How does place impact who you are? This was the driving question that we were given for our Alberta trip project this September. We were tasked with creating a video that answered this question regarding a specific group, I got the First Nations. To be honest at first I had no idea how I was going to answer this question, but through everything we did in humanities, In the end I did. This is the story of that journey. 

It all began with our first milestone, our power of place creative response. We had not yet been assigned our specific groups and the assignment was to simply think about how place has and does impact who we are personally, and then hand in a recording of our thoughts to Showbie. We could answer this anyway we wanted, in a song, poem, voice note, etc. I chose to do a voice note. This assignment although it was short, really helped me develop my curricular competency skill, speaking. 

The next step in my journey was milestone two, “using a lens”. For this milestone we were split into groups of four. In base camp we learned about the four lenses, environment, political, economic and social. Each group of four was given an article highlighting a current event and our task was to each pick a lens and reflect on the article through that lens. My group received an article about a buffalo being “destroyed” in Banff national park. Just from hearing the very bold title I knew I wanted the environmental lens, and my group let me take. I thought that because of my lens the reflection would be easy, but as I started to dig into the details of the destroyed bison I realized I was mistaken. I learned from the article that a bunch of bison had been realized into the park boundary’s to try to rehabilitate them into Banff’s natural environment. Unfortunately several bison had begun to wander out of the parks boundary’s and were therefore endangering livestock and people on private property. Sadly one bison had been euthanized as they could not lore it back into the park. It may have seemed like all I had to write was “the environment was damaged because a bison was killed”, but that wasn’t the half of it. I had to think about the impact of introducing the bison to an environment they had not been in for over 100 years, how to keep them in park boundaries park rangers could potentially damage the ecosystem around them and many more problems that these bison could cause for the environment. This milestone really helped me learn how to apply a lens to a topic and reflect on it. I knew that this skill would prove crucial for my final video. 

The alberta trip was fast approaching and I was so excited! Before we left though there was more work to be done, our third milestone, pre-trip plan. For this milestone we had to hand in a plan for our video. This plan would outline what shots we wanted for our videos, interview questions for experts, background research we had done and the general idea of what our video would look like. At this stage in my journey I was, to be completely honest, feeling very unsure and unprepared for my video. I knew that if I was going to do well in this project I had to get my ideas together. I spent many hours, writing and then re-writing my plan until I felt sure that I was ready. Although it was a lot of work, when I handed in my plan it was the first time in days that I had felt that I was in control and prepared and stress poured off me. This milestone was in my opinion the most important because it is what set me up for success in alberta. 

I woke up at 5:45am on Sunday but I wasn’t tired, I was to exited. We were finally leaving for our trip. The first day was so great! We got to see the last spike, three valley lake chateau ghost town and go for a swim in the titanic themed pool that was in the chateau. Right before went off to our rooms we started our milestone 5, daily note. Although this milestone technically started on the last day of school before we left for our trip, that daily note was mostly practice for the trip. As you could guess from the name, for this milestone we would write a short paragraph every day of our trip. This paragraph was in response to a prompt question given to us daily. Most of the prompts would encourage us to reflect on aspects of continuity and change in the things we had seen that day. It was also in this milestone that I wrote down my answer to the driving question. This milestone showed me how to see and reflect on Change and continuity in my environment, which would be a crucial skill as our whole videos would be based around those two concepts. 

Late at night we arrived back at seycove after nine days on the road. The trip was great but I could only think about finally sleeping in my own bed again. The first thing we did when we got back was write our video script, we had done our research, got our interviews and taken our shots. Before we made the video we had to know what it was going to be about. The first draft of my script was definitely rough but I knew I had a good base. After several revisions it was ready, and we started milestone five, identity video. I got to work right away. The strategy I used to make my video was to record my voice over first, then add my video clips. By doing this I could perfectly time by videos to reflect what I was saying. I have to say, making my video was one of the most interesting and engaging parts of my journey, if not the most stress full. The next day I shared my video with a pier and received much needed feed back. I got home and made the changes. I knew that I wanted my video to be almost perfect before I handed it into to showbie for feedback form Ms.Maxwell so I decided to send my video to another pier via text. We each watched each others videos and gave more feed back. After I made the further changes they had suggested I hit the share button to YouTube, sent the link to showibie and then went to bed. 

We had almost done it, I had answered the driving question, made my script and my video draft. All that was left was to get the final copy prefect. In showbie I got the feedback from Ms.Maxwell for my video draft. There was lots of feedback and I was ready to implement it. Most of it was what I had been expecting but one thing really embarrassed me. Instead of saying First Nations in my voice over, I had said first natives which is not a real term. This meant I would have to redo my whole voiceover. I have now vowed never to say first native again. Regardless I made my final changes to my video, posted it to YouTube and sent the link to showbie. 

So that was my journey. I learned so much from this project, from how to apply a lens, see change and similarity’s and understand how place impacts who the First Nations of Alberta and parts of bc are. I’m very proud of my final video, it showed the curricular competency’s listening and speaking, as well as change and continuity and answered the driving question all through the social and environmental lens. So I encourage you to go watch my video. thanks for reading my vlog, I hope who learned about my process to get my final video and enjoyed the story of my journey. 

Video link: https://youtu.be/9lQyuzHbuiE