Recently, we had to do a project about Confederation. To be more specific, we had to do was split into different, provinces we had to come up with our demands and pitch them to the class. Then we would be given feedback and come up with final pitches. Next the teacher would make a decree that had some of our demands, and we would decide if we were going to join. Finally, we had to make a commercial that included our demands.
Just before I get into talking about what we did, I think it would be helpful if I introduced you to the driving question, which was “How and why did Canada develop into a nation?” The reason I wanted to introduce the driving question before I explained what I did for this project was that I thought it would be more helpful if you could have time to think about the question before I answer it.
What I’m going to talk about is three of what I think are the most critical milestones in this project.
The first of those milestones being milestone one. The reason I think milestone one is so important is that even though you don’t do much for it, it explains what you are going to be doing and how you are going to be doing it. What we did for this milestone was after reading a short excerpt from a textbook, we had to write a one page summary about factors that led to Confederation. When I first heard about this milestone, I thought it would take quite a while because I’m a slow writer, but it ended up not taking that long. That was because we had specific font sizes, spacing, etc. The reason that helped so much is that when you are writing a blog at 11 font and spacing, it takes a lot more writing than with 13 font and two spacing. Overall I think this was a very helpful milestone, and I enjoyed it.
For the second milestone, I’m going to be talking about milestone 3. The reason I’m talking about milestone 3 is that it’s probably the most essential milestone other than the actual commercial. So, what did we have to do for milestone 3? For milestone three, my group (Angelo, Brenton, Felix) and I had to come up with our six demands for joining Confederation. We also had to make a keynote. Finally, we had to present our demands to the class where they would give us feedback. Overall this was probably my favourite milestone because we got to debate and discuss with our classmates about our demands.
The final milestone I’m going to be talking about is milestone five, perhaps the most important milestone. What did we have to do for milestone 5? For milestone 5, what we had to do was make our final commercial, although it was a little more complicated than that. What I mean is not only did we have to film a commercial, we also had to use a green screen and VFX. We had a lot of fun when doing this because although we were focused, we also did a little bit of goofing around with the green screen. Overall this was a very fun and exciting milestone. My favourite part was probably being able to learn how to use iMovie for green screens.
In addition to our Confederation Commercial, my group and I decided to create an additional video, telling the delegates just how much we didn’t want to join. Our teacher did not condone this, but thought it was pretty entertaining. We played it at our final conference. Warning the video is very loud.
In conclusion, I enjoyed learning about confederation, and I thought that it was quite funny when our class voted it down. If I were to do this project again, I would try to work on my presentation skills because I think I lacked a bit. I would also like to do a little bit more work on specific elements. Finally, I think I met both competency’s because I showed evidence though our discussions/debates with the teacher over particular demands and I showed create through our commercial and keynote.