Hello! It’s been a long time since I have written a portfolio post, and this is the first post of Grade 9. Our first project in a Grade 9 was all about “How does place impact who we are?” That was the driving question and that is what we we going to find out. That is also the subject of this post so let’s get into it!

This project started in the summer, and in the form of a book called “Rescue in the Rockies”. Rescue in the Rockies was all about a girl who was able to time travel using a certain pin. She traveled back to when the Cave and Basin was discovered by railway workers, and to the middle of WWI where she witnessed an internment camp at work. This was an introduction into how place impacted who we are, as the girls friend in the book is waiting for news about his missing father and he constantly liked to compare his home country (Germany) to the Banff Springs Hotel, where they were staying. This was a transition to our first milestone assignment of PLP 9. This was the first big step towards answering that driving question. We made a Creative Response to the Power of Place. I decided to make a series of haikus about how some people in the area take the place we live in for granted, like there is this much forest and water everywhere an don’t take advantage of it as much as they could.

After learning about the “Power of Place”, we were now learning about different lenses we could put on a topic or article. To help learn about this we were split into groups and given a certain article. My group was Ryan, Meg, and Owen and our article was about two bison who left Banff National Park and how one was killed after straying too close to humans. Then we were given one out the four lenses we were learning about. The four lenses we were learning about were an economical lens, an environmental lens, a political lens, and a social lens. I chose the economical or financial lens and then went to work. My main focus about the article was why the bison was euthanized and why the bison were being relocated in the first place. If you want to read the article itself, just click or tap here.

Now that we learned about the Power of Place and how to apply a lens we finally started on our main project for this driving question. We were given a certain group of people in Alberta. Out of the 7 groups of people, (Tourists, Albertans, Wildlife, First Nations, Students, Business People, and Artists) I chose Tourists, so my driving question shifted from “How does place impact who we are” to “How are tourists impacted by the places they are going to?” The other people who had tourists were Gabe, Kaden, and Brenton. The main part of this project was the video we were going to create, and that we would be collecting data and footage to help show how place impacted our group of people. So we started collecting area that we were given “first dibs” to interview anybody in the area. Then we learned a bit about our group of people in Canada and how they have changed. This was called the Pre-Trip Plan and it would help us answer that driving question.

Here comes the fun part of the project. After two weeks of school we were already leaving for Calgary and Drumheller. We stopped in many beautiful places such as Lake Louise, Banff, and the Columbia Icefields. It was here that we would truly try to answer that driving question, “How are tourists impacted by the places they are going to?” We did write a daily note in Alberta, so if you want to know how the trip to Alberta went, be sure to look at the slideshow below. If I took one thing from Alberta, it would be that I should never take the landscape around us for granted because it might very well disappear. This is the case with the Athabasca Glacier. It won’t be there for the 22nd century. This was the focus for my video.

After Alberta, I was confident and prepared for the video. Gabe and I had interviewed many interesting people who had very useful and helpful things to say. We completed the first take at a video in about a week. One useful stepping stone that actually really helped was writing the script for the video. I originally thought it would be difficult to write a script. But once I had established my focus and applied my lens it was very easy and really helped me complete the video on time. i have already mentioned my focus for the video, which was how tourists are affected by place and how they can positively maintain and affect the place back in a positive way. I think it is pretty obvious that my lens is an environmental lens. Unfortunately I cant show my first draft of the video (technical difficulties), but I can show the peer feedback I got from Asha.

My main focus for the final product of the video was to add music. This was the focus for most of the class as it does sound odd to listen to somebody talking and at the same time hear background noises. Music also really ties everything together. So I went on Garageband and created my own track which you will hear in the final video, which I can show!

I learned a lot from this project. It was really interesting to learn about different places and how they are impacted by tourism. It would be really interesting to do this project again but with more detail and time to do it. I feel like this would make a very good and interesting website or book. But the subject is very important as well. I really want people to be more aware of what is actually going on and what is happening to our world. My focus for this project was how quickly our world is changing. The point of now return is now about 17 months and if we don’t take drastic actions then we will be the downfall of humankind.