How can a understanding of nationalism help us understand today?

Hello welcome to my blog, it’s me Randy again. Today I’m going to reflect on my last project of this quarter. In this project we studied nationalism around the world, and we were asked to make five different videos to answer the driving question. The driving question of this project was “how can an understanding of nationalism help us understand today?”
“throughout history many events were caused by nationalism, and many of those events still effect us today. so by understanding what nationalism is will help you to understand what happened in the past and the reasons why we think those events were worth remembering or celebrating today.”l came up with this answer after studying nationalism for four weeks. Within these four weeks we had ten milestones, and countless stepping stones, and most of them were about filming or planning the films.
In the first week we studied the nationalisms around the world, but first we needed to know what nationalism was. Nationalism is the pride and loyalty that citizens have for their country or a nation. After knowing the definition of nationalism we studied some simple cases that were caused by nationalism. In milestone one we were asked to make an interview video of our parents and see what they know about nationalism, so I chose my mom as my interviewee and asked her a few questions.

In milestone one we were mainly being assessed on our editing
skills and the questions that we asked our interviewees. I met all the baseline expectations on the Empowered Leaner and the designing text competencies, so I got a ☀️ for being accomplished. In the textbook there were many cases of nationalism, and after reading them, we all had our own notes on each event. For milestone two we were asked to choose one of those events and make it into an animatic video.

The animatic video:

In the milestone two we were being assessed on our story tab which was the planning stage, there were three competencies that we were being assessed on, use of evidence from various sources, identify continuity and change, and empowered learner. I met most of the baseline expectations, like planning out my story and citing my sources, but I didn’t do well on identifying the continuities and changes so I got a ☀️ and a 🌤. For milestone three we were being assessed on the same three competencies, but I took too long on the animation so I didn’t finish. In my animatic the animations was really good, especially the war scene, but I didn’t have time to get to the ending and explain the continuities and changes, so I got a 🌤, ☁️, and a ☀️. The teacher told me that there would be more opportunities to improve my grades on those three competencies later on, so I didn’t have to revise it. But anyways, after making this animatic video I found out that I was really bad at time management so I needed to make improvements on that.

weekly reflection:

Through milestone four to six we were asked to make a tutorial video about British North America, which was mainly about the confederation of canada. In this video were being assessed on four competencies, design text, identity continuity and change, empowered leaner, and the use of evidence and resources. In the planning stage we went through the story tab, the screenplay, and the storyboard. In the story tab I got all my sources in MLA citations but my story line was a bit messy. The story of mine was pretty decent, I planned to have a tutorial video of how to make canada(how canada was born) represented by metaphors of me baking a chiffon cake. The video was very creative and I met all the baseline expectations including the answer to the essential question “how did nationalism change BNA in the 1800s”, I’m pretty proud of it and I really recommend you to check it out. In the second week I showed a lot of improvements on time managing, but I wasn’t happy with my film planner, so I settled a goal of being more organized in the future.

my tutorial video:

Weekly reflection:

In the third week we were asked to make an explainer video of oppression in canada, and I chose to explain the story of Louise Riel. We read the textbook pages and made some notes on him, we were mainly being assessed on answering the essential question “What ethical judgements were made to justify oppression in Canada?”, citing the sources, and our editing skills. On Thursday we were giving each other feedbacks on our rough cuts, but the teacher didn’t want the time line to be too tight so we didn’t make our final video. My grade didn’t change because my rough cut didn’t show improvement on the previous competencies, but I did a good job on organizing my film planner that week.

Weekl reflection:

On the weekend and the fourth week of this project, we were asked to make our two last videos, one of them was the cumulative video which was about answering the driving questions “how can an understanding of nationalism help us understand today, and show it with a few examples. We were also asked to identify the continuities and changes that happened because of nationalism.

For the last video milestone ten, we were asked to make a reaction video of our interviewees reacting to our cumulative video. We were mainly being assessed on our editing skills. My mom didn’t really give me any reactions when she was watching my video which was a bit disappointing to me.

But anyways, after four weeks of hard work we finally completed ten milestones and countless stepping stones, the work we did were really incredible. My editing and time management skills improved a lot after making so many videos within that short amount of time, and I learned a lot form the textbook pages and the activities that we did in class together. After all it was a great time for me, and I really enjoyed the class working sessions that we had together.

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