🚘 Driving Question:

The driving question for this project was: What were the Consequences of Colonization? This driving question may seem easy to answer for some people, and I thought it was easy too. But it is such a broad question, and there are so many consequences that it was hard to come up with an answer. This blog post is about how I came to understand the driving question! Stay tuned!

Using Craft

To start off this project, we learned how to use a note taking app called craft.

This is what it looks like. Craft is now my favourite app for note taking because it is very easy to use. You can use colours, add photos, create folders, and much more. There is even an AI assistant. We started out with reading documents and then taking notes on diseases, traditional homes, New France, and many other things in the topic of colonization. Craft helped me keep track of all my documents and keep it all in one place.

Keynote

As the final product for this project, we were assigned to create a keynote presentation (10-15 slides). We were in groups or three. My group was Ella, Emilia, and I. We were allowed to choose 2 or 3 main topics for our keynote. The two topics that we chose were Indigenous resources, and Indigenous architecture.

The hard part about creating the keynote was that we had to have links for every picture and site that we used. Our group had a shared craft research document where we put all of our sources. Once we picked a theme it was much quicker to lay everything out. Once the keynote was finished, we had to (here is the scary part) present to the grade 11 BC First Peoples class. Here is the final keynote!

At the end of our presentation we had a Kahoot Quiz to make sure they were listening 😜.

Two Focuses

Indigenous Architecture: We researched types of architecture and homes 🏠 that the Indigenous people lived in at the time of New France. We mentioned the Haudenosaunee group, and the Algonquin peoples. But, the main thing that we talked about was how it affects them even today. That is something very important to recognize

Indigenous Resources: Our second focus was resources 🦫 , how they gathered them, and how their resources are affected still to this day. We talked about plants, salmon, and most importantly at the time, beavers!

Struggles

Some of the struggles that our group came across was design, sources, and lots of little things like speaking loud enough and making eye contact.

BUT THEN….

We completed our presentation! 😁 🎉. But it wasn’t over yet. The grade 11’s gave us feedback. One of the most common bits of feedback was to answer the driving question. I began to understand that we could have had a clearer answer. I knew something was coming… and then our teacher told us that we were going to make an individual keynote. At first I thought 💭 “nooooooo”, until I heard that it is only two slides long, with 3 words per slide. That was kind of weird, but I had already had all the information I needed!

Individual Keynote

Like I mentioned, it could only be 2 slides, with 3 words per slide. Here are my two slides:

I felt pretty confident on my little presentation! The limit of words really helped me with not reading off of a Q-card or the slide. I had everything memorized.

Back to the Driving Question

“What were the Consequences of Colonization?”

The consequences go from loss of identity, land, traditional life ways, resources, language, and so much more. It is a very broad answer like I said. There are so many answers. But the main thing that stuck with me was loss of identity. That can refer to language, traditions, etc. In my individual keynote I talked about residential schools, and how they impacted lives of Indigenous people until today. They are still trying to regain all of those things.

Reflection 🌊

This project has actually taught me so much about how much colonization affected(and affects) Indigenous people. On top of that, I also learned a lot about presentation and speaking skills. Overall, I enjoyed this project!

THANK YOU 😁