Hey everyone, a few weeks ago we began our first humanities project this year, The Greatest Canadian! For this project we had to answer the question…
We chose a Canadian and were then tasked with telling their story and proving their significance in our very first podcast episode.
To ensure we answered the driving question to the best of our ability and created an amazing podcast. We focused on improving in these competencies.
Comprehending text
Comprehending text in this project was really important. Using a variety of ways to understand text and the features content includes, Would help us create our own text (our podcast.) We worked on this skill through numerous assignments but the ones I found to be most helpful were milestone 3 and our work about globalization.
Our work about globalization helped me realize the value of features. For this assignment we picked a aspect of Canadian identity that was being impacted by globalization. We read through our chosen article, taking note of cool facts and statistics. We then picked a feature in the article to analyze. I picked this feature.
I took note of what type of feature it was, what purpose it served and overall how it made comprehending the article easier.
Focusing on the value the feature had got me thinking about how important it would be to include the podcast version of features in my episode. Because the most important thing when it comes to creating a piece of content is clarity, if the audience doesn’t understand then how can I possibly answer the driving question properly?
Later on in the project Milestone three also challenged my comprehension skills. Around this time I had chosen my individual to focus on. I chose somebody who is definitely the greatest Canadian in the world of my podcast, Gordon Lightfoot.
Gordon Lightfoot has always been a big part of my family’s history. In fact his songs are practically the soundtrack to every summer memory we have together. I thought it would be great to tell his story because my family could support his significance. In milestone three I had to find out more. I needed to know his whole story and who he impacted besides my own family and how he affected people’s lives. In other words I had to research.
Research has never been easier than it is today, but its also harder to string together a story with so many sources available. Now more than ever it was important to fully comprehend the content I was reading and watching, Because I would have to take that information and turn it into my own creation.
Working on researching for this milestone, improved my ability to comprehend text drastically. Other assignments prior had helped, but it’s definitely different when you know you have to take the information you’re receiving and make something important out of it. Practicing reading a source and taking the most important details is really important no matter what you’re learning about, I’m proud I got better at this skill.
Establishing historical significance
Establishing historical significance was one of our main goals for our podcast episodes, After all the purpose of the episode was to prove why our individual was the Greatest Canadian. The assignments I learned the most about this competency were Milestone 2 and the significance worksheet. The significance worksheet was one of the first things we worked on in this project. This worksheet was meant to get us thinking about our chosen individuals significance. Here’s the sheet I completed.
This assignment worked really well, it gave me a clear understanding of what significance was. It also prepared me for future work like Milestone 2.
In milestone 2 we made a story spine. The story spine told my individual, Gordon Lightfoot’s story. This milestone was the perfect way for me to use what I’d learned about significance’s criteria, To make sure the story I would tell checked all the boxes.
Practicing telling a story with examples of significance helped a lot when I later wrote my episode script. Although I now have a clear understanding of significance, I still think I can get a lot better at including examples. Even though I researched a lot about Gordon and his impact. I didn’t do as good as I could’ve when it came to including multiple perspectives. I think I was focusing too much on how he impacted my family and not enough on other groups of people. In the future I hope to include more detail and establish historical significance a lot more effectively.
Empowered learner.
Empowered learner is probably my favourite competency, I like it best because I feel like it relates to every project we do in PLP. Empowered Learner is all about using technology to improve your work, and its one of the only competencies that has endless possibilities. In this project the work I completed in which I improved the most in this competency, Was milestone 5 and this blog post.
For milestone five we completed our podcast episodes. Making my episode helped me learn a lot of new technical skills, things like recording ambience and mixing my podcast. Which were fundamental parts of the episode I created. Im really proud of how I used technology to make my podcast more exciting and informative. Click this link to check out my podcast episode.
Doing those things have made me a more empowered learner, since I now know all these new skills that I can use in future projects.
Being an empowered learner means you use technology to your advantage, which is something I really wanted to do in this final part of my project. Which is why I decided to incorporate GIFs instead of still images in this post. I remembered how cool the GIFs looked in our post from our last maker project, and thought Its never to late to get better at a competency!
Overall I’ve learned so much about podcasts, canada and what it takes to make something or someone significant. I’m definitely a lot less scared to put together my next episode of Relative Recital. My next podcast episodes all about WW2 and I’ve got some pretty shocking stories to share. Thanks for visiting my blog….
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