HUMANITIES CONT'

YEAR 7 HISTORY - ANCIENT EGYPT PODCASTS

In our first year of High School at McKinnon Secondary College, half of the Year 7 cohort spent the first semester researching and learning about Earth’s past. The topic of Ancient Egypt took up a decent amount of our History lessons, and it has certainly intrigued us a lot. 

The Ancient Egypt Podcast was the first Learning Task based on the specific topic and it was certainly a fun ride! We were introduced to new tools and websites as well as techniques and ways to research. The goal for this Learning Task was to create an Ancient Egyptian Podcast about a specific topic.

The first thing we did was create a list of information about the topic we chose, including a wide range of answers to the 5Ws (who, what, when, where and why). We collected them from different reliable sources and recorded the websites/books in the bibliography. It was the first time we learnt how to properly reference sources! After that step, we arrived at an exciting stage. Writing the script. We were to speak for 2-3 minutes in length: it was a podcast after all and we couldn’t be sounding like a short advertisement. 

Edit, practise, time, repeat. Soon enough, the due date for our podcast was a mere week away and off we began with our recording.

Most of us have never used or even heard of WeVideo before in our lives. WeVideo was the platform we used to record our podcast! From mummified Egyptians to the Ancient Obelisks of the past - we spoke about what we were most fascinated about in the topic of Ancient Egypt. After ensuring our podcast was long enough, we did the fun part: editing! We added in our favourite tunes and funny sound effects to add to the mood we were going for. It was an amazing experience for everyone, it taught us about the secrets of Ancient Egypt and modern technology of the 21st century.

I completed this learning task on Ancient Egypt and was really looking forward to it ever since we were first informed of it. I scrolled through the list of topics to choose from and settled on one of them: The Abu Simbel Temples. The main reason I chose it was because I had never heard of it before, and while I hadn’t known many of the other topics, this one was alluring in a way. So why not choose to research it? 

Just to give you some background information, the Abu Simbel temples were two temples that were built beside the Nile River (much like many other structures in Ancient Egypt). It has four enormous statues of King Ramses II at the front of the largest temples and the temples were in honour of his victory in the Battle of Kadesh. Completing the Ancient Egypt podcast was fascinating and recording it was definitely the funniest part. We laughed and misspoke words, creating bloopers and the best memories. 

The overall project was extraordinarily fun. The idea of recording a podcast was certainly a good idea because all the students enjoyed completing the task. Unlike the usual essay or standard test paper, a podcast on a specific area in History is a useful and enjoyable way to see how kids can collect information and use it in an engaging way.

I can say for a fact that I had a cheerful time doing the podcast and the whole of Year 7 doing History in Semester 1 would have too.

Good luck to the students who are doing history in Semester 2, it will be a joyful ride for you!

Alisa Krivulin

Year 7D Student