Have you ever tried watching a history video on YouTube? If you have, you know its usually very fast paced with a middle aged man as the host. In this project, I wanted to change that. I had to create a 4 minute YouTube video on German nationalism. In this project I learned a lot including, how to make an engaging YouTube video, what happened during nationalism and……. Although this was an extremely challenging project, I am very proud of myself for pushing through and completing it.
The first thing we did was create a series of who, what, when, where, why and how questions that related to German nationalism. These questions provided a jumping off point, and an organized way to research our topic. I learned how to create a question that would allow a detailed answer. This was often a open ended question. It is important to know how to create strong questions because people need to be able to understand what you are trying to say. My questions allowed me to gain a full understanding on German nationalism.
Creating questions
As a class we used many exemplars to help guide us. Using these videos I learned what I had to include to make strong YouTube video. I took many ideas and strategies from multiple videos to get an idea of what I wanted to include in my video. I learned that a good YouTube video needs to have structure such as a beginning middle and end. The video needs to have a hook that encourages the audience to continue watching. There must also be images and animation to keep the audience engaged. I knew I needed to include all of these things to ensure I had a strong video. Watch my video here!
Another key thing I learned was details aren’t always your friend. In this project I focused so much on each individual tree rather than just looking at the whole forest. I looked so heavily into the unification of Germany I got steered away from the main focus, German nationalism. This meant I had to revise my script, which ended up taking me a long time. I found it is helpful and good to get a complete understanding of a subject, but it can also be harmful. At a Certain point some of that knowledge can just cause more confusion.
Beginning process of creating my final script.
This project came with a lot of sleepless nights, hard work and stress but those are the projects you learn the most from. Those are also the projects that feel so good to complete. I learned so much not only about Germany, but about the things I can improve on. Although I am happy this project is over, I am excited to continue learning about German influence in WWI.
Syddy gyddy out ✌️