What’s up, what’s hanging, what’s happening my friends?

As you probably knew we are coming up on the end of term one. Pretty scary right, a third of the year is already gone. But you know what this means… A little reflection post. And this post is for the subject of maker. Today I’ll be telling you all about the videos I’ve made this term and what I’ve learned from them. As you know, a blog post means core competencies. And you will not be disappointed, because today there are five. Just to keep things interesting, today this blog post will be a little different than usual. Instead of taking you through the post competency by competency I’m gonna go through each video and then I’ll explain to you which competency I learned with each video and what I learned most from them in general. So by all means, keep using your brain to analyze the letters that I have typed onto this pages document.

FOUR SHOT FILM: COMPUTATIONAL THINKER

The first video I am going to start with is the first video I did this term, the four shot film. Now this film was pretty basic. It was the first video we had really done with PLP. But this video was the perfect example of the computational thinker competency. This competency is all about solving and understanding problems. Because we had done almost no planning for this video it is fair to say that we encountered quite a lot of problems. This meant we had to work as a group to fix problems like finding good locations, having bad lighting, or even just figuring out who played what part! Luckily we had our iPads to help us out so we managed to fix those problems. This was the starting point for a term of videos and I think it started off pretty good.

GHOST TOWN FILM: KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTOR

The Ghost Town film was the second big film I did in PLP. It was a film we made in Alberta in the ghost town we visited. In this film I think I really displayed the competency of knowledge constructor. The knowledge constructor competency is all about using a variety of tools to create your final product. Our Ghost town film ended up having a lot of parts that went into it. We used several different apps such as animation apps, filming apps, and editing apps, to make everything come together. It was a really good example of the knowledge constructor competency, and it was a really interesting movie because it was the first one we actually got to plan ahead of time.

ROYAL TYRELL FILM: CREATIVE COMMUNICATOR

The Royal Tyrell film was an impromptu movie that was sprung on us at the Royal Tyrell museum that we went to. We had about half an hour to make an entire movie and it was very hard. I do think it demonstrates the creative communicator competency very well though. The creative communicator competency is all about sharing your message using technology in interesting ways. Although I didn’t get to show it in the most interesting way because we were confined to certain things for the project, I think I did a really good job of sharing my message. I used the technology that we were given and some cool apps to make a video that showed my message!

ALBERTA PEOPLE VIDEO: EMPOWERED LEARNER

My Alberta video as you probably know if you’ve read my blog was pretty wild. And I most definitely learned a lot from it, but the main competency I think I learned about from it would be the empowered learner competency. The empowered learner is all about using technology to take a role in demonstrating your ability to achieve your learning goals. And as with all the projects we do in PLP my learning goal was to answer the driving question. And of course my way of answering the question was with a video, which I used so much technology to create. I definitely showed my ability to achieve my goals using the incredible technology I have at my fingertips.

RUNNING A REMAKE: COMPUTATIONAL THINKER

As the fifth guest of today’s video blog post, we’re gonna talk a little bit about the running a remake video. This video was interesting to say the least, but was one of the biggest learning experiences for me so far this term. The competency that I chose to represent this video was the computational thinker. The computational thinker competency is all about finding strategies to solve problems that can or cannot use technology. Because this video did not go so well there were definitely problems, but I used a lot of strategies to try and fix them. For instance we forgot to film a lot of clips when making the video so we use strategies like reusing clips or finding times to try and re-film clips, to try and get the video as good as possible. This did not work the best and that video could definitely use improving, but I think it was a good example of this competency.

FRENCH REVOLUTION: CREATIVE COMMUNICATOR

(Check out the post for all the revolutions here)
The French revolution was the first video in our four-part revolution series. This was the video with the focus on creative communicator competency. Basically the creative communicator competency is just all about sharing your message in creative ways, and I think my group definitely did that. Because we chose the acting format for our video, it meant we had to be very creative and still send a message. That’s where the creative communicator came in. We had to write roles and lines that we were very sure would still contribute to the creativity, without taking away from the message. I think we managed to do a pretty good job of this but we should’ve focussed a little less on the creative side, and a little more on the message side. And if you’re wondering what the message was, it was the driving question “how do ideas drive change?”

AMERICAN REVOLUTION: COMPUTATIONAL THINKER

The American Revolution video was the second in our four-part revolution video series. This is one of my favourite videos and that’s because it was a music video. The only problem is we had a lot of problems. The big problem we had was with the recording, we couldn’t get good audio. We just didn’t know how to do it! You can’t hear music when you plug a mic into the iPad, which meant we couldn’t hear a song, which meant we couldn’t sing. But that’s where the computational thinker competency came in. Being a computational thinker is all about testing things over and over to find the answers to problems, and that’s exactly what we did. We recorded the audio so many times in so many different ways. We tried putting a headphone in at the same time, connecting AirPods, playing on two separate iPads and pressing play at the same time, but we ended just recording our voices in the quietest classroom we could find. We tested so many different things so many different times, and it was the perfect example of this competency.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EMPOWERED LEARNER

The Russian revolution was the third video in our four part revolution series. This video really demonstrated my proficiency in the empowered learner competency. The empowered learner competency is all about using technology to achieve your learning goals. And because this was a PLP project I had a learning goal, the driving question! The driving question for this project was “how do ides drive change?” and I feel like my group really answered that. We used our technology but more specifically, the video we created to answer that question. I think we demonstrated the competency really well because we answered the question very well, but I do think our video itself could’ve used some improving, because it was both very boring and far too long.

THE TROUBLES: KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTOR

The troubles was our revolution video where we got to pick the topic. This was our best video and I think I know why. We were really good at this specific competency, which was the knowledge constructor. We used a lot of different platforms and resources to make our video. We used different editing apps, drawing apps, animation apps and it ended up working very well. It made our video a lot more interesting to watch and fun to create. This video was the perfect example of the knowledge constructor competency and that’s really cool.

TAKE YOUR KID TO WORK DAY: EMPOWERED LEARNER

The final video that we created this term was he take your kid to work day video. This video was a sort of vlog throughout your day at your parents work. The competency that I feel I learned the most from this video was the empowered learner competency. As I’ve said unfortunately many times before, the empowered learner competency is about using technology to achieve your goals. My goal for that video was not a driving question, but more of a personal goal. I wanted to showcase my dad’s job, but at the same time give others and myself an insight to the world of work that I will one day have to be a part of. I don’t know how well I actually did this, but I personally think I did pretty good. I most definitely used the technology to try to spread my message, I just don’t know how successful it was. This was probably my favourite video that I made so far this term, but I think it’s just because I got to hang out with my dad all day and meet cool people!

(A bonus video)

I think my video skills have grown a lot this term. I’ve gone from the basics of the four shot film, to developing throughout the revolutions videos, to making the most recent video that actually wasn’t part of this blog post, my live event video. I have learned a lot of new skills, I’ve gotten to have some really fun times, and I’ve been able to prepare myself for the probable tons of videos that are coming in the future. So far I think this has been a good term for me video wise, and I’m excited to see what other wild videos Ms. Williemse and Ms. Maxwell will come up with next year!

Ok signing off in English today,

See ya.

Holly