Hello fellow humans, Iām back here with pt.2 of my āItās The End Of The World As We Know It,ā reflection. Now Iām just gonna skip the intro so if youāre looking for some witty wording and light humour, resort to pt.1 of this reflection. Now letās cut to the chase. In my last post I talked about the building knowledge part of this huge project, now Iām talking about the development of the final product and the critique that comes with!
geralt / Pixabay
Ā Ā After we wrote our crusades paragraphs we transitioned into putting our knowledge into words. We made MindNodes. MindNode is basically a thought bubble/web building app that allowed for me to put everything Iād learned into words which later became song. ( more on that later )
The requirements for the MindNode were; show how the transition from elementary school to secondary school is represented in each aspect of worldview. Below is mine!
Ā Ā So how did the use of MindNode affect my final product? Good question. Making thought bubbles and webs was never really a part of my thinking process until this year. I now resort to using this method in every project whether itās required or not. During this long winded and painful journey we had to give three examples of transitional effects from each aspect of worldview and I had more than a few realizations about how much my life has changed since starting high school. This allowed for me to write a much more honest song and I didnāt have to stick to the cliche, āmore homework, harder to navigate, and couldnāt find my locker.ā
Ā Ā Not only was the MindNode helpful for my understanding of things, but it lead on to be a great help with the next assignment, the triple venn diagram! A venn diagram is simple, Iāve used them since kindergarten. So why did the ātriple venn diagramā sound much more intimidating? Here is why. In order to complete this task we needed to share the somewhat personal stuff recorded in our MindNodes. Not only with our teachers, but with our peers. I was not present on the day we shared but a few of my friends helped me out by giving me their opinions on the transition. Another factor in our diagrams was the opinions of āthe expertsā¦ā
You may be asking yourself, who??? We were also given a document written by a group of scientists working with teens transitioning from elementary to high school. In the article they talked about the stress of the situation, the changes in ones personality, peer pressure, and even gender influenced anxiety. At first the venn diagram didnāt really help me but I later understood why we had to do it. The assignment was to show us how our opinions about how this transition combined with that of others is a real eye opener in how our overall worldview has been affected.
Ā Ā Almost finally, you will learn about the song in question. Yes we had to sing. Yes it was embarrassing. Yes our teachers made us present them. That is the more humiliating side of this project. Once we had built up the knowledge and put it into words and even real life situations, we had to put it into song lyrics. Remember the title of this series of posts? Yeah well, āItās The End Of The World As We Know It,ā by REM is the song that would be altered just as Stephen Colbert did in his rendition āItās The End Of The Year As We Know It.ā
Ā Ā Just as Stephen did, we altered the lyrics to a limit and made our song center around our worldview shift since entering secondary school. We wrote multiple drafts, some accepted and others rejected. Eventually, they were ready to be recorded. Once again if you live on the moon then itās in my best interest that you know, PLP uses iPads instead of pencil, paper, and textbooks. So inevitably we used GarageBand. GarageBand allows for you to edit you voice and add audio tune. (thank god)
We did 2-3 drafts of our songs and received peer critique on both the lyrics and the singing, which was itās share of purely embarrassing. I am really grateful for the critique I received. It helped me notice things I probably wouldāve been defensive about and even little things that made the song soooo much better. After mastering the art of GarageBand I had learned so much about using music software and about how much it can help bring anything from a soundtrack to a professionally recorded song to life.
See yāall in post number 3 āļø
