Have you ever done a big research project at school? I did. It’s called Capstone, and the process was very hard, especially for me because I did it about the Chinese Exclusion Act. First, we had to do lots and lots and lots of research. Then, we had to write an essay based on a main inquiry question about our topic and after that, we had to cut our essay so much to fit it in our script (I had to cut a lot -I had too much background information building up to the Chinese Exclusion Act). After we finished the script, we were allowed to start our video. That was also challenging since we had to use Creative Commons images but there weren’t a lot of Creative Commons pictures of the Chinese Exclusion Act that I wanted to use or wasn’t useful at all so I ended up “stealing” a lot of photos. The final product was worth it, though. I also used Canva to make a brochure for my video and I think it turned out great.
At first, Capstone research was really hard for me since there aren’t a lot of kid-friendly resources with lots of information and the only one with plenty of information was the National Archive and some of the words I couldn’t understand. Like, there was this one word I didn’t know and I thought the Page Act was worse and the Geary Act was really good. Finally, I discovered a book called Exclusion and the Chinese American Story and it was amazing for me. Sadly, I didn’t have much time to research after I got the book so I didn’t read the entire thing (I skipped some not-so necessary things) and I didn’t add details but I worried I would need the details so I used these paper post-it tab thingies that were stuck to my Heathcote notebook I got at the book fair and put them where I left out some details so I could come back to them when writing my essay. After writing all my notes down, it was time to start my essay.
In my Capstone Essay, I answered the question, In what ways were the Chinese people impacted by the Chinese Exclusion Act. From all of my research, I can tell that Chinese people were upset but they didn’t stop trying to come to the US. I really liked writing my essay because I was putting all of my research into one and I really liked that I got a lot of research so my essay was long and had lots of interesting background information that built up to the Chinese Exclusion Act. What was challenging was also the fact that I had a lot of information. Sure, a lot of information was good since then it would have a lot of facts and be interesting. But, it took a long time to write my essay. I had to go back to my Capstone notebook to look at a note and then write it down on my chromebook then change it a little bit so it made sense in the sentence and didn’t read like “Horace Page came up with the Chinese Exclusion Act, President Chester A. Arthur signed it into law” and was changed into “Horace Page didn’t think that the Page Act was enough, so he created the Chinese Exclusion Act, which President Chester A. Arthur signed into law on May 6, 1882”. I had so much information and we only had 5 days to complete the essay, at school and at home, so I worked on it a lot (and didn’t practice my entire two hours of violin, which was a shame). In the end, my Capstone Essay was 3292 words which is about 658 words on average per day. Here’s my essay down here:
For my Capstone project, I chose a WeVideo instead of a Ted Talk because I probably couldn’t remember anything from my script. Since my essay was so long, I had to cut so much of my essay to fit it in the script and keep it under six minutes. I was devastated when I cut out all the parts I found really interesting, like Afong Moy or Anna May Wong. I had no idea what to cut so Mrs. Furgatch helped me a lot. I got 3292 words cut to 969 words. When inserting my script into the boxes, I would lose track of where I copied and pasted, so I highlighted where I had already pasted that section into a box thingy. The script took a long time to finish and I was exhausted when I inserted the last sentence. All that work was worth it, though.
WeVideo Script Template – Capstone Jennie
After the script, it was time to start the WeVideo! Since my topic is the Chinese Exclusion Act, it was frustratingly hard to search for Creative Commons photos (as I mentioned earlier). I’m glad I’m still a kid since I’m still technically stealing a photo but the people who made/own the photo can’t sue me. I tried finding photos for a box that wasn’t a Chinese Exclusion Act photo. For example, when I described Chinese people staying in America, I didn’t search “Chinese people in America during the Chinese Exclusion Act”. Instead, I searched on WeVideo, “America” and I chose one since, hey, I was still talking about the US. That helped a lot with the Creative Commons thingy. One of the problems was when I was talking about a specific person, they had few/none photos of that person. For example, when I searched for Hui Shen there were people named Hui Shen, just not the Hui Shen I was looking for. At first, I thought one guy was Hui Shen and tried to find Wikipedia’s source, but then I read what Wikipedia said and realized that was not the Hui Shen I was looking for (there’s no images of him anywhere because most scholars don’t believe he is real). Instead, I just put text, reading “Hui Shen”. A lot of my photos are way longer than six seconds, since, as I said, I had pretty much no photos. I animated some of them as best as I could, especially all the ones with only text. It was really hard for me to record my voice over since there were a lot of sounds every once in a while and sometimes I made mistakes since I was so nervous. Once, I recorded more than half of it and took a small break, but I didn’t press the button to save the recording, which was really annoying but somehow, I managed to record the thing right before the WeVideo due date. I had NO IDEA what to put for my music so I just typed in “Chinese music” because why not and I used the track Lotus Pond because it sounded pretty good and it was so short that I used it a bit more than four times. Making the video was pretty fun, it’s just really tiring and for me, requires a lot of stealing which I do NOT like.
Overall, there were many challenging bits when doing Capstone but it’s pretty fun. What do you think of Capstone? Would you pick Ted Talk or WeVideo, and what would your topic be?
My video:
My Canva brochure:
