Goals

No pressure, no DIAMONDS

megumib

Driving question:

How can I push myself to make meaningful connections in order to become a better version of myself?

Learning intent:

“This year I would like to be an extending level student. I would like to be a student who can advocate for my learning, make positive contributions in class and make connections with the real world. I will do this by communicating with teachers to further my understanding of topics, apply skills I’ve learned to a non-school situation, and be a reliable community member. I would like to take advantage of the zettlecasten much more by using my notes to share unique perspectives on what we are learning.”

Projects:

How does dystopian literature act as social commentary?
Why is horror an effective way to reflect and comment on our society?
What do I need to know to move forward with lifelong learning and active citizenship?
How do we encourage children to support woman’s rights?

 

 

Celebrations

Completing a movie! And acting as one of the main characters in the movie. I had a lot of fun with the death scene.

I was really proud of the work that I put in to utilizing craft. It has really helped me with organizing my thoughts and connecting my research in an organized way. One of the notes that I feel showcases this is the Author Bio of Simon Sinek. Another thing that has helped with organization is having different “spaces” for each of my classes.

Personally I feel as though I have shown the best work in my PGP class because it was already something I was working towards so I felt like I was building on things that I already knew rather than starting a new system.

Skills

Communicating! A personal favourite that I bring up in every Mpol and TPols I’ve done. This one is always a 50/50 where I am great at using in some scenarios and in others I have a lot of work to do. My children’s book is a good example of how I have been working on communicating this year.

Reflecting is a skill I have been perfecting for the last 12 years of my life. It’s a big part of my identity as a learner and gives me the ability to improve myself. This is probably the biggest skill in terms of my personal project.

Time blocking is a skill that I have been focusing on especially this year. I can be very forgetful and lazy is I don’t write something down or dedicate some time for that thing.

Really there are a lot of skills I have been working on but those are the 3 that I stood out to me. All of the skills that I have work together and connect and grow through each other on each project that I do.

Mpol skills diagram

Growth Points

As always I would like to work on asking for help and coming in to tutor time much more. Usually when I go in to tutor time it’s just to work on my own but I think just showing my face there shows initiative and I can ask for help if need be. I personally really liked the goal I set for myself of checking in with the teachers once every project because it helps give me peace of mind knowing that I am on the same page as them.

 

 

TPols 2020

megumib

 

TPols is all about reflecting on your learning, and this year there was a lot of things that didn’t go as planned. One cannot talk about 2020 without mentioning COVID 19. COVID 19 was a big unplanned event that changed the educational world. Online learning was introduced in order to keep social distancing in place. I will tell you right off the bat, I am not suited for online learning. So let’s get started.

Scimatics

Our Metaphor machines unit required me to use my reasoning and analyzing skills in order to make a functioning RubeGoldberg machine. This was one of my more liked project as it required problem solving and very literal visuals that helped show the solution. This was made in a team of 4 composed of Ally, Holly, Anders and I. We were able to combine our ideas to make a functioning RubeGoldberg machine that turns on an electric circuit that we made. This was explained in a video that shows each part of the machine and explained how it worked. I really liked this project because we were able to make a plan and follow through with it. We came together at the beginning to discuss our ideas, then we assigned roles and everyone did their part equally. 

https://youtu.be/JnaeICd7p3c

Humanities 

In Humanities the project that was most memorable was about ethical judgement. This was a partner project that focussed on decision making and in away justice. I found this project really interesting because it honed in on your morals and beliefs. Looking back in history to decide where someone’s judgment may have been clouded and deciding what is just and unjust was a very difficult task to do. I think that i grew the most as a learner in this project because of how it made me question my own morals it also helped that my partner, Matthew, and I disagreed on our topic and had very different opinions. This was one of the projects that i thought was the most memorable because even though my partner and i disagreed, it didn’t make it difficult to work with them and we were able to create visuals that we were proud of because of the different perspectives that we showcased.

Maker

Destination Imagination was the project that transitioned into Covid 19 panic mode. The regionals was held as usual and went fairly well, but provincials was cancelled. So what did we do? PLP held our own tournament. It was an online tournament where we weren’t really competing for awards but it was a good opportunity to use our problem solving skills, our teamwork, and our imagination. DI is always done in a fairly big group so one of the biggest challenges was finding times to meet up. It was hard to accommodate for everyone’s schedule s therefore a lot of meetings that were done wit people missing. Thankfully we did get it done and I thought that the improvements that we made were one of the better decisions we made. Since a lot of our props were at school, and we couldn’t get them, we mainly focussed on revising the script. Looking back, my favourite part was probably the instant challenge. During the challenge, one of our group members, who happened to be the narrator, was kicked out do to bad wifi right before the time was up. I ended up filling in and bluffed my way through. It’s pretty funny to remember looking back but back then i thought that i did horribly. Which makes me realize that i need to improve my attitude big time.

What has COVID made me realize about my learning?

I need to get better at focusing. If how I work depends on my environment it will most likely get harder for me in the future. So adjusting the environment to what I’m doing is what I have been doing so far but I need to get better at adjusting to the environment. COVID 19 have helped me realize that I can spiral pretty quickly. If I miss one due date, I start making excuses and letting more things slip and before I know it, I’m not attending classes. So I need to find a method that will 1. Keep me on top of my work. And if I get something late 2. Keep it at a minimum. How I’m going to do this I’m not sure yet. But I am definitely planning on experimenting on a few things because I have noticed that reminders aren’t working. I need to improve my attitude, both towards the assignments and to the finished result. If i do badly its not the end of the world is really a lesson that i need to learn and continue learning.

What am I going to do about it?

I am planning on continuing to work on my time management skills and find some other strategies to improve them. Time management is something that I have always struggled with and a big part of that if because I don’t see the point of doing the work. If I’m not excited about the assignment the likely hood of me wanting to finish it is low. Even if the concept of the project is something I like, there are usually a lot of steps that you need to take to get to that final concept and a lot of those steps aren’t as interesting to me.

How can my parents and teachers help?

Please continue what you have been doing so far. Occasionally giving reminders would be helpful but I really appreciate everything that you guys do. 

Star Wars + School= Exhibition?

megumib

Imagine that you are in a completely white room. White walls, white floor, and the lights are dim. You are wearing all white too and it is cold. And all around you, is chaos. Stressed teachers, students fighting over the last pieces of clear tape. Everyone hurrying to finish whatever task they had deemed important. This is where I found myself one December 19 2019. Ladies and gentleman, the PLP exhibition has struck again.

As you may have noticed, I am writing in quite a descriptive mood. That is because the main topic for this years exhibition was story telling! I loved it! The project itself is a little complex to describe but I will do my best to break it down for you. First of all, let’s start by saying that this Exhibition was Star Wars themed and that played a big role in making our groups and deciding our planets. Basically we were divided into planet groups based on the planets in the Star Wars universe. The planets were; Tatooine, Endor, Hoth, and Death Star (not really a planet but whatever). I was put into the Hoth group along with my fellow storytellers; Ciara, Julia, Kaden, Felix, Brenton, and Angelo.

I say fellow storytellers because that was our task. To write a story about one of the minor characters on our planet. We decided to chose the Tauntaun that died and ended up saving Luke’s life. We also named him Pudge. Then to make it more complex we put our collective story on a story chart, and assigned each part to a group member. Then, that group member would take their part and write a story. To top it all off we created an object that is symbolistic and connects to our story.

The part I got was right after the climax, where sadly, our charector dies. My story;

For this project we were focussing on our ability to create, and our literary skills. So I will be talking about my literary skills first than what it is I created. In our class we talked a lot about a cycle that all stories go through called the hero’s journey. The cycle goes something like this; Call to adventure, committing to the journey, some tests, allies and enemies, the supreme ordeal, reward and road back, and finally crossing and final life. I found that this was challenging to do because finding the climax of the story and matching things up isn’t always easy. Luckily we had a lot of practice thanks to the short stories that we had read.

After a lot of practice I think that I can analyze stories fairly well. I find that when I am writing I have one of 2 problems; the first is that I can’t think about anything to write and the second more common one is that I have too much to say and can’t narrow things down. I managed to get over this struggle by taking feedback from my group, and incorporating more that fit with the others stories. Since I am not that big of a fan of Star Wars, I relied a lot on my group members to make sure that my story made since.

Now, as much as I love story telling and books, I must say that the create part of this project was incredibly fun. As I explained briefly before, I made an object that helped represent my story. That object could be anything; physical or digital, as long as it connected to the story in some way. The object that I ended up making was a paper mâché heart. In the beginning I was planning on making the heart as realistic as possible but I soon realized how inconvenient that would be. My main charector is a fictional animal so the closest example that I could come use would be a cross between a horse and a lizard. So, in the end I decided to make a more symbolistic representation of a heart so that it would be easier for the audience to understand what they were seeing and I could put more time and detail into the heart itself. That was part of the reason why I made a paper mâché was so that you could see the past of the Tauntaun through a filter.

Throughout this project we were documenting our learning using an app called Explain Everything. This app allows me to make annotations on pictures and add videos. It is great for animating and explaining things which is why I used it. Check out my video below.

In the end after talking with the audience I decided that our group did a good job of making an interactive experience that elevated our stories. I had a lot of fun with this project and I am looking forward to the next. Check out some pictures from the exhibition below.

Chemistry

megumib

Hi guy! Today I will be talking about what I learned in science. We were learning about atomic bonding and how atoms work. We were given the task to make a animation that explains how atoms work using 2 different examples. One had to be a bond between 2 of the same covenant compound, while the other was a bond between a multitalented metal and a polyatomic compound.

In order to make this animation I used an app called Explain Everything. This was defiantly not my favorite animating tool because I found that it glitched a lot. However, it is really good for explanation videos and I ended up working out.

For this project we were mainly focusing on 4 competencies and I will be going through how I demonstrated each of them.

The first competency is the Big idea. Did I accurately show how atoms bonded and was it animated in a way that the audience could understand? I think that I defiantly did do this because if you watch the video you can learn about atomic bonding and hopefully understand it. I also demonstrated my understanding with the types of words that I was using to describe how binding works while keeping in mind who the audience might be.

The second competency that I demonstrated is communicating. Is it understandable? Like I mentioned before I think that I did a good job in keeping in mind who my audience is while still being able to teach them about the bonding process. You can however easily hear, or not so easily hear, the voiceover. The volume setting was all over the place which made it hard to actually understand what was going on. I think that I could defiantly improve this by checking the audio beforehand and listening to it without headphones on.

The next competency was  processing and analyzing. This was the one that I personally had the most trouble on. The main focus for this competency was about the actual exchange of atoms and how it was shown in the Bohr model. Making sure that all of the electrons were in the right place was a big struggle for me and I had my classmate, Felix helping me a lot. I also made sure to ask my teacher about the Bohr models and went back many many times to revise it. I also had a lot of trouble identifying whether or not, after the bond, if the 2 atoms would share  atoms or not and showing their charge. In the end I did manage to show the sharing and exchange of the atoms rather correctly but I accidentally left out the charge when the stuck together.

Finally the last competency was basically whether or not i am able to use my class time effectively. I definitely think that I am good at this because I don’t really get that distracted and am fairly good at staying on task.

Star Wars!

megumib

Caution; SPOILER ALERT. I will be talking about some of the scenes from the movie; “The Empire Strikes Back” proceed with that in mind.

Star Wars is a sensation. With the up and coming movie, I only deemed it necessary to talk about this franchise. More specifically about one I believe to be the most popular. I am of course talking about “The Empire Strikes Back.” With some of the most iconic scenes and an introduction to one of the most famous characters, this movie is by far an epidemic of ideas. It is like an anchor to the Star Wars universe being that it is a great introduction to those starting out and a great reminder to the super fans. So of course why don’t we dive into this universe by starting strong.

This movie introduces to us the iconic father, son conflict. In the Star Wars universe it is a norm to know about Darth Vader and his contribution to the dark side, being the main “bad guy” in a lot of the movies. However, it is first introduced to us, in “The Empire Strikes Back”, that Darth Vader is actually Luke Skywalker’s father. This brings along the memorable scene when Darth Vader invites Luke to the dark side and tells him about his heritage. Despite what most people say, it is a common misconception that the line said is “Luke, I am your father” when all he actually says is “No, I am your father.” Needless to say, one shouldn’t let that anticipation take away from the scene.
Though the scene itself has quite a bit of action, the dialogue that is said helps elevate the importance of what’s going on, keeping viewers on the edge of their seats. Despite learning of this new connection with Darth Vader, Luke still decides to risk his life falling off the ship than going to the dark side. This internal conflict is clearly shown and represented later on when we see Luke muttering “Why didn’t you tell me?” Over and over once away from the man newly recognized as his father. Luke is saying this to Ben, who became like a father figure to him and was a mentor in learning about the force, the rebels, and the universe in general.

 

haven’t seen it? Check out the trailer below!

Original trailer;

Live Event!

megumib

Hi guys! Today I will be talking all about a live event video that I made! What’s a live event video you ask? Well, it’s basically a video about an event that you went to and you make it seem more like the viewer is there with you. You can see an example of a live event when you go to sports games. They have a big screen in the middle where that shows a video of what’s going on. I basically did that except that it was prerecorded. While working on this video I was trying to use 3 main competencies. These competencies were there to help, guide my learning and made it easier for me to reflect on my work. These competencies are; Empowered learner, Creative Communicator, and Navigating Ideas. So why don’t we use these competencies to take us through what I did?

Empowered learner

I used iMovie to create my live event video and I found that using iMovie which is a tool that we’ve used all term, all year, and still being able to find different ways to use it, was really fun. I found different ways to put videos together to maximize the amount of time I had and still make an amazing video. I learned how to use the split screen which is a new tool that I found while reading one of the books that we were suggested called “ everyone can create.” The reason why I decided to make a live event video on this Japanese school was because I have been attending this school since I was around three years old. After I graduated I decides to come back and volunteer to help the younger kids learn. I do not regret that decision at all. I think that it is a really fun experience and I want to share it because in this school, there is a huge age variety. Most people who attend this school speak both English and Japanese like me, so it’s really interesting to see how all these bilingual people gather in this one place and share a learning experience. I decide that I want to express our experience which is why I decided to make my live video on it.

 

Creative Communicator 

In my video you will notice that I haven’t actually spoken all that much. In fact the only time that I actually spoke was when I was translating what my teacher said in the interview. This is a weird thing for a Live Event video but I decided that I wanted what was on the screen to speak more than what I might have said. I did use live titles which is basically text on the screen so that people wouldn’t be too confuse or lost but I decided that it would be more powerful for my video if it didn’t have me speaking in the background. I would just like to say that translating everything, though it wasn’t as hard as I imagined, getting the timing right and making sure that people could still hear what was being said was a big challenge for me in this video. Making a video that uses more than one language is a challenging in and of itself which I found was made this experience a lot more exciting. Due to the fact that my life event was a school and a place of learning I needed to be on top of communicating with teachers and parents and more teachers and the students, because I needed their permission to film them.  Not only that but if you could see in the video, there was a guest speaker which was part of the reason why I decided to make a video of the Japanese school. I had to be talking with her as well to make sure it was OK to film and share their work.

 

Navigate Ideas

This competency was all about taking creative risks and I think that I definitely did that with this project. They were the three main risk that I took with choosing to film at the school. The first one was definitely the language barrier, being able to translate everything was a challenge. Putting it all in a video and making sure that it was understandable and the grammar was correct was even more of a challenge. I managed to get through thanks to my Japanese speaking mother and English speaking father, and google translate. The second risk that I took was with the filming. The day of filming had to be pushed back because sadly there was a storm and the school had to close due to the fact that a giant tree had fallen down near the entrance of the school. So at that point I had to ask myself whether or not I wanted to continue pursuing this event or if I want to change the event itself. I talked with my teacher and decided that I wanted to continue trying to film the Japanese school as my event. I got an extension for my video so that I could finish it with all the editing and have enough time to finish. The third risk I took was probably with editing the video. I’m taking more risks than what I originally thought that I would. I explored using the iMovie tool a lot more which came with the reward of the split screening and the live titles, which turned out better than what I expected. Live titles were really useful in dividing up the English and Japanese portion of the video so that both came through and both could be understood. I also put a lot of work into transitioning with the song making sure that the audio kept playing while the visuals changed and kind of showed the environment in which these kids were learning. I also used Keynote for my animations which is basically the title slide and the ending slide. Keynote is a tool that I’ve used before and I continuously find is good for making animations and I especially love using them for the title and ending slides.

 

I discovered a lot with doing this project and developed a lot of skills that will defiantly use in the future.

Term 1 Is Over! 😯

megumib

Term 1 is officially coming to a close and though that means that we are closer to the winter holiday, it also means that report cards are coming up. Report cards mean grades and grades, mean reflection. That’s what today is all about. I am here to reflect on all the awesome and not so awesome work that I have done so far. This is really focussed in one thing. Video making! We have made so many videos this year it’s crazy. However, since I have made so many videos, why don’t I make this easier by just talking about what I learned. You know, to save you some grief.

So what have I learned? I have first learned about how to take proper videos. Before even taking the videos I need to know what I want to film. What types of things do I need clips of? Never shoot vertically! This includes how I position the camera, what I am getting in the clip and things like the quality. Can I see what I’m filming? Does it look good? What about the audio quality? Things like that. Then there is of course editing. Do I need all of these clips? Hint; the answer is no. What kind of music is there in the background. I have to make sure that the viewer can see and hear what’s in the video too. And of course publishing it. While I was doing all of this, I was also making sure to  practice the competencies; empowered learner, knowledge constructed, innovative designer, creative communicator, and computational thinker. So, let’s break things down.

Empowered learner;

The first step would have to be planning. A lot of these video we had to make in groups which means that communication is key. The best example of this that I can think of would have to be my revolution videos. This was a 6 week project that we did in order to learn about revolutions and why they happen. This was a group project so we had to make sure that we were communicating with each other and that we all stayed on top of our work in order to not drag everyone else down. I thought that I was really good at finishing my work and helping my team during the project. One thing that I really bad at was editing the videos. I finally managed to figure out that you can crop in iMovie and I thought that I used my iMovie skills way better in the Take Your Kid to Work day video. I will talk more on that later. I thought that my main skill in this project was animations. I found that Keynote and Explain Everything were really helpful and I created most of the animations in our videos. If I were to do this project again, I would want to make sure that my group films 3 or 4 day before the video is due. This way we have more time to edit and retake scenes that we don’t like.

Knowledge Constructer;

Since I mentioned it, why don’t I talk about editing? This was definitely not my best skill but it has gotten better. Well to be honest, I think it was okay in the beginning, then we started to learn about these cool features that we could use and it got worse. After I figured out how to actually use these cool features, it started to get a lot better again. A great example of this is both the ghost town video and the Take Your Kid To Work Day video. In my opinion the TYKTWD (Take Your Kid To Work Day) video is a lot better than the Ghost town video but there are sides. The Ghost Town video, we worked on as a group. I did most of the editing and added the music and such but at this point I had barley used iMovie. So I would like to say that for a beginner this was a fairly good job. And to top it off we had a few comedians in our group that helped to make our video funny which made it way more entertaining.

https://youtu.be/T_1J_gH9Q_Y

Innovative Designer;
The TYKTWD video was done completely individual. So from planning out the kinds of shots that I wanted to take to filming and then to editing, it was defiantly a piece I was proud of. While working on this video I discovered more about how to control the volume, the transitions, cropping video and photos and adding text. The last one, adding text, was the one that I was most proud of figuring out how to do. When I think about it now, it is actually really easy to do but it took me a while to figure out the timing. I also liked this video better because I was using the new animations skills that I had learned in Keynote. I thought that because the intro animation and ending animation used the same kind of transition, it helped keep the whole video together. The one thing that I didn’t like about the video was the fact that I was speaking so fast. I can’t really compare this to the Ghost Town video because it was a silent film but it’s still pretty easy to hear that I’m talking very fast. The main reason for this was because I had a time limit that I was trying to reach. If I didn’t have that I think that it could have sounded better but then the viewer might get bored. I definitely still need to work on my ability to stay focussed on a point and not getting sidetracked.

Computational Thinker and Creative Communicator;
The final video I will mention for today is the Alberta video. I was focussing on artists for this video and had to interview a lot of strangers. This means socializing. Yes, I socialized. This video really made me problem solve and search for effective solutions to problems that I faced. One of these problems was talking to strangers. In order to overcome this I decided to get my friend, Grace(link), to help me interview. This ended up going really well and I got 4 interviews from different perspectives. I found that making this video helped me in understanding the kinds of things that I need to get on video in order to communicate my point clearly. This was shown when I was conducting the interviews. Some of the people I interviewed talked about one thing for so long, which was great, while others I was able to ask 4 questions in under a minute. This made me realize I was probably asking the wrong questions. Through many trials and errors I was able to understand what kinds of prompts I could use in order get a person to say what it is I wanted to express. That was really a key thing that I learned.

Whew, that was a lot of talking! Hope you enjoyed!

 

Week 6! Emoji’s!

megumib

Hi guys, today we are talking about emojis! I made a few math games so feel free to try them out! Write the answer in the comments if you figure it out!

easy:

🌴 + 🙉 = 6

🙉 + 🌴 + 🌴 = 7

🙉 + 🙉 = 10

🌴 = ?

Medium:

🍭 + 🍭 + 🍬 + 🍫 = 28

🍭 + 🍬 = 15

🍬 + 🍫= 18

🍫 = 8

🍭 = ?

Hard:

🚢 + ✈️ + 🚅 + 🗼= 34

✈️ + 🗼= 3

🚅 + ✈️ = 7

✈️ + 🚢 = 26

🚅 + 🚢 = 31

🗼= ?

Next I decided to get a little artsy and create a emoji:

Finally, try to guess the song from looking at the emojis.

Job shadowing!

megumib

Do you want to know how I did that? Hi guys! Today I will be talking about a really exiting event; Take Your Kid To Work Day!!! (Or Job Shadowing for short). This was basically where instead of going to school, I followed my dad around to find out more about his job and the place that he works at. Then if that wasn’t exiting enough, I also was there to make a video to help show what I learned.

What does my father do?

So what is it that my dad actually does? My dad is a operation supervisor for a transit bus company. His job is to talk to the public, receive and respond to complaints and, in some cases, compliments. He then decides whether or not the complaint should be investigated. Sometimes a complaint is about a personal opinion and isn’t something that needs to be pursued. However, there are also complaints that are about situations that should have and could have been dealt with. In this case, depending on the situation, he can take a variety of actions ranging from just warning the driver, to getting the police involved, to firing someone. My dad has worked at this company for over 10 years. Until recently he was a driver and then the person in charge of defending the drivers from getting fired, after that he was promoted to the job that he has now.

Something that really stayed with me is something that my dad mentioned; “a workplace filled with laughter, is a good workplace”. Basically when everyone gets along with everyone else, the workplace becomes a lot better of an environment to work in. While I was there, I went with my dad and 2 other people to do frontline support. This is when supervisors and managers go out to meet with the drivers to make sure that they are doing ok. While we were there, we were also giving out awards. The awards that we gave out were for 5 years in the company, and 10 years in the company. However, there are also many other types of awards such as; perfect attendance, years at the company, safety award, safest driver, and the peak award. While the other awards are self explanatory, the peak awards are for drivers who go above and beyond to do something. I think that these awards are a good idea because they help to keep moral up and it makes the job more interesting. On top of that, it helps to show the community the kind of support that happens in public and within the company.

Speaking about community support, on our way to the company I saw a lot of messages posted on the bus. The messages were displayed where the bus number usually is and it tells us whether or not the bus is still in service. These messages said things like “go team go”, amber alerts and “lest we forget” for Remembrance Day. I thought that this was an interesting idea because it’s somethings small but it shows support and respect and that’s something that I really liked. I also found out that the bus company will lend some busses out during special events. For example, they will be lending busses for Victoria Day. This also really shows the public the kinds of things that the bus company supports an I think that it helps give them a strong image.

Now, if I’m going to talk about the bus company I gotta mention the strike. For those of you who don’t know, the strike is currently for bus drivers asking for hi higher wages, and more breaks. So basically, better working conditions. Up until recently their method of protest was to not wear their uniforms and to not work overtime. However that might not be the case for long. Soon they will have a formal negotiation and if things go badly, there may be an all out refusal to work. This means a lot of things for a lot of people. For the public, this means that they will have to find a different mode of transportation. It will inconveniences a lot of people and will probably lead to a lot more traffic. For people like my dad, this means overtime. A lot of overtime. The busses need to be turned on every few hours for maintenance and if there isn’t people to do that, there will have to be someone who steps in. That would be people like my dad. For people like me, that means that I will be spending less time with my dad. For the drivers, they will get paid even thought they aren’t working, but it will be a much lower amount than what they would get if they actually were working. This means that might not have enough for living expenses. So lots of unhappy people. When something like this happens, it really makes you think about how much you actually rely on it being there. Most people don’t actually think about it but it’s nice to stop for a moment and realize how much you use something.

Finally, I took all of the things that I learned above, and condensed it as much as possible. Then I made it into my video using iMovie and Keynote. For the animations; the introduction and the ending, I used Keynote. Then I took all of the clips and put it into iMovie, editing it a whole bunch. In the end I came up with my final product that I am proud of! I hope that you guys learned something new and enjoyed reading!

Revolutions! Cause why not?

megumib

Welcome back! Today I will be talking about a 6 week long project that I have been working on. In school, we were studying revolutions and in groups, we made 4 videos of our choice. We were doing this project in order to answer the driving question: How do ideas drive change? In the end, I decided that this was due to a persons personal experience. The first 3 videos were about the French, American, and Russian revolutions. We chose what kind of video we wanted to make with our group. I got to work with an amazing group consisting of Asha, Ally, Liam, and I. We got a week to make these videos. The 4th and final video was completely free choice. We got to chose the revolution and the kind of video that we wanted to make. In the end we decided to do the Meiji revolution with a John Green (crash course) style video that included animations.

The 4th video:

So why were learning about revolutions through video making? Well first of all, it’s really fun! Although there were times where, just like in most group projects, there were disagreements, we were able to make the most of it and have fun along the way. From this project I really took away the fact that in all of the revolutions that we were researching, the rich were always belittling the poor. It makes me think about how money can corrupt people with greed. This got me thinking about how these peoples actions can be put to blame for a lot of the events. The main person held responsible is always the one in charge, usually the king. However, you can also debate the fact that, that’s just what they were taught. In the end though, revolutions don’t happen unless there is someone who decides to do something.

The 1st video:

https://youtu.be/5eH-0WCYYds

The first video that we did was kind of like a tester video. We were trying to figure out what we needed to know and express in our video. This means that we were trying to figure out the information that we needed and convey it in a way that all types of audiences could enjoy. Then once we started to figure out what information we needed, we then needed to know what the visuals would be. That was our main goal in our second video. We didn’t get the audio to match with what was on the screen so it looked really weird and didn’t make a lot of since.

The 2nd video:

By the time we started to understand the process of making the actual videos we were able to get a fairly good understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We understood that there were people who were really good at editing, others who were comfortable on screen, and so on. Once we understood this we were able to play to each other’s strengths in order to create our video. This made the 3rd video that we created, my favourite video to create. I was in charge of helping with animations, and I worked on the call sheet and helped with the storyboard. Because these were all things that I liked to do it was a really fun experience. We were able to add comedy and over all I think that the video itself was pretty good. Not to say that it didn’t require improvement, but it defiantly on of our better works.

The 3rd video:

https://youtu.be/_fIAvm0tbs0

While we were working on these videos, we were also reading a book called “revolution” by Jennifer Donally. It’s a story about a teenage girl named Andi who is having a lot of internal conflicts due to the fact that her brother passed away, and she blames herself. To make matters worse, she is failing school and has a senior thesis that she needs to work on. Her father, a famous scientist, is fed up with Andi’s grades and takes her to Paris in order for her to finish her Thesis. She ends up finding a diary belonging to a girl during the French Revolution. From reading the book she is able to resolve some of her internal conflicts and meets a lot of interesting people along the way. I would recommend this book to people who like history, fantasy, drama or all of the above. I personally have very mixed feelings on the book. There were some really interesting points and perspectives in the book and I thought that the way that the author wrote the book made it relatable yet kept the reader intrigued and engaged. However, there were also some parts in the book that served as red flags for me. There were a lot of unanswered questions that I had upon finishing the book, which is something that I don’t enjoy. While we were reading this book, we were also tasked with book chat assignments. These were small tasks that helped us stay on top of reading and helped deepen our understanding of the book.

In the end from this project I learned that I am really good at using animations and in some cases taking an active role in leading. I can work on the quality of our videos, and I think that I could have stepped up more for the editing. Finally I think that ideas drive change because of a persons circumstance. This can be shown in the revolutions that we were researching. People decided to change because there was something that they didn’t like. They can me up with an idea to make that change happen, and then they took action. Now, the idea itself will be different with each problem and the extremity of the action also depends on perspective. However, you can see that this pattern is shown throughout many examples in history, things in your personal life, things other people (like inspirational speakers) say, and especially in revolutions.