesting and fitting tone for the podcast. What I felt would be good tone while I was recording would actually come out sort of flat, so I ended up spending hours on my voice recordings. My first draft for this podcast was based purely on MY understanding of podcasts and what we learned from class. Needless to say, it wasn’t top notch work…
For our second draft, we were told to just redo the first thirty seconds of the podcast. At this point, I started listening to a lot of different podcasts to get more of a sense for what works and doesn’t work in a WWI podcast. Once again, probably not the highest quality of work and I’ll explain why. One of the big things I noticed in my first draft was that my use of tone and background music/effects wasn’t working too well. I ended up coming with a completely new script for my podcast that I thought would work better and I really focused on using lots of expression and fixing the background effects. What I noticed upon presenting it though was that I seemed too cheery and the new background music I was using wasn’t very fitting for the podcast. Either way, you can check it out for yourself right here.
For my last draft, I had a pretty good idea for what I would be doing. I went back to my original script which was concise and to the point. Instead of aiming for a very expressive tone which made me sound cheery, I went for a quieter, more reflective tone, making absolutely sure that my tone wasn’t going flat. I then went back to my original background songs/effects as I thought they fit nicely, but I fixed them up so they wouldn’t distract from the podcast. What I ended up with was a final draft that I felt pretty happy about. Although it didn’t turn out like I pictured it, I still feel that for my first actual podcast, I didn’t do half bad. This is how it turned out…
After finishing our podcast project, we only had a little bit more work to do to finish the unit. The war was coming to an end. The Allies and Powers were exhausted from the years of hardship and gruelling battles. It seemed that the whole world was closing in on Germany and its allies. Land was being lost, surrenders from several countries were occurring, and North America just seemed to keep coming with resources and troops. Finally, on November 11th, 1918, Germany calls for peace. For the first time in a long time, the sun finally seems to be coming up. Guns drop and spirits are lifted. WWI is finally over…
Retributions and repairs alike are being made in the world. The League of Nations rises, and the world is finally at peace, for now…
So what happens next? Well, I’ll tell you. The post-war world is going pretty well for many. Changes and advancements are being made worldwide, the “Golden Twenties” are in full effect and the world seems like it’s going to be changing for the better, or is it? The Interwar Period is only beginning…
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