I had a fairly positive experience doing this project. It was a good difficulty because finding information to fill 6 minutes about one school and area was challenging, however not too much. There was a lot of information to be found about the school my group chose because of the tragedy of the 215 bodies found buried on the school grounds. Some of the facts and information about the school was harder to find because a lot of sites were only writing about the bodies.
The way my group approached the project was by assigning everyone an area to research and take notes about. We all would exchange notes we wrote on a collaborative word document. This made it easy to figure out what everyone needed to be focusing on and what we had enough written about. After the note taking we worked on making a script for our podcast and divided it up so that everyone would have a roughly equal amount of time speaking. The day after recording the podcast was edited and we were done.
Some obstacles faced were finding websites that wrote more about the school from just the bodies found. There were a lot of articles written about the school but most were about the children found. Another obstacle we found was staying on task for the whole time, but I think in the end we had a good balance of messing around and working so that it wasn’t boring but we were also being productive.
I have a lot more empathy for student who attended the schools after having done the project. I knew it was a really bad place and a lot of bad things that had happened there but after some of the stories people have from going there I feel bad. I wasn’t completely aware of how bad it really was and hearing the story from someone who was taken there so early and treated how he was opened my eyes to the situation they lived in. The person whos story I read luckily got out at 16 but there is people who were there for longer and dealt with even worse than he had and it makes me grateful for how lucky I am to not have to live like that.
Overall I enjoyed the opportunity to work in a group with my friends, learn about a school that I heard a lot about but never knew the smaller facts about and learn about an area that I have not visited yet is close to me.
Thank you for posting your “Indigenous Exploration” audio project (podcast). As the assignment was completed for both English 9 and COL, I have the following feedback for you on the post:
– All elements of the assignment’s post were well done and properly uploaded
– Reflection on blog somewhat explains process taken to complete the assignment
– Clear audio quality and delivery
– My only suggestion is do not laugh when you mispronounce words. Just try your best and move on, as the rest of the content was well put together.
– Podcast is well done
Overall, this assignment was well done. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Thank you!
Mr. Barazzuol
COL Teacher