life’s not a paragraph

we are doing a semester-long (and may i say, fairly intense) project in my advanced computer applications class. i think it may be a little hard to explain, but i am going to try.

our first step was to choose a time period. it obviously had to be an era that we were really interested in– we are going to be spending four months on it after all. i chose the american industrial revolution, more specifically the textile mills in new england during the first half of the nineteenth century. we visited the textile mill museum in lowell, ma when i was in sixth grade and it really made an impression on me. plus i read that dear america book (do you remember those books? they were awesome!) about the irish mill girl around the same time so it has always been an era that i particularly connect to.

step two is to create a narrative. we are essentially going to assume the identity of this person we create. this past weekend i wrote a research paper about my time period so that we become experts. i am sure that the longer this project goes on, the more i am going to learn, but for now, i have a really good idea of the events and influential people  of the era. we have to get really detailed. (my professor joked that we even needed to have a social security number haha) i have decided to become a young girl from a farming family in new hampshire who becomes involved with sarah bagley and the union-run movement for a ten hour work day (they used to work fourteen hours a day!) i still need to flesh out all the details… that’s my homework for the weekend.

once i have my persona and my story, i have to come up with artifacts. yes, actual physical artifacts. we have to have ten or so. with these articles, we are essentially going to create a museum exhibit about our person and our story. then the last step is to create a booklet about our exhibit and the story. it’s going to have photos of the artifacts, descriptions, and the story.

essentially, this semester we are acting as a historical figure, a museum curator, and a graphic designer. like i said, intense. i am really exited because it’s going to be really amazing at the end. but the road to get there is going to be rocky. this is going to be hard, but i really think i am going to learn a lot, which is the point. hopefully, i am going to come up with something incredible for my portfolio too!