Hello everyone welcome back to my blog! If you like pirates well boy do I have a treat for you. Before spring break we did a quick project involving the history of piracy and global exploration. Because this project was so short I will do my best to not bore you will all the gory details and try to keep it short. So as you may know every project has a driving question so for this project the question was ‘what was the impact of global exploration?’ So I’ve been sitting here while trying to think of an answer to it and so after thinking for a while I finally came up with my answer. I think that to answer the question is that global exploration and Columbian Exchange changed the trade markets and the world forever. We can see the effect of this exchange today because 1/3 of all the worlds food is produced in America, so that is what I think. Now I will tell you more about the project and the milestones. But while you scroll down to look at the next paragraph take a moment to check out the timeline infographic. I made it as a bonus visual to help you understand the hole project and the things we completed everyday.

First off we started by watching a movie called ‘Captain Phillips’ which we got to watch in the vortex room aka theatre🎭. I enjoyed getting to watch this movie because it was interesting to see what 🏴‍☠️pirates🏴‍☠️ do and how they survive, along with what Captain Phillips and his crew did. Then once the movie was over we did a question and answering sheet which I felt helped me understand some parts of the movie better. 

Then we started trying to complete a milestone a day because we had to complete this in just a week and a half. So you may be thinking ‘oh a week and a half is not that short you have plenty of time’ but with everything we learned and the things we had to complete, it went by a little too fast. So after watching the movie and answering the questions we completed many milestones and activities but I will just share one which I personally found difficult.

This activity was one we did on March 4th. For this activity we first learned about Prince Henry the Navigator, shipbuilding, cartography and some instruments they used for navigation which I will talk more about down below. We then did something called the Iron Chef Protocol which is different for each activity. For this specific activity it was called ‘sketch and tell.’ Sketch and tell is where you have to sketch what you have learned so far, then type out what you have sketched. I found this difficult because I had no clue what to draw, but after given a few examples I eventually came up with something. 

As I mentioned above we learned about the different types of navigation tools. The first one we learned about was one you might have heard of before the compass. The compass was used to find the direction of the ship which was travelling. The next thing we learned about was called the Astrolabe, this used the North Star or sun to calculate the latitude, and the distance from north or south of the equator. Then the new and improved version of that is called the Sextant. The sextant replaced the astrolabe and was used for measuring angles like the one between the horizon and the sun or star in order to find out the latitude (of a ship).

So now that I have put some facts in your brain about navigation tools for you to tell people at dinner tonight I will finally tell you the final product and what we ended off this project with. What we did in the last two days before spring break was bring all of our knowledge together to create a AR Makr video. To do this we had to create a story spine with a story involving what we learned. After we had our story spine finished, we put everything together we made our actual story. Then we drew out all of the photos which we showed while we were saying our script in the video. So drumroll please🥁🥁now you should go check out my really cool AR Makr Video which is down below! 

So now that you have read and seen photos of the project, I get to reflect on it while using the curricular competencies. So I personally think that this project was really cool and fun! I actually did not know piracy was a real thing and I found it really interesting to hear and learn all about it.

I felt that in this project I showed that I can use technology appropriately and effectively to construct knowledge. I do this when using the app AR Makr to create the video at the start when we were learning how to use it and at the end of the project. I found AR Makr cool but really annoying at the same time. It kept glitching and moving to a different location like onto the dumpster outside of the school and to places like under my coffee table at my house. So this led to it not saving properly and me having to redo it multiple times. 

In this project I showed that I can demonstrate appropriate speaking skills. You can see that I have done this in my AR Makr video, when you listen to me telling my story and recording it. I also had challenges with recording it because it was actually really difficult to tell your story and walk through the photos at the exact same time. If you have an apple device you may have heard about something called split screening which is where you can have two different apps open at the same time. But because we had to record it on AR Makr it did not let us split screen. This led to me and my friends coming up with an idea where someone else walks through the photos while filming on your iPad, while you read your script on theirs.

Haha, so much for keeping that short but anyways I hope you enjoyed reading this post. I spent a lot of time creating the timetable Infographic and coming up with everything to write, So I do really hope you liked it. Also be prepared to for a good pirate joke.

-Makenna

PS-Q: How much did the pirate pay for his piercings? A: A buck-an-ear!

PPS-We got to eat pirate packs at the end from White Spot (really yummy😋)