The Great War, The War to End all Wars, World War One

 

 

Hello! Welcome to my blog post, “About The Great War Exhibit”. Before I start, I’m extremely grateful to the Canadian War Museum for providing this wonderful learning opportunity to explore Canadian history and to learn about our country’s macabre story during WWI. With that being said, in this blog post I’m going to be reviewing the curricular competencies of this project, our driving question, which is the focal point of our entire project and now that we’re at the end of our project, I will answer this question. The driving question of this project was “How might we use artifacts and film to show the significance of WWI?”, and our product of this video was a 3-5 minute arguing and demonstrating the significance of WWI. These artifacts had been sent by the Canadian War Museum, as part of one of their highly interactive exhibits called the “Supply Line”. During this exhibit, the museum sends out “discovery boxes” which contain multiple artifacts dating from either WWI or WWII out to schools across the nation. The artifact I chose was the small box respirator, a type of gas mask used against poison gases during the war. In this blog post I’ll cover the driving question and which milestones I learnt the most from.

 

Milestone 2

What is the significance of my artifact?

For our second milestone of the project, we had to argue the significance of our artifact, using three specific pieces of evidence to prove our point. This helped us expand our research capabilities, our ability to formulate, propose and argue points, as well as our writing skills. We had to clearly and concisely explain our point, as well as connect our artifact to present day. We also needed to tie our artifact into the Canadian role in the war. Overall it helped us expand our skills when it came to making and arguing points. These news skills would help us in our upcoming video. I also had a fun time writing out and formulating my points, so I really enjoyed this milestone.

 

Milestone 3

How do I tell the story of significance about my soldier?

For milestone three, we built our screenplays. We used these screenplays to direct our films, and here the skills developed in milestone 2 come into play, expanding even further on our skills when it comes to designing and building points using solid evidence. We expanded on our research abilities to write and prove our points, we also continued to expand on our writing skills, as well as writing and telling a narrative through our screenplay. We also chose a soldier from the Canadian WWI archives, and we needed to connect our soldier to our artifact in a creative way, whilst expanding on our storytelling skills. The soldier I chose was named Charles McCartney Scott and served in the 7th battalion. His record was short and he was never promoted. However this did not mean eh was in significant since according to my research he likely died at the Battle of Vimy Ridge, one of the moments in WWI which helped created a singular and united Canadian identity. He also likely experienced chemical warfare, which I will explain the significance of later on. All this information and all these points are explained in much more depth at the top. We went through many drafts, constantly revising and changing our screenplays. Overall I found we continued to develop our skills when it came to building and arguing our points as well as developing our storytelling skills.

 

 

Milestone 5

The Video

Our video was the culmination of all of our previous work, and the goal of the video was to demonstrate the points we’ve designed and researched, as well as our story telling skills. We needed to demonstrate the significance of our artifact, as well as how it connects to present day and finally shows how it’s symbolic of the Great War. this is where all our previous work came into play and allowed us to build the best film we could. We also needed to creatively connect our artifact and soldier, which demonstrated our storytelling skills. Overall, in this section we combined all our learning into one piece, one evidence of what we learnt over the course of our project.

 

 

The driving question

How might we use artifacts and film to show the significance of World War One

By using the artifact as evidence of how the world was changed by WWI in ways that still affect us today through story. For example, I prove my artifact’s significance by showing how the heavy casualties from poison gasses are tied to the gas mask, and how the gas mask and chemical warfare is tied to the Geneva Protocol of 1927, a series of laws still in affect today that makes the use of chemical warfare as illegal, which affects our life today with the troops our country has fighting over seas and how if they were using chemical warfare or being attacked with it, the struggles they are fighting in would be a very different one than the one we see today. I also show how the gas mask is significant through the symbol it has become, a symbol for death, destruction and revolution, an extremely dark and simple symbol that conveys it menage easily; death. And the way that film ties into this is that it is the medium through which we convey these stories.

 

The exhibition

Demonstrating what we learnt to the world

On June first and second, we hosted our exhibition during which we demonstrated our learning to our schoolmates through short presentations and explanations of our artifacts and their significance to the story o WWI, as well as demonstrating the significance of said war. We arrived in early in the morning 9:00 am to set up our exhibition with the proper covid protocols, to showcase our artifact and to set up up any other props. As different classes and groups came in, we pitched our presentations to the viewers and if they were interested ew continued on with our presentation. We also played our video loop without audio, conveying our story through visuals. Overall from this exhibition we expanded on our presentation and storytelling skills as well as the culmination of our skills when it came to arguing and designing points since this is where we finally put those skills tot the test.

 

07:08 my exhibit

The entire exhibitor live stream

 

Credit to my friend Amy who designed this poster for our exhibition as well as an awesome blog post of her own.

 

 

A final reflection

My honest thoughts and reflections on the project

I really enjoyed this project. Both history and filmmaking are some of my passions and when I was able to combine the two into one single project and had the opportunity to produce quality work which I could be proud of, its everything I wanted out of this project. Not to mention the in-your-hands artifact is an incredible and wonderfully in depth way about learning our country’s past. Overall in this project I feel that we most developed our skills in research which led to the opportunity to improve our skills in building our evidence and points. However, this project like most ones we have done recently go by really fast and are quite stressful, but that’s a product of the current times with the quarter system. I am also disappointed that we didn’t get to use our audio during the exhibit, but the logistics wouldn’t have worked out.