Welcome to my blog post, everybody! In our latest project, we dove into European nationalism pre-WWI. Our end product was to create a YouTube video explaining a national movement in history. Prior to this project, I had never studied nationalism or, in fact, European history. This was a great opportunity for me to test the waters and learn some history!

To kick-start our project, we did multiple activities where we had to identify the cause and the consequence in the situation. I learned about how the cause-and-consequence relationship is important in analyzing historical events. Focusing on the cause and consequences effects of historical events has helped me understand the historical events I studied.

I thought that most of this project was independent work and research. We did do a lot of learning together as a class to help guide us through this new, confusing topic. As a class, we watched videos explaining nationalism and European history pre-WWI. These videos, along with our class discussions, kind of helped me grasp how nationalism affected the state of Europe pre-WWI.

To prove that our content is accurate and to show our own contributions, we learned about citations/ways to cite our work. This is an important thing for me to learn, as citations are really important in academic work, especially in college.

Another important part of creating educational content is making sure we are using good sources to ensure our information is accurate. To do that, we learned ways to check the reliability of our sources.

Back to the creation of my YouTube video! I chose Russian nationalism because I was interested in learning about Russian history. To begin our research, we used a questioning strategy where we had to create and answer who, what, when, where, why questions. The questions I researched helped me gain a deep understanding of Russian nationalism. For example, researching my question “Where does Russian ideology and beliefs play a part in Russian nationalism?” has helped me understand the core concepts and ideas of Russian culture and their beliefs. From that, I was able to draw connections and understand how these beliefs have affected nationalism. This questioning strategy has allowed me to understand the cause-and-consequence relationships in the events that shaped Russian nationalism pre-WWI, and how it affected Russia during WW1.

For my research, I obviously couldn’t just find the straightforward answer to my questions. I read sources and watched videos to find pieces of info that I needed. I tried to use primary Russian sources that translated sources, but I decided to go back to secondary sources such as Wikipedia and Britannia. I thought that doing that would give me a better overview of the topic because it gave more of a summary. Wikipedia had so much general information on Russia and Russian nationalism during the 19th and 20th centuries that I didn’t really need to use any other source. However, Wikipedia’s main page on Russian nationalism was filled with a lot of confusing concepts that I had to further research to understand what they really meant. I also just looked at the history of Russia from the 19th century and tried to find evidence on how they were connected to those concepts and nationalism. For example, a lot of events were related to the Tsar, Russia’s emperor. And I read from Wikipedia that unity and autocracy are a big part of nationalism during the Tsar regime, so I was able to make connections.

However, this project wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for me. For some weird reason, when I wrote my script for my video, my focus on nationalism was on the wrong time period. I started to write mostly about Russian nationalism during WWI. And even started doing research on Russia in WW1! Maybe this could have been for the better because I got a better understanding of the consequences of Russian nationalism. Regardless, I had to rewrite most of my script very late into the project and do a lot of cramming to finish my video in time.

For the voice-over for my video, I actually had to record it in many segments and I took many takes. I used movie clips of Russia during WW1 and actual footage of protests and such, which really elevated my video. I’m happy that my final video turned out pretty well! If I could change anything, I would add better and more imagery to make the video more appealing. As well as maybe a more well-organized way of presenting my info and sounding more enthusiastic.

Overall, I learned many researching, writing, and time management skills throughout this project that will really help me grow as a learner. This was my first time really studying any European history/a little bit of WWI during the 19th century, and I’ve got to say it’s very interesting!

Thanks for reading, Claire