What a time to be alive. All the rich, and beautiful…. knowledge from Maker, of course. What did you think I was talking about? Maker has brought out some amazing ideas, footage, and, in the end, videos out of me. You may think making videos is easy, but boy behind the scenes, there is a whole other world back there. I got a peek behind that curtain, and what I saw and learnt is what I’m going to share with you today. 

Making videos was just putting a bunch of clips into iMovie and pressing play, but now to me, it comes with hard work, stress, time crunches and on top of that meeting the curricular competencies. Our competencies being assessed were Empowered Learner, Knowledge constructor, Innovative Designer, Computational Thinker and Creative Connecter. These might be new words for some of you, so down below you can see what they are and their descriptions.  

You can imagine how scared I was when I read all these competencies and being expected to meet them perfectly. But somehow deep down I knew that thats not what the teachers wanted me to do, they didn’t want me to be a perfect student and do everything perfectly. I knew at this point it wasn’t going to be an easy road, it was going to be bumpy and I was going to take a couple tumbles along the way. I was pretty discouraged, and I didn’t see the point in trying if I thought I couldn’t achieve, but I promised myself that I’d at least try. Like Ms. Willemse says, failing is a first attempt at learning. So I set off on my journey throughout and the first obstacle? Well, everything. 

INNOVATIVE DESIGNER VS. COMPUTATIONAL THINKER 

A competency that I think I met was being an innovative designer, which means I think I used a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions. Specifically on my take your kid to work day video, our most recent one. When I went to my dads work, I always had the questions “how does this job help the local and global community?”, “how does this impact public and personal identity?” and getting footage to back up my answers to these questions. I wanted to get, not just footage randomly, but footage and b-roll that I could use creatively and have lots of extra. I had problems along the way like what to film, but I’d always go back to filming footage that helps my cause, that I can use in my video, that backs up my answers to those questions. I really like how my video turned out and I’m proud that it shows my creativity. 

Being unconfident comes in the form of being a computational thinker, for me. A computational thinker means developing and employing strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions, and I feel I am developing in this area. 2 examples where I could’ve demonstrated this, but didn’t were in my four shot video, and my “Run” remake video. I feel these videos were my weakest videos out of all of them, but they helped me learn from my mistakes, and helped me improve my skills for my future videos. Our planning for our “Run” video was, in my eyes, ideal and our group, Ben and Holly , worked well on this stage. Execution was rough, and editing we went downhill. We had issues and obstacles but instead of finding creative solutions using technological methods, we slide them under the carpet and tried to forget them, hoping they would go away.

 Our four shot video is a pretty similar case, but we didn’t have much time to plan, or even brainstorm a solid idea, so our filming was rough. We weren’t sure what scenes to film, shots that we needed were unknown, angles and audio were all figured out in the last minute. Editing was okay, but we had a music problem and, again, instead of finding a solution using our technologies, we executed our music and audio portion quite poorly. 

CREATIVE COMMUNICATOR

Do I think I communicated clearly and expressed myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to my goals? Well somewhat yes, but I still have a lot of room for improvement. I think during my 2 revolution videos, the American and Russian, I could’ve demonstrated this a bit better, and been a bit stronger in this area. I feel I can confidently check the box for communicating clearly using tools and formats but expressing myself using tools, platforms, styles etc… could’ve have been done better. I was left with the job of editing those videos and I could’ve used many more tools on my ipad and just simple strategies that would’ve 100% improved those video. I strictly used iMovie while editing and I regret not using my iPad to its full extent, because much better outcomes would have existed if I did. 

On a high note, I think my Drumheller documentary, met these expectations. I don’t necessarily think I deserve an amazing mark in this competency, but I think I accomplished what I was trying to go for and met the curricular competency of being a creative communicator. I used many different editing apps on this video, unlike my American and Russian ones, and I used effects, title formatting, different styles and I even interviewed a stranger! Which, by the way, is way out of my comfort zone so ya gotta give me that at least! 

EMPOWERED LEARNER

I saved the best for last! What does that mean? Well, in my opinion, being an empowered learner is something I think I excelled at. It means having leveraged technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating this competency in my learning goals. I’m not trying to sound arrogant or cocky but for my Revolution videos, I did all the nitty gritty work and completed screenplays, storyboards, editing for every video, I initiated group meeting and planned all the shots. I saved the French Revolution (draft 1) for this category because this was our first ever revolution video. We had chosen a rap, but honestly I’m glad we did because: #1: it was the hardest form of video for us.  #2: we had just learned about the revolution, so it was fresh in our minds. Our video may not have turned out the best, but how I started to grow as an empowered learner really started here. I really did have an active role in this group, which consisted of ,  Emily , Gabe and Owen. We did make mistakes but as I said it was for the greater good of our final revolution video. We liked the French Revolution so much, we ended up choosing it as our last revolution video, using the video choice “Act it out”. I used many different tools for editing, filming, and planning this final video and I think it turned out way better than any of our other ones. 

Draft 1:

Final:

Our ghost town silent film, was probably the most fun for me to make, and my group, Thomas, Meg and Anthony all matched my enthusiasm for this video. We all had equal roles in this video, but in the end Meg came through with the editing and I helped her with most of the planning. But why do I think this video falls under this competency? Well because we ere given plenty of time to plan, but not enough (or so it felt) to film. As we arrived at the ghost town in three valley gap(where we were filming), we all immediately had to be actively engaged in taking a leadership role, and making executive decisions right then and there. I grew and realized that I had to help Meg with filming and editing, because although she didn’t have a main role on the screen, she was the boss behind the curtains. We bounced ideas off each other, and I introduced to her new tools, apps and things that could help her edit our video and she did the same for me. Both of us used our leveraged technology, and the outcome was far better (and funnier) than I imagined. 

My last video, that is going to be mentioned is my Alberta video. I put this under this particular category, because this was an individual assignment, as well as a group project. My company consisted of Anders, Ryan and Julia , and they joined me in answering: How place impacts business owners? Having lots of shots and planning was quite important for this one and that required lots of actively using my leveraged technology. I think I did pretty well, and I’m proud of what I created in the end. I chose a goal and shot for it and most importantly… I tried. I helped my group, and my group helped me as we were all looking to have our goals met but also helping someone else’s goals be met. 

During the span of this course, I worked with MANY different students, possibly half my class. And during it I learnt these curricular competencies, and I know what I need to work on for term 2, what I already know and can improve, and what I can fully revise on. I never expected such a journey for term 1 and now I’m excited for term 2 and its many, many, many possibilities. 

~Malaika.