Hi everyone and welcome back to what you probably assume is just another blog post summarising a unit same as always right? Well you would be wrong. While this is a blog post summarising a unit, the unit was done fully online. That’s right, because of the Covid-19 pandemic all the schools were closed and we changed to learning online.
Now this project in particular ties in with the pandemic as our driving questions is “How has the country you chose handled Covid-19? What do you think the consequences of those actions will be?” Now while we can’t know what will come after this pandemic we can see changes in the world already and make predictions about what might happen when this all ends.
In the driving question it asks what what country we chose which is of course where the project comes in. Our project for this unit was to create a 7-10 minute podcast about how the country of our choice has handled the pandemic. We also had to connect their success or failure back to their system of government and ideologies. This way we were still able to learn about current events while tying it back into the government aspect of social studies. 
For my project I chose Finland as my country because near the beginning of the unit I found an article about female leadership at this time and how successful women have been. My first choice was New Zealand’s Jacinda Arden but as Fraser also selected New Zealand I decided to focus on a different female leader which is when I chose Finland for their Prime Minister Sanna Marin. Learning about Finland’s government was not 
easy as it’s very different to Canada’s but eventually I understood it. After researching about Sanna and Finland’s government the only other piece I needed was the study more about women leaders. So I found two articles about it and held an interview with my Mom who’s been a super big fan of Dr Henry. With all the pieces together it was time to actually make the podcast. I ended up only really needing one draft as the critique I got was very light so I just made a quick change to the music. Below is my podcast feel free to take a listen.
The two core competencies we focused on in this unit were Create and Cause + Consequence. I think a milestone where I showed my use of the creative competency was milestone 1: Podcast Listen. The task was to listen to a podcast and write a review of what we listened to. Very simple task. I ended up writing a small essay as I listened to three episodes of Coronavirus Fact vs Fiction. By being an active listener I took notes during the podcast and was immediately brainstorming connections to other life experiences or coming up with my own opinions. I’m proud of this review because it was an easy task but I think I pushed myself and showed good comprehension skills. My podcast also shows good use of the create competency. By using all the research I had found I was able to speak to the viewers and inform them on the knowledge I had gained in an easy to understand way.
The other core competency, cause + consequence is also shown through my podcast. While in my research I couldn’t find a whole lot about future predictions I still decided to talk about some changes we might see in the conclusion of my podcast. By looking at the articles I had read about how the world is responding to female 
leadership as well as knowing about the change in rights for females after the two world wars I made a prediction that we would see more female leaders. I also know that once there is a vaccine for this virus and we can start living our lives as “normal” the normal will change. The attitude around sick days, hand washing, and working from home will change. Anything that in the future can be done in a more sanitary way probably will change. Even the small things like blowing out birthday candles can go away, like who really wants to blow spit all over a cake before sharing and eating it.
Since we didn’t have daily classes we had a lot less milestones which is why two of my core competency pieces are my podcast. My podcast is what most of my time and thought went into. I really enjoyed this project. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of online schooling this project somehow was really fun for me. I enjoyed the Zoom calls twice a week where I could see my classmates and teachers, it really felt normal. I also really appreciated how the teachers adapted to the current circumstances and made a project out of it. It was way cooler to learn about the world right now and actually study this crisis instead of the teachers trying to teach us about something that happened 100 years ago over Zoom. The flexibility and attitude in this project was so relaxing for me I felt like I had so much control over what I did and I really enjoyed that. I also wasn’t totally excited to make a podcast but after hearing it in full I’m very proud of what I made and I think I’m starting to like podcasts. That’s all from me for now, so thank you for reading this post and make sure to stay safe.
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