 Who should I be? What is my purpose? Do I really even think I am? Why am I here? What am I? Who am I? My ancestors, do you know who I am? And welcome to Constructing Identity with an iPad. I'm Clara Kruger, and I'm a grade 3 teacher in Mousshtras, Saskatchewan, Canada. In this session, we're going to look at building identity. In that quote from Patrick Rothfuss, he writes, We build ourselves out of our own story. In the book Wonder, there's this incredible English teacher called Mr. Brown. And he begins his year talking to his students about who they are and what kind of people we are and about knowing thyself. And he says, And learning who you are is what you're here to do. And I agree with him. I think school is a perfect place for students to begin to think about and about building their identity. In this session, I'll show you a range of iPad apps and assignments that I use in my classroom to help my students construct their identity. Last year I took part in a project run by the University of Regina with funding from a Shirt Grant. We looked at how to use digital storytelling as a way of bringing treaty education to the classroom. For those of you outside of Saskatchewan, treaty education is a compulsory part of our K-12 curriculum in which teachers are required to teach all their students about the signing of the treaties between the First Nations and the Canadian government in the late 1800s. Now, for this project, we were looking at the identity question, what does it mean to be a treaty person? However, you could easily follow the same process and look at another question, such as, what does it mean to be an American? Now, I'm going to be honest. At the beginning of this project, I had a very minimal understanding of what it actually means to be a treaty person, just like my students. And that's how I presented it. I said that I would be learning alongside my students, and together we would build an understanding of what it means for all of us to be treaty people. Now, luckily, there's a school division in northern Saskatchewan who has posted a video on YouTube about what it means to be a treaty person. And that's where we started. On YouTube, I searched Horizon School Division Treaty Person. And the first result is the Horizon School Division Treaty Education video. Below it is the video that my class created as a response. If you watch the Horizon video, you will see that they make three key points about what it means to be a treaty person. The first point is that you don't need a treaty card to be a treaty person. The second point is that all Canadians are treaty people simply because we signed treaties. And the third point, because the treaties were signed to last as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow, we are all essentially treaty people until the end of time. So as a class, we watched this video a few times, and we discussed these three points. And then we decided that we wanted to make our own video in that same style. Now, my purpose for this was to use the video as a benchmark to see what we knew at the beginning of this project and then compare it to the end of the project and hopefully see some growth and a deeper level of understanding. So this video that we created is deliberately simplistic because our understanding at the beginning of this project of what it means to be a treaty person was simplistic. We are all treaty people and have to have a treaty card. We are all treaty people. I'm a treaty person. I'm a treaty person. The sun shines I am. What was the first digital storytelling product that we created? It turned out to be an excellent benchmark for what we learned over the course of the project for my students but also for myself going into the project I'd never used an iPad before and I'd certainly never used iMovie and so you can see in that movie it's a little rough kids' heads are cut off a bit the iPad has turned the wrong way and so it's fun for both my students and for myself to be able to look back on that project and really see the growth that we've had over the course of the year. You can find all the projects that I will be presenting on my treaty education blog at treatypeople.edgyblogs.org On the right hand side under digital storytelling there are links to each step of the project and the video that we just watched is step one. The second step of the project was to figure out what it is to be a treaty person and what is a treaty. So we looked at first just at the time aspect of that. So we are in Treaty 4 area and Treaty 4 was signed in 1874. So we thought back to what this area would have looked like at the end of the 1800s. In particular what Fort Capow would have looked like because that's where the treaty was signed. So then students were asked to create a character that could have been around during the time of the signing of Treaty 4. They then used the Puppet Pals app on the iPads to create a puppet show introducing their character. So the Puppet Pals app is really great to use. It's fun and flexible. You can use the characters that are already provided for your puppets or you can add a character from a photo. You just take a picture of yourself and you can cut yourself out. Then you can move your character around as you speak. The following is an example of one of our projects. Hi, my name is Misa. I was born near Fort Capow in a small TV. I am a girl, my hair is brown. I am 8 years old. I was in Fort Capow because I was getting flowers from this store. I'm excited because the signing of Treaty 4 is being signed tomorrow. After making our puppet shows, we went on to study the signing of Treaty 4 more completely. We studied the intricacies of the negotiations of the Treaty and then we decided to make a podcast using the GarageBand app. The assignment was for students to be in present day making a podcast and then in their podcast go back in time to interview the character that they created in the Puppet Pals project about the signing of Treaty 4 and about what it means to be a Treaty person. The GarageBand app is pretty awesome because you can easily create your own songs and your own music using a bunch of different instruments and also add your own voice and sound effects. Here's an example of one of our projects. Hello, there. This is news with Miki Z. I am your host. Today we're going back in time to September 15th, 1874. Oh, that was a bumpier. I'll have to fix that for the ride back. My friend Misa will be around here somewhere. We're going to interview her about treaties. Oh, there she is. Hi, Misa. Hi, Miki Z. What is a treaty? A treaty is a piece of paper that has a chief sign that says they have to give each other stuff. In the treaty negotiation, two spoke for the Canadian government. Alexander Morris spoke for the government. I just met him today. I think his clothes are kind of funny. Who did Alexander Morris come with? He came with 105 soldiers, two helpers, and an interpreter. I didn't see the soldiers, but whatever. What was the interpreter's name? His name was Charles Pratt. Who negotiated for the First Nations chiefs? Chief Kukush away spoke for the chiefs. What were you given in the treaty? There are reserves set aside for our nations, new tools to help us with farming and help with education. We will also be given money each year and the chiefs will be given new suits, medals, and flags. What did you have to give the government in your treaty? In exchange, we had to share our land. What does it mean to be a treaty person? To me, it means being a Canadian. What does it mean to you to be a treaty person? To me, being a treaty person means being bound by laws. Okay, it's getting dark now. I should go. Bye! A lot better than the ride there. Okay, it's end of the show. See you next time. We loved our iMovie app, the Puppy Pals app, and the GarageBond app. But by far, our favorite app last year was the stop motion animation app called Pick Stop. So stop motion animation is when you take a stationary object and you take a picture, you move it slightly, take another picture, move it, take another picture, and repeat. And in the end, you have a series of pictures that put together give the illusion of movement. So we decided to use the technique of stop motion animation as a way of documenting our learning about the history of treaty relations since the signing of Treaty 4 up until close to present day. But before we can get started on that, we really needed to learn the craft of stop motion animation. Luckily, Pick Stop is very straightforward and easy to use, and even has built-in tutorials that explain step-by-step what you need to do. Our learning projects are some of our early work as we learned how to do stop motion animation. This first project has no sound because within the Pick Stop app there is no sound. However, you can export your Pick Stop movie to iMovie and then add sound from there which we do in the next projects. Once we got a handle on how to do stop motion, we moved on to doing projects about treaty education. So, our first project is about the signing of Treaty 4. Day 1 of negotiating, Treaty 4. Hello everyone. Tassie, my name is Tessie. Hello, I'm Charles Pratt. I will be your interpreter. Hello, I'm Alexandra Morris. I would like to negotiate a treaty with you. Day 2. If you give us this much land, we will give you farming lessons, farming equipment, school for children and payment of money every year. We will also receive new suits, medals and play. Day 3. Do you agree with that Chief Kukishui? Do you agree? Can I have your attention? Our land is not forgiving. It's for sharing also and it's too much land. We will negotiate to share this much land. Are you good with that? Day 4. No, this much land. Day 5. No, this much land. Are you okay with that? Day 6. Fine. Your turn. Charles Pratt. So do your turn. Now I will go get my things. The end. Residential schools. Hi, Mom. I'm the Indian Legionary. I'm here to take your child to residential school. Here's your residential school. Where are you going? Here's letters from your family. Finally, the residential schools are closed. I miss you so much. Let's shut this thing down. After studying residential schools, we went on to look at the OKA crisis. This occurred in 1990 in OKA, Quebec, where the town of OKA wanted to expand their existing golf course to include the surrounding areas, which would have meant building on top of a traditional mohawk graveyard. In order to study this, the National Film Board of Canada's film, my name is Cahen Teosta, which is available online. This film was told from the perspective of a mohawk woman named Cahen Teosta, as she is arrested after the protest. What really resonated with my students was the fact that although everyone was arrested, most protesters were let go. But Cahen Teosta was kept longer than the others because she did not have a Canadian name, and the judge would not accept officially her mohawk name. So this is a stop-motion film that re-enacts the OKA crisis. Golfing's fun. We should expand. Yes, all in one of you. You can't build a barricade here. You can't build a golf course here. OK, mohawks, off to jail now. This is the army base. You'll be staying here for the night. See you in the morning, you mohawks. I've been Adam. Time to go. To the courthouse. These go last. Free to go. You're free to go. You're free to go. What's your Canadian name? Cahen Teosta. That's your mohawk one. What's your Canadian one? My name is Cahen Teosta. OK, you're free to go. Maybe that wasn't such a great idea. And that was the story of the OKA crisis. After finishing our unit on stop-motion animation, it was nearing the end of the year. And it was time to assess what we had learned about being treaty people. So for our final project, students were given the choice of using any medium to show what they had learned over the course of the project. One group of students decided to do a video similar to the one that we did at the beginning of the year, but what it means to be a treaty person. But this time, more in depth. In the future, as a Canadian, I feel guilty of the things that had happened. And I hope it doesn't happen again. We are all treaty people. I think we need people to take some of the first nations. Because of the residential schools, management and guide, the other first nations were sent to Florida. We as treaty people, we can make the future better than the past by being partners with the first nations. Another group did a common craft style video. What it means to be a treaty person. It is confusing to be a treaty person. We don't know why the Indian had nothing to do with the treaties. We feel sad about the kids that had to go to residential schools. The 60's group is confusing because it's good and bad. The good part is that the kids were placed in good homes. The bad part is that the kids lost their culture and no one could teach them their language and traditions. The OKA crisis doesn't seem fair to us because clearly there's a graveyard there. The graveyard seems more important than both. We want to make a difference. We want everyone to be treated fairly and we are going to learn from all these mistakes. We can make a difference. And one group wrote a song and produced it on GarageBand on the iPads. I see the stars they're flying up above what they are crying it's hard to think it's hard to fly oh Used to think the past was better but now it's worse. Sharing the land at first until the Indian act came. The act was bad. Now when I look back it always gets me mad. I see the stars up above what they are crying it's hard to think it's hard to fly oh We see the stars. They see the stars so high like we're on Mars we need to celebrate because we need to recalibrate I feel good, I feel strong but living on the sun sometimes feels wrong. I see the stars they're flying up above it's hard to think it's hard to fly So there you have it. A year's worth of digital storytelling exploring the idea of what it means to be a treaty person. Now the author Thomas King has written that the truth about stories is that's all we are. And I think if we think about that then it makes sense that as teachers one of our jobs is to help our students figure out what stories they want to tell. Thanks for taking part in this session of constructing identity with an iPad and I look forward to interacting with you either on Twitter or by email or on our blog. Thanks.