How it Started, How it’s Going

Hello, and welcome back to the blog of the Nolan.

We have finally finished our first big project of quarter 3. This project was called “How it started, How it’s going,” after the meme that was popularized during the summer of 2020. If you have never heard of this meme, it’s basically a meme that shows a passage of time from one event to another, i.e “How it started,” and “How it’s going.”

Source

The other part of the project was all about worldview, and the events of the Renaissance and Medieval times. Now you might be wondering how that ties into a meme. Well the answer is that we needed to make a “How it started, How it’s going meme” based off of our worldview and Medieval and Renaissance events. Plus, the cherry on top was to put all of that into a virtual museum that would go live in 4 weeks. Yeah, we had a lot of learning to do.

Worldview Definition: Worldview is a collection of attitudes, values, stories and expectations about the world around us, which inform our every thought and action.

Source

 

 

First up, was worldview, which I think was my greatest improvement over this project. One of the big ideas for this project was the ability to create connections between myself, the work, and the world. At the start of this project I had no clue how worldview connected to my life. To practice this we made a worldview mind map, in which we connected each of the seven aspects of worldview to our life. You might be able to see that I struggled with this. Some of the examples didn’t make the most sense, and it took a very long time to finish. Thankfully we had more time to practice.

My Worldview Mindmap

We practiced this more on milestone one and two. For milestone two we had to create a collage of the important parts of my life, then connect them to each aspect of our worldview. During this process, we also learned about historical significance. Historical significance is what makes an event worth remembering, which I think can be boiled down to two main points. How influential the event was at that time, and how influential and widespread the event’s consequences were. These two points are what helped me figure out what events of my life were the most significant, and we would later use it to figure out what historical events we should focus our meme on.

(Click HERE to see my worldview collage and click HERE to see the writing that explained the pictures.)

While doing my collage, I still found it challenging to find good examples that connected to my worldview, but I still think I greatly improved. I understood more of why I was writing what I was writing. This milestone also showed me that pretty much everything is connected. Each moment of my life has probably been affected by multiple different aspects of worldview. You just have to look a bit deeper to find the connections, which has always been a skill I can work on. 

One Page From my Cornell Notes

That was the first side of the project, the second part was all about Renaissance and Medieval events, and why they were important. To do this we first learned about many important events. We learned about this using something called Cornell Notes, which is just a fancy way of organizing notes so they are easier to navigate and make sense of. Personally, I didn’t really like using Cornell notes, but I think the main reason why I didn’t like them was probably because I wasn’t using them to their full potential. Creating notes that are short and specific, but still easily recognizable when read is a really hard skill that I have yet to master.

 

Anyways, at the end we wrote a test in which we chose one Renaissance or Medieval event and showed why it was significant and how it connected to our worldview today. I wrote mine on the Black Death and how it was a key part in creating a middle class and getting rid of feudalism. This test did not go the best. I think I understood the historical significance of the events pretty well. I can see how one thing leads to another, and how that causes a chain reaction of events that leads us to where we are today. However I once again I struggled with connecting it to my life today, but it did tell me that I still had a lot of time to grow.

My history test writing👉  The Black Death

Finally after all that, we had to bring it together into one meme. We were put into groups for each aspect of world view. I was put in the Time group. Our job was to choose a Renaissance or Medieval painting for our “How it started” side, then edit the original painting to show how it affected our worldview on time in the modern day. To do this we tried to become an empowered learner, which means to use our technology to empower our learning. To do this, we used many new and old apps including Keynote, SuperimposeX, Pixelmator Photos to create our meme. We also used a new software called Artsteps, which was the software that we used to create the museum. We learned a lot more about these apps to be able to make our meme look good. One saving grace for my meme was when I realized that you could use the bandage tool in Pixelmator Photos to mask out pretty much anything. This was super useful, because I was struggling in hiding the chickens, without overcrowding the meme and making the original photo too unrecognizable.

(Props to my classmate, Dylan for showing me this trick. I’ll link his blog HERE if you would like to check him out)

We also had to create a written argument about how the Renaissance and Medieval events shaped a certain aspect of my worldview today, which I’m quite proud of since my first attempts at connecting worldview to my life didn’t go so well.

You can view my finished argument HERE, or you can go to my painting in the museum to see the shortened version.

After all that learning and hard work, we finally could start actually building the museum. To do this we were each put into multiple different groups. I was put into the Techie group which meant I was supposed to use the software to put all of the paintings and 3D objects inside the museum.  To launch our museum, we all hopped onto a online ribbon cutting ceremony over Zoom, in which each group would present what they did to help build the museum and answer the driving question. This was our first experience doing a Zoom event, and it was quite interesting and nerve racking. It was like having the pressure of talking to over a hundred people while only ever seeing my own face. In my opinion it’s a lot less exciting then doing it in person.

Anyways, here is my finished meme!🎉

How it Started,                                      How it’s Going

 

I’m quite proud of my meme since it took a lot of failed drafts before I got to the meme I have today.

 

Finally for the driving question. This projects driving question was “What can we learn from the past, and why does that matter to us today.” I think that we can learn a lot from the past. It is always a good thing to look back to see what other people have done, and figure out why we do what we do, otherwise know as our worldview. Reflecting on our past also gives us the ability to learn from our mistakes. If we didn’t know what happened in the past, we will more often make the same mistakes in the future. We can look back at the important events, and see what worked, and what didn’t. It also teaches  us a lot about our daily lives, and why some things exist. For example Christmas is only as popular as it is today because of how fast Christianity spread during medieval times. However I think the most important thing history can teach us is to persevere. The human race has made it this far, let’s not stop now.

If you want to check out the museum, it is live right now. You can check out every single meme from all of my classmates. There is also a guided tour which takes you through one by one with a voice note from the artist as well as a companion book with all of our world view collages. You can check them out below👇.

See you next time,

Nolan🖼

1 comment

  1. Love the shout out to Pixelmator Pro! Also, it looks like you learned a lot on this project. Thank you for sharing all your work and adding such quality enhancements.

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