Despite screaming kids, speaking in my second language and hours of editing, here it is. Enjoy!
I’ve had such a great time participating in this class and I would like to thank everyone who took the time to comment on my blogposts. Your contributions to my journey of learning was greatly appreciated.
Here is a short video recapping my learning project journey:
To watch the video progress from week one, you can check out my YouTube playlist, or read the posts below.
To keep with the theme of my weekly posts, here are some reflections.
What I worked on:
Wins:
Fails:
What’s next?
This week represents the culmination of my project. My aim was to complete my EDC2 bag and I’m pleased to report. MISSION ACCOMPLISED! Here are how things went in the final week of my major learning project.
My first task was to cut and install a piece of plastic to act as a rigid bottom to my bag. I scavenged an old piece of plexiglass that I has in my supplies and used the table saw at school to cut it down to size. I then used a piece of sandpaper to make sure there were no sharp edges. I didn’t want the piece of acrylic to make any inadvertent holes in my bag.
I then placed the piece of acrylic in the bottom of the bag between the outer layer of the bag and the liner I had completed last week. Once I had aligned the liner and the bag, I pined them in place to prepare for the installation of the zipper. Making sure I had everything aligned, properly oriented and securely clipped in place, I was ready to stitch the assembly. On the other side of the bag, I did the same procedure with one additional step. In the original plans, two nylon paracord loops are placed underneath the zipper to act as a clipping location for the eventual shoulder strap. Having purchased plastic clamp style clips to use instead, I cut out a couple pieces of fabric to act as supports for my clips. This little bit of improvisation went smoothly.
(Side note: Had I not gained the experience of the previous project, I’m certain this step would have never been so easy. This small piece of sewing improvisation gave me a tremendous amount of confidence in my abilities as a student of sewing.)
With the zipper installed, I felt a wave of momentum that called for me to finish my project. I should have kept calm and collected as this is the point when things started going awry. The spacing in my stitching started being uneven and I even missed the proper location to stich at some points. I started introducing involuntary pleats in my seams and started to get irritated that things weren’t going as quickly and smoothly as I wanted. I was getting tired and it was late.
(Side note: Over the many years I have spent working late nights doing hobbies that I love; I have noticed that working when tired is never a good idea. Patience quickly runs out, I rush through steps, I miss important ones and end up with mediocre work that is not up to the standards I set myself. At this point, I should have listened to my body and to my frustrations and stopped. Sewing, like many other practices like teaching, performing sports and playing music, having a positive growth mindset is essential. This is not achievable when the mind and the body are tired. There is no shame in taking breaks and going to sleep when contemplating a problem. A good night of sleep seems to always bear fruit in these situations.)
I decided to at least install the two zipper sliders and secure the zippers by sewing the stops at both ends of the zipper. The first stop was a challenge as the material was very thick and didn’t want to feed properly in the machine. The machine was struggling to get through all the thicknesses of the material, and in my impatience, I floored the pedal to get the job done. By doing so, my first zipper stop was crooked and poorly stitched. In frustration, I removed the stitching and tried again with a relatively satisfactory result. When came time to install the second zipper stop, the same problems arose but a major one manifested itself. Due to going too fast and asking too much of my machine, I broke my first needle when it slammed into the flat part of the zipper. That was the tipping point for me. Not knowing where the replacement needles were and not being in the mood to proceed, I left the project there and stormed away.
(Side note: Breaking the needle was probably the best I could have asked for, it forced me to stop my unproductive use of time. I often tell my students the following words of advice: There is no sense in staying up late to study as the mind is not in a state where that information can be retained. I recommend, the night before and exam, for my students to go to bed early and get a good night of sleep.)
The next day, rested and ready to continue with my project, I found a new needle, replaced it, and finished my final zipper stop without any issues. The next step was to install a long piece that was going to act as a tube to house the rods retain the shape of the bag when it opens and closes. I used the seam tape to keep the folds in place and sewed the tube in place in a matter of minutes. I was once again, one with my machine!
The last important part of the project was to make the shoulder strap. Not only did I have figure out how to thread the webbing through my clips, I had to fashion a primitive shoulder pad. There were no instructions on how to make said shoulder pad, but a quick scrub through my resource videos quickly gave me the answer.
The final part of the puzzle was to bend some stainless-steel rods for the openings on my bag. This was quickly done with a hack saw to cut the rods to length, a hammer and a vice to bend them into shape and file to remove the sharp edges. Installing the rods was effortless. Suddenly, my project was done. I had learned the foundation of sewing and felt an enormous sense of relief and an even bigger sense of accomplishment.
As I proceeded in completing my final sewing tasks related to my major learning project, I came to appreciate the mix of resources I was able to use to accomplish my goals. Learning how to sew is not an easy task, but with the proper resources and the proper support, it is well within reach for any learner. Although I had my wife available to support me, I honestly tried to fend for myself so as to explore my limits and fully exploit the tools and methods a new learner would have at their disposal without the luxury of someone with experience by their side. The main resource I used was YouTube. The diversity of available tutorials ranging from complete beginner concepts to more complex situations, I could always find answers to my questions on Youtube. The availably of open resources such as the creative commons patterns I used were very valuable to my development. I’m not going to pretend that after 7 weeks and more than 50 hours of sewing that I’m an expert. I still have many things to learn and as with any new skill that is acquired, new questions arise, and new opportunities emerge. I’m already thinking about the next project I would like to accomplish. I’m also reflecting on how these new skills fit with all the previous skills had already acquired in my capacity as a make. I have gained a new perspective on a world that was foreign to me and I’ve proven to myself that I have the ability to learn by using many of the technological tools we have explored over the past few months in EC&I 831. From social media, to open educational recourses and well beyond. Here are a few pictures of the progress I have made and the final product I have achieved.
One of my biggest challenges in learning how to play jazz music has been figuring out how to practice. With classical music, my practice has always been very “prescribed” – technical warm ups and practice, followed by working on specific pieces. This might include hands separate practice, slow metronome work and focusing on small sections. In fact, it was very rare that I would do a full run through of a piece because it was not an efficient use of my practice time. With my jazz learning project, I feel like I am always jumping to the “full run through” phase without taking the time to build a solid foundation. Looks like I need to take my own advice! This week I tried slowing down and focusing on some of the fundamental aspects of crafting a solo. My recap this week highlights that I have a long way to go!
What I worked on:
Wins:
Fails:
Resources used:
Learn How To Apply 10 New Piano Chords To The Jazz Tune Autumn Leaves
Next week will be my final learning project post. I plan to reflect on my progress over the last two months and make a plan for future practice. This is only the beginning of my jazz journey!
The term activism can encompass a wide range of interpretations as we can attest by the varied discussions that were shared this past week in our EC&I 831 small group discussions. Wikipedia starts its description of activism in the following way:
Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct, or intervene in social, political, economic, or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society.
As social media has taken an ever-increasing priority in the daily lives of an swelling segment of the population, it’s only natural that the idea of activism has established itself into it. Human nature leads us toward wanting a better world that better reflects our personal values and our personal situations. As the internet has become almost ubiquitous in all corners of the world, the panoply of values and opinions ranges all walks of life. From human rights to religious beliefs, from art to culture, the internet and social media provides a medium that allows society to debate and thus continually evolve the social contract.
When it comes to the idea of social justice in the online world, an uncountable amount of initiatives are continuously fighting for our attention. By the difficult to understand voodoo of social media and viral campaigns, certain initiatives gain notoriety and affix themselves in the psyche of popular culture. Here are a few examples of initiative that have certainly crossed your social media feed just to name a few:
As these online initiatives fight for your attention, others important initiatives fall through the cracks and never gain your attention. This reality in an unfortunate part of social media in that with the current structure provided by the big social media frameworks, media and information is being tailored for audiences thus providing a certain filter that can easily blind individuals to the true depth and complexity that makes up many social justice issues. As Zeynet Tufekci from Scientific American elaborates in his article: YouTube’s Recommendation Algorithm Has a Dark Side, the algorithm that recommends content from YouTube is structure in a way to lead users in very deep rabbit holes of content and often leads towards content that promote extreme views that are often unbalanced and heavily biased, thus inculcating erroneous information in the minds of its users. On a personal note, I had this experience when, out of pure curiosity, I clicked on a video denying that humans had landed on the moon. As a science teacher, I wanted to see first-hand, the arguments put forward by the creator of the video so as to gain an insight in this large piece of online subculture. In the following days, I had difficulty avoiding these types of videos in my Youtube Recommendation feed as the algorithm was constantly trying the recommend videos of the same type and genre. Had I not been strong in my convictions and knowledge about the issue, I can see how undecided minds could easily be influenced towards one side of an issue, regardless of which side is right or wrong.
Another more nuanced example of the same situation is the influence social media had in deciding the 2016 American General Election. Although there is much analysis that remains to be done to determine the real effect social media had on the decision the American electorate made, Hunt and Gentzkow in their article entitled: Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election, explain that social media is a growing source for news. With questionable sources of said news and the speed at which this information travels, one cannot deny that social media’s influence on society will continue to grow. The many nuances and the many biases that are present in many sources of information on the internet make evaluating social justice issues a true minefield that can be very unforgiving.
Social activism on social media is without a doubt very present in our daily feeds, but how effective can it be? In my option, activism requires concrete actions and changes in behavior. It’s easy to comment on a social media post, it is easy to change your profile picture and it is easy to retweet an article related to a social justice issue. It is much harder to have a conversation with political figures that have actual influence on the issue, it is much harder to write a letter to entice a company to change a behavior and it is much harder to get out of the house and act on what you believe is right. In my own situation, my conviction towards the use of sustainable renewable clean energy has led me to invest my own money in a solar power system for my house. This is real action as opposed to continually tweeting about the advantages of solar power. The inertia that often keeps people from real social activism is often referred to as Slacktivism. As Wikipedia explains it:
Slacktivism is a pejorative term for “feel-good” measures in support of an issue or social cause. Slacktivism is showing support for a cause with the main purpose of boosting the egos of participants in the movement. The action may have little effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfied that they have contributed.
This is not to undermine the value of sharing ideas, views and positions on social media. Awareness is without a doubt an important part of activism and cannot be underestimated. As a teacher, I feel conflicted in using my platform and my influence as an educator to promote any social justice initiative. Although certain initiatives can seem to be straight forward and obvious, other issues can be delicate and complicated. No issue more complicated that politics. In the last Canadian Federal Election, strong opinions and positions circulated in my school. I was often asked for my opinion by student. This was a trying time in that my convictions sometimes came into conflict with those of my students and, in many cases, their parents. I was very careful to not share my own views but would carefully guide the discussions towards the debate of broader ideas and the rationale behind such ideas. I encouraged my students to seek real and credible information to substantiate their positions and their arguments. To me, this habit of evaluating information, seeking it and basing one’s opinions on it is the basis of good citizenship. I cannot, in my own good conscience be a social justice warrior online or in my classroom without first guiding my students towards habits of healthy information processing.
Curtis questions in his blogpost about Activism: “Am I making a difference? Am I being complacent in taking the cause further? By posting on Social Media how can you participate in productive conversations online?” I tend to go through these same questions when confronting activism on social media. In most cases, I just don’t see the value in participating myself considering the potential risks as a semi-public figure in my school community. This might be a bias in my own mind since, as Catherine elaborates in her blogpost, there are many pros related to social media activism:
Social media activism can:
Spread a message to a large audience very quickly
Organize events easily (like the Women’s March)
Allow marginalized groups to express their views freely
As Brooke wrote in the conclusion of her blogpost:
As classroom teachers, we have a responsibility to present social justice issues to our students. If we chose not to participate, our silence indicates a clear message, that these are not issues we care to address and therefore, do not value (Source). If we choose to remain silent on these issues, we risk allowing our students to become passive citizens rather than justice- and action-oriented.
I feel the pressure of this responsibility and I feel like I must face it in my own way. In way that I will have true impact. These arguments by my classmates have pushed my beliefs to a point where, at the moment, I’m of the opinion that social justice and activism has an important place in the classroom. As much as I would like to take positions on certain issues as a teacher, I believe my job is to foster discussions and lead my students to making strong arguments based on good information. By promoting good social media practice and by teaching strong media literacy skills, I think that if I accomplish these goals, I will have done my part in promoting healthy activism and productive social justice activism.
The word activism makes me think about protests, signs, marches and fighting for change – trying to make the world a better place. But this is only one part of the picture.
Simply defined, activism is “taking action to effect social change” and involves efforts that “promote, impede, direct, or intervene in social, political, economic, or environmental reform“. In other words, activism can have both positive and negative effects on the social agenda of specific groups.
For the purpose of our class, we discussed activism through social media and were asked to consider the following questions:
Can online social activism be meaningful and worthwhile? Is is possible to have productive conversations about social justice online? What is our responsibility as educators to model active citizenship online?
What is social media activism?
“Social media activism is essentially using the platform of an online forum to lead or support a cause. It’s activism behind a screen.” (The Journal – Queen’s University)
“Bringing change or awareness about a cause through the use of social media, by posting or sharing ones thought about a particular event or issue.” (Life of Anna)
These definitions are very basic, but “social media activism” is somewhat self-explanatory – it is activism using social media. It could be liking or sharing a post on Facebook or using a hashtag in online posts to bring awareness to a particular issue. If you use social media, you have probably viewed or participated in hashtag activism:
You may have added a filter to your Facebook profile picture to temporarily support a cause. Or clicked the retweet button to raise awareness while drinking your morning coffee. The question we must ask ourselves is if social media activism is meaningful and worthwhile and looking at the positive and negatives is one way to explore the answer.
Pros of Social Media Activism
“Successful maneuvering of social media platforms creates significant changes in society through the impact of an individual who cultivates awareness and makes knowledge accessible to millions.” Human Rights Education Research Outreach
Social media activism can:
Using the power of networks, “online activism allows activists to organize events with high levels of engagement, focus and network strength” (The Conversation). The ability to share, like and retweet instantly allows movements and causes to gain traction very quickly and draw in a large audience. For example, when a tragic events occur, vigils are planned, shared and attended in a short time frame, all thanks to social media. Larger events are organized in locations all over the world through hashtags and social media posts.
Greta Thunberg stops by City Hall, tells Mayor Valérie Plante she’s “still very overwhelmed” by the march today in Montreal. Calls crowd of 500,000 “unbelievable.” #climatestrikemontreal pic.twitter.com/Mz8vYrjXjU
— T’Cha Dunlevy (@TChaDunlevy) September 27, 2019
Finally, the good, badly and ugly part of the Internet is that you can post and support whatever you want at any time. A positive example is that people all over the world can be part of Pride festivals, even if they are unable to attend in person.
“One of the greatest things about social media is the platform it can give to otherwise isolated and marginalized people. Entire communities have developed and grown together over social media, and this has exponentially strengthened many activism campaigns. Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter allow people to organize events and communicate on a medium that is accessible to anybody who has an email address, internet, and some kind of connectable device. This vastly increases potential audience size, and ultimately increases the possible effect that these campaigns can have on policies, politics, and everyday life.” The Power of Social Media in Modern Activism
Cons of Social Media Activism
“The ease with which current social movements form often fails to signal an organizing capacity powerful enough to threaten those in authority.” Zeynep Tufekci
Unfortunately, social media activism has drawbacks:
A 2014 Maclean’s article explains that a “slacktivist is someone who believes it is more important to be seen to help than to actually help. He will wear a T-shirt to raise awareness. She will wear a wristband to demonstrate support, sign a petition to add her voice, share a video to spread the message, even pour a bucket of ice over her head.” All of this takes place instead of offering time or money which could truly help a cause.
My classmate Brooke dives into a deep discussion of #slacktivism and a few articles that explain and criticize the movement. She included this image (shared in class by Dr. Couros) that highlights the problem with #slacktivism.
“If our desire for social change extends beyond the resolution of a single issue, we need to close our laptops, turn off our phones, and spend time in the presence of others.” – The Walrus
With the ease of liking and sharing posts or adding a hashtag, it is inevitable that the wrong information will be passed along. #FakeNews is a perfect example of deliberately sharing misinformation, which was particularly problematic during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. #Kony2012 is another example of a movement that exploded on social media without really understanding the true facts. Social media activism has the potential to raise awareness, spread a message quickly and help grow a movement. But it is important to not disregard the power of slow-growing, face-to-face, grassroots organization. Wael Ghonim (an Internet activist that helped organize the social media campaign during the #ArabSpring) discusses challenges facing social media today and how it can be used to promote real change:
Before we can have conversations about social justice online, I think it is important to discuss the concept of a digital citizen and to understand three different ideas of citizenship as discussed by Westheimer and Kahne in the article, “What Kind of Citizen“.
Katia Hildebrandt writes about the Digital Citizenship Guide in Saskatchewan Schools , which explains that,
“digital citizenship asks us to consider how we act as members of a network of people that includes both our next-door neighbours and individuals on the other side of the planet and requires an awareness of the ways in which technology mediates our participation in this network.”
With this knowledge, we are able to explore the possibilities of using social media to talk about social justice issues online. Below, I have shared Brooke’s (she made some excellent points in her post this week!) example of how each type of citizen may participate, using the food bank as an example:
The personally responsible citizen might donate money to the food bank online or share an article about how the food bank is in need of donations.
The participatory citizen might create an online fundraiser, like a GoFundMe page, where people can donate to the food bank and use their social media page to highlight some of the issues related to perceived injustices regarding food security. They may also decide to volunteer at the food bank.
The justice-oriented citizen might use their social media page to share potentially controversial articles, and viewpoints which spark discussion about the root causes of food security, inviting others to join the discussion and organizing followers to contribute to participating in working towards social change in online and offline spaces.
The conversations about social justice can happen online, but they are more effective when they are rooted in offline organizational efforts. Another point is that online discussions should take place with the intent to promote change or raise awareness, rather than use the post for personal gratification (for example, getting lots of likes or shares). But how do we teach our students to use social media to have meaningful conversations about social justice issues online?
Educator Responsibility
As educators teaching students who only know a world with social media, we should:
In Spring 2018, I participated in a joint Regina Public Schools/Regina Catholic Schools project called #YQRActivistArt. The project involved bringing the Landfill Harmonic Orchestra to Regina with an opportunity for our students to see the group perform live. To participate in the project, you had to commit to producing an art project in response to a social issue. Through planning and collaboration with other classes, our students chose social issues they wanted to explore and created an art piece to raise awareness about the issue. Every school did something different, and my students presented their projects in a school wide gallery opening:
An incredible display of art and activism by @Connaughtcomets students at our #YQRActivistArt Gallery! Well done
@RegPublicSchool @MrsChyzsClass #art #activism #artsed pic.twitter.com/CV2cL32nem
— Catherine Ready (@Catherine_Ready) June 4, 2018
The reason I share this story is because of the importance of teaching activism in schools. My students were engaged, motivated and excited to spread awareness and it allowed us to have conversations about meaningful and worthwhile ways to share information about different social issues. The guide, “Facilitating Activist Education” explains by teaching about activism, students may become “engaged citizen-activists – people who see themselves as capable of affecting positive change for social and ecological justice”.
By starting with offline activism experiences for our students, we can then move online with confidence.
“Edtech, at its very core, is about privilege” – Katia Hildebrandt
Hildebrandt explains that by participating in social media activism, we take a few things for granted, like access to educational tools, computers and the Internet. With this privilege, she adds that “we have a responsibility to risk our privilege to give voice to social inequities and injustices. We have a responsibility to risk our privilege to give voice to those who have no privilege to risk.” Furthermore, as educators we have the responsibility to teach our students about this privilege. Wasting our time with #slacktivism is not an option because we have the power and ability to promote real change with our access to edtech tools and social media to support these efforts.
Jeffrey Knutson explains that, “we need to teach digital and media literacy in the context of empathy and understanding each other’s differences. Talk about integrity, the importance of humility, and other important SEL (social and emotional learning) skills while working on digital citizenship and media literacy.” He also provides two Common Sense Education tools to lead the teaching and learning: SEL Toolkit for Educators and the Digital Citizenship and SEL Guide.
Finally, Yes Magazine shares four tips for using social media activism:
To engage our students, we need to provide relevant tools and information to “speak their language” (using social media and edtech). Through conversations of digital citizenship and offline activism, we have the ability (and responsibility) to mold the next generation as informed and compassionate citizens who care about social justice issues. Let’s use social media to make the conversation relevant for our youth.
“Social media activism is great for so many reasons: It is more widely accessible, it gets conversations started, it sustains momentum, and it helps empower people who may have never thought of themselves as activists.” – Yes Magazine
Until next time,
As I started my remix of the EDC2 this week, I initially thought I had bitten off a bit too much than I could chew by trying to undertake a project like this one. Upon watching all the tutorial videos, I was feeling a certain sense of anxiety and dread that I would fail. (This is something I see quite often when teaching high school science.) I often had to settle down and tell myself, as I often tell my students, let’s take this one step at a time. There is no sense in worrying about step 32 when steps 1 to 31 have yet to be completed. With this feeling of anxiety and dread, I buckled down and got to work while telling myself: there is no shame in failing, as long as you do your best!
Step 1: Preparing my fabric
Last week, I was thinking that using canvas as my main fabric was the way to go, but when looking for canvas to use to my bag, I found it was hard to find exactly what I liked. The canvas material that I found was very expensive and it wasn’t quite the texture I wanted. Before making a decision, I decided to go look at the remnants section of the store and found some denim. After much consideration, denim was much more affordable and provided the rigidity and the structure I desired. Having cut all the patterns last week, a few hours of cutting and all my fabric was ready to go.
Step 2: Sew the pocket
The first task I undertook was installing the pocket on the liner of the bad. Positioning the pocket took a bit of measuring, but once everything was positioned, a few pins kept everything in place. I first folded over the edges and stitched them all the way around. This stops the material from fraying on the edges. Then I stitched the pocket to the liner remembering to not stitch the top. I added a couple vertical stitches to keep pens and markers in place. Although the stitching is not the nicest, as this will be inside the bag. I’ve accepted this result as a learning experience and decided to press on.
Step 3: Attaching the bottom to the outer bag
The next step was to attach the bottom piece to the outer bag. Although relatively straight forward of a task, I needed to fold over the edge of the denim and met a major obstacle. As once tries to fold over denim, the material has a tendency to regain its shape thus not keeping the fold. I had seen in one the Youtube tutorial videos someone use some special tape to hold the fabric in place when preparing it to be sewn. After a bit of rummaging in my wife’s supplies, I found said tape and was amazed at how well it worked! Not only did it keep everything in place, the constant width it provided made for a nice consistent professional look. I’ll keep that special tape in my toolbox for years to come! With everything taped up, top stitching the bottom to the bag went perfectly.
Step 4: Make the handles
This step was and interesting one for me. To make the handles, I first had to fold over strips of material and stitch them in a manner to make a long tube. Using fabric clips to hold everything in place, the stitching was rather simple to accomplish. The difficult part was turning over the tube to get the proper side on the outside while hiding the seam. A long stick proved to do the trick.
Once the tubes completed, I had to fold over a small section in the middle of each tube and stich them together to make the place where the handles are to be grasped. I was surprised by how well this technique worked and how it made the handles sturdier and more comfortable to grasp. I’ll never look at bag handles in the same way again!
Step 5: Attach the handles to the bag
Positioning the attachment points for the handles was simple. The pattern provided the exact locations. I simple overlaid the pattern on top of the bag, poked holes in the corners of the areas where the handles were to be attached and drew marks with my white pencil that I had retrieved from my sewing kit. I then traced the positions and removed the pattern. Now that I had clear locations for my handles, I need to attach them. I positioned them with sewing pins and stitched them with a rectangle stitch pattern with and x pattern within. As I got to the 4th handle, I was pretty happy with my improvement.
(Side note: At this point of the project, for the first time, I had the feeling of being one with the sewing machine. My old Signer was now an extension of my mind and by body. I felt complete trust in its abilities and the machine worked with me rather than against me. Perhaps this is the point where my anxiety started to fade, and I started having fun.)
Step 6: Stitching the sides of the bag and the liner
This step was simple, stich the sides of the bang and the liner. Making sure to hit my marks it went perfectly. The next part of this process proved to be a bit more difficult. I needed to add a second stich along the inside of the bag to provide strength to the structure. This required me to sew inside the bag and I had difficulty seeing what I was doing and it blocked much of the light from getting in. To solve this problem, I retrieved my trusty headlamp from my toolbox and my world was illuminated! (This is the type of problem solving I love!) Doing the inside stich went like a breeze.
Sept 7: Bottom stitch and flip
The last step was to do the final bottom stitch of both the bag and the liner do the final flip to reveal the bag in its half-done glory!
Next week: zippers, straps and clips!
As we near the end of our learning projects, I started working on my final goal piece, the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves“. This has always been one of my favourites and my earliest introduction to jazz music. After a little bit of analysis, I found that it follows the simple 2-5-1 chord progression I started working on at the beginning of my learning project.
I love that I can start transferring my new skills to different pieces! Here is my progress this week:
What I worked on:
Wins:
Fails:
Resources used:
Next week I will continue with Autumn Leaves, but I plan to go back to only using a lead sheet and begin practicing scales for improvising.
This week was all about rootless voicings on the piano. I carried on with my work on ‘Misty’ from last week and tried a different style of comping. I originally planned on introducing another song this week, but I found the rootless voicings to be challenging and require more time. I tried figuring out the voicings in my head at the piano, but it was too much to think about. So I decided to break it down by going back to the theory basics and writing out each chord, determining the root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 13th. Then, I wrote out the chords transitions so that there would be nice voice leading and common tones between the chords.
A side note about voice leading: I studied a lot of Bach chorales in my first and second year of music school, with the goal of understanding proper voice leading. There are lots of “rules” with voice leading, but they help with problems like:
“smoothness, independence and integrity or melodic lines, tonal fusion (the preference for simultaneous notes to form a consonant unity), variety, motion (towards a goal)” – Open Music Theory
Open Music Theory is an open source textbook (open educational resource). Cool!
In short, good voice leading makes music sound pleasing to the human ear! I really like the end result of my progress this week:
What I worked on:
Wins:
Fails:
Resources Used:
Next week I am going to begin my final piece as part of my learning project. I am looking forward to learning my favourite jazz standard, “Autumn Leaves”.
This week was one of preparation. As my projects increase in complexity, the time required for preparation seems to also increase.
As I undertake my final project, which is making an EDC2 from Savage Industries, I’m realizing that a big part of sewing is not really sewing. Gathering the required materials and preparing them takes longer than sewing the project itself. This week’s tasks were categorized in three parts: gathering the materials, preparing the pattern and mental preparation.
(Source)
Gathering the materials proved to be more difficult than I initially thought. In my mind, a quick trip to the fabric store was all that was needed; however, this was not the case. As I proceeded through the list of things to find and acquire, it became apparent that choices had to be made. As I decided to source the materials locally, I had to modify the supply list to products that were immediately available. Steel hooks were one the list from the pattern maker, I decided to go with plastic clips as an alternative as they are more economical and were immediately available. The zipper I needed wasn’t available, therefore I decided to wait until I’m further in the project as it’s not an essential until much later in the construction process. The materials that were recommended was used sailcloth, given we live in the middle of the continent, let’s just say it was impossible to find. Therefore, I decided to substitute sailcloth for canvas. For the bottom part of the bag, I decided to repurpose and old pair of denim jeans. These are but a few of the numerous adaptations and decisions I had to undertake over the past week. Here goes to hope that these decisions won’t impact me too negatively later on into the process of making my bag.
The preparation of the pattern was smooth sailing considering the ordeal I went through last week. (This goes to show how with I’m reapplying the concepts I’ve learned from the past.) I printed the pattern on 11’ x 17’ paper using Adobe Reader and with the straight edge, the cutting wheel and a bit of tape, assembled the pieces to make a full-size pattern.
*(Side note: Early on in the process, I was made aware quite clearly by my wife that certain cutting appliances were exclusively for fabric and others were exclusively for paper. It turns out, paper, which is made of cellulose, is extremely hard on cutting edges thus dulling blades quite quickly. I was reminded of this lesson by the following tweet from @courosa)
I prepared a time-lapse video showing the process of cutting the pieces of the pattern that I had previously assembled.
The final part of the project was mental preparation. As building this bag is much more complex than my previous project, I needed to familiarize myself with the process of assembly from people who have already accomplished this project. I therefore turned to Youtube and found a selection of excellent videos of people who undertook this project. The initial video I watched was the original video of Adam Savage assembling the bag himself. It’s a fantastic step by step process that goes in depth on how to assemble the bag. There are certain parts that were hard to follow but overall, it was an excellent starting point.
My take on Adam Savage’s EDC2 bag// sewing by Make With Miles was a fantastic video where many different substitutions were made from the original plan. It gives a nice step by step process. The author’s father owns a sewing based business, consequently, he used many types of machines that I don’t have, and he used a few procedures that I could not use in my situation as a beginner.
Adam Savage’s EDC 2 Bag in the style of The Martian by Malt and Make is another video I appreciated as it clarified many of the difficult to understand parts of the process. I also appreciated his approach in explaining the intricacies of assembling the bag.
Finally, the last video I watched was Making my own version of Adam Savage’s EDC.ONE by Crafts by Ellen. Another step by step video using other techniques that are different from the other two videos. It’s apparent that the author is very experienced in sewing and the quality of her explanations and work is self-evident.
With all these videos, I feel like I’m on the path to success as I have all the support I will need to achieve the result I’m wanting to achieve. Many unknows will undoubtedly appear in the next week, but as I’m a journey based on open education, I’m sure I’ll be able to find the answers I need somewhere online. I’ll end this post by showing the message inscribed in the pattern of my project written by Adam Savage. I found it so appropriate when considering OEP from this week.
With a message like this from Adam Savage (of Mythbusters Fame), how can one not become a bit exited to get back to work!
