An Average Post About Frankenstuffies

Hello, and welcome to the final blog post of 2020. This year was really crazy and really showed us something we’ve never seen before. An entire country of stupid people! And also this whole global pandemic thing but that wasn’t that big right? Anyway, onto the reflection!

This project started out incredibly weird, and I think everyone in the class can say the same. When we started, we were told to bring in some stuffier we wanted to destroy. And we would soon learn why.

In this project we wrote a made a mutated stuffed animal, designed our stuffy’s personality, wrote a short story, cut down the story to fit a short film, designed the film and its shots, and made the film. All of these assignments called upon a new skill. But they all had one thing in common. Storytelling.

This is a picture of my frankenstuffie. It is a combination of a pink whale, a rat, and a frog.

Throughout this project I learned a lot about writing, storytelling, formatting, and the forms writing can take on and I think that this ties into our two text competencies, designing text and comprehending text. I showed a lot of my learning about understanding and creating a text in milestone two, one that I am personally proud of (and not just because of the grade I got on it). I demonstrated my skills by using engaging descriptions of the surroundings and items in the story, as well as taking the point of view of the reader to make the text engaging from their perspective.

This was when short story I wrote about my frankenstuffie. Unfortunately the formatting didn’t come with the story so I apologize if it is a little hard to read.

Brad was bedridden in his family’s home. His condition had worsened. Brad had nearly been given up on. His sister was the only one pushing for them to help him. Brad’s parents thought of one solution. To bring him to town to look for someone to help. They carried him into the city and hoped someone was here, but they only found a crazed old man, claiming to be able to help. All that he asked of the family is that they trust that it was the only way to guarantee his health after the fact. “He may not look the same as when you last saw him, knowing this, are you still willing to do this?” The old man asked Brad’s parents reluctantly agreed, trusting the old man at his shaky words alone… Brad woke up. He was in a bedroom, but not that of his old, worn one. The room he had just woken up in was much larger and had fancy patterns dotted across the walls, with a glass chandelier in the shape of diamonds, and his bed had curtains. After he had taken in the new room, he remembered the old man’s words. “This must be his house! I didn’t think that old fart was rich.” Brad thought to himself. It was only then that he realized. His body felt… different. He looked down at his hands, only to see that they weren’t his own. These weren’t the hands of a farm rat, they were the hands of a frog! He looked frantically around the room, and caught sight of a mirror. He walked up to it slowly, noticing that his feet at least felt the same. He gazed into the mirror fearfully, waiting to see that he had been transformed into a monster. However, the only differences he saw were his arms and his… head. HIS HEAD WAS FROM A WHALE! Brad stormed out of the room in search of the man who had done this. When he left the bedroom, he was met with a great hall. He walked slowly, aimlessly trying to find where he was going. He entered a dining room of sorts and found the man eating. “Oh, you’re awake, Well? What do you think?” The old man asked with an exited tone. Brad was furious, “How could you do this to me?!” “This was the only way for you to have survived. You had fallen ill because the flesh in your brain was in the beginning stages of infection. And you better count your lucky stars because I happened to have those hybrid parts laying around.” Said the old man looking pleased with himself. “Well, what’s with these hands then?” Brad was confused. “Oh, those old things, your arms looked frail and weak, so I gave you new ones. They are stronger, faster, and more precise than your old paws.” “Well I suppose it’s good that I’m up to good health again. I should go back to my family’s farm.” “Very well, I do hope you can use the extra brainpower I gave you with that head of yours.” And so the old man had one of his well fitted servants escort Brad back to his home. He knocked on the door, but right before he could see it open, he woke up. He had been living the same dream of his childhood for over a year now, and was wondering what the cause could be, but no matter, because there was still much work to do on the farm. Three years later, his parents finally decided that was the last straw. He had been neglecting his job to make some stupid useless invention with the scraps he found around the farm. “It came to me in a dream!” He would say, but his parents wouldn’t listen. He was kicked out of his home with only the clothes on his back, exiled from the family he held so dear. He quickly found a job as blacksmith’s assistant and got enough money to afford bits and parts for his preferred career, inventor. This was the career he could make his dreams come true literally. Brad had been using his new hands and head for years now, and understood the advantages he was given. He had stopped having dreams of new inventions as of late, and was unable to make anything fun or useful anymore. But he had an idea. One that could end his unmotivated, and unproductive times. He still had the prototypes of all of his inventions and can still remember the dreams clearly, thanks to the old man from some years ago. He wondered what became of him. But that was for another time, he looked through his inventions, and found parts he thought would be interesting to put together. At first he remembered an old children’s toy, a string with cups on either end. He decided he would do everything he could to improve it. Weeks were spent in the workshop with little to no sleep, all from his motivation to create something of his own. Two long months later, he emerged from his workshop, contraption in hand. It was a weird machine, like a small horn attached to a wooden plate with coiled wires coming from the closed end of the horn. When he went to sell it in his battered storefront, he had made two. A wealthy man approached the invention. “What is this curious contraption?” Asked the wealthy man. “This, sir, is my newest invention, the telephone.” Brad answered “Well, what does it do?” “It converts the sound put into it into an electric current, which is sent to the other telephone and recreated using the signal provided.” Brad explained proudly. “Hmmm. A curious device indeed. Shall I test it out?” “Sure!” The men took a few steps back, and Brad spoke into the bell of the telephone. “Hello, can you hear me?” Brad was hopeful. “Oh yes! Very impressive, I shall take them both, and expect more customers, this is a very useful machine!” The wealthy man said as he left with the pair of telephones. As Brad made more in his workshop, he thought about his new machine and its future as a product. Maybe in the distant future, this could be used without the wires, and maybe even commonplace. He wanted to revolutionize the communication between people. But little did he know yet. He already had. As the days flew by, he began to see more customers asking for his device. But he suddenly remembered his family, barely making ends meet in their farm. Brad turned down the pricey offers for the machine and he went to where his parent’s large farm once stood, but it was no longer home to any animals, only a few withering crops and a small cottage. He knocked on the door. Just like that dream he had once forgotten, but this time the door opened, and he was greeted by his sister. “Where are mother and father?” Brad asked, he felt a lump forming in his throat even before she could say anything,. Tears staring to form in his eyes, but he held them back, hoping to appear strong in front of his sister. “They passed on only a year after you left for the city,” She said with tears forming in her eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.” “How could you be? They kicked you out.” “Well, thats actually why I’m here. I sold one of my most recent inventions to a wealthy man and have lots of money to improve our lives. I thought that they might take me back, I guess that’s just not possible anymore,” Brad was beginning to cry. All he wanted his whole life alone was to have his parents accept him. His sister was there for him this time though. “Could I move back in here with you? I can’t leave again knowing you’re the only one left. All I need is a small workshop outside.” Brad offered, hoping she would accept him once again. “It would certainly make it less lonely here.” She had given her answer. “I have a dream…” Brad said thoughtfully. He was going to make long distance communication instant.

Another skill that I used in this project was video making. I definitely have room to improve on this, and I think that that is evident in milestone six, showing the competency creative communicator. This milestone was not my best work, but I think that because of this I can look at what I did well and not so well to improve on my skills even more.

One more thing that I learned was how establish historical significance and analyze cause and consequence. This is a skill that can be used when looking at past events to see why it was important or what it affected in the long run. Although I don’t think there was mush to demonstrate this skill in this project, looking at the industrial revolution how we did in our revolution notes helped me understand why and how we decide what is important to learn and where the consequences of those events lead.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my learning throughout the last project.

Until next time.

An Average Post About Revolutions

Hello, and welcome back to my blog. This post will contain all that I have learned from our most recent project in this chaotic year, “Storm the Barricades!”. I hope you enjoy this post, and be sure to check out my teammates blogs as they are covering their perspective on this project (check them out here Ryder, Sophia, and Jakub.

This is the man himself, Crane Brinton.

This project was based off of the theory of revolution by Crane Brinton. His theory was, in short, that a revolution is like a disease with a high fever. Similarly to our bodies after a fever, we return to a state very similar to what our body looked like before. Brinton theorized that revolutions were the same, and not only that, but that revolutions had a formula to them. It went like this, an economic crisis, political weakness, intellectual opposition, and or class antagonism will be the lead causes of the revolution. These causes lead to the “Phase 2” of the revolution. This means the beginning of the end. Here, the economy will crash and burn, the people will start to take action into their own hands, and begin leading movements against the current regime. The old regime is overthrown, and the new one, ruled by moderates, will emerge. This is normally short lived though, because the radical people begin to take control of the country, which can even lead to wars. This is called the reign of terror. It is called this because the radicals normally rule thought force and fear. As the reign of terror burns to the end of its wick, the moderates once again attain control, and the rough and bumpy road to recovery begins. As this happens, nationalism arises, and for a short while, the people are hotheaded and may start wars to prove that they are the most powerful country. Soon after though, the revolution ends very close to where it began, only changing the society enough to realize that something had happened.

Anyway, enough about the theory of revolution, and onto the reflection. In this project we learned a lot about video skills and the ability to tell a story through film. In my opinion, this was one of the hardest projects we have been given yet. And I think that even though our group didn’t do perfect, this was our FAIL (First Attempt In Learning), and I think that opportunity makes way for even more learning. In the duration of this project we made a lot of mistakes and a lot of corrections, but to make it that much better the second time, you need to realize what really went wrong the first time. For example, in my groups video, the audio’s volume seems to fluctuate which is an issue regarding not watching it back enough ourselves, this could simply be solved by posing as a viewer and watching it back to see what keep you engaged and what puts you off. Another issue we faced was with the pace of the video, we didn’t think about it much until the final product, but our video was just too slow paced and not super interested to someone who for example, just clicked on the video because it looked interesting.

(Yes I know the beginning is a little funky)

Now onto assessing the competencies.

Creative Communicator: This competency is based on your ability to communicate your thoughts and messages through a creative means. I think that in our final product, we showed this competency by using a variety of tools to create the video that had our full message.

Establishing Historical Significance: This competency is about, well, establishing historical significance. This competency was showed in our project when we made our video. During this time, we had to decide what to include and what not to. To create an educating video we had to choose the most important events relevant to what we were trying to say with our message.

Analyze Cause and Consequence: Here, we take a look at the domino effect of sorts. I call it this because the cause of something creates the consequence which might subsequently become the cause for another event and so on and so forth. I think that I showed this in an individual assignment called “an outstanding paragraph” this is because we analyzed the causes and consequences of actions and problems during the French Revolution.

Designing Texts: This competency assesses how you planned and executed your video while considering the purpose, audience, and the message of the film. I think that we definitely could have improved on this in many ways, but the main one being the audience. While making the film we didn’t consider how much the audience would want to keep watching.

Discussing, Listening, and Speaking: This competency looks at how you shared your opinion in a respectful and constructive way within your group. At the beginning of our project, my group members kept coming up with a bunch of ideas that could never realistically be demonstrated with the time and materials that we had. I recognized it and did my best to get the group to think of the “how” side of things when pitching an idea. I think this demonstrates this competency because of the constructive manner that I showed when putting my group back on track.

Thanks so much for reading this far and I hope you’ll stick around for the next project!