Hello, my name is Kyra Williams, and I am currently a sophomore at SIUE, in my spring semester, navigating through the last month of classes. As we enter the last few weeks of the semester, a notably challenging period for college students, I wanted to share some insights into my experiences this semester.
My research team and I have engaged in significant foundational work, focusing primarily on our final project plan at the Garden. At the beginning of the academic year, we collaborated with our project partners at the garden and discussed the steps we needed to take this semester. Throughout this process, we have found great value in our meetings outside of class, where we discuss the legacy we aim to create at the Gardens.
However, one of the challenges we have encountered is the timing of our final project, ensuring that all team members, including our partners, can meet outside of class to produce our videos and edit the content. Despite these hurdles, I am optimistic about our progress and the impact of our work.
With that being said, I wanted to give you guys a little overview of what our project is going to look like. We are creating a “choose your own adventure” type of interactive learning platform for the garden. Our focus is on how extractive colonial practices have been rooted in the garden’s history; we plan on telling this story to the garden’s patrons.
At the beginning of the semester, my group members and I sat down and created a detailed timeline and checklist for our plan. This helped us greatly to manage our time and keep us motivated to complete our projects’ deadlines.
Our next course of action was to create our scripts for the actual modules. This took us a good week to finalize them and make sure we got everything that was needed to be said.
Our next step was to actually go to the gardens and begin filming the videos for our modules. We had been preparing for this moment for quite some time, making sure we had all the necessary equipment and a solid plan for each scene we needed to shoot. The gardens, with their vibrant colors and natural beauty, provided the perfect backdrop for our project. The idea was to capture not only the beauty of the flowers and plants but also represent what our overall project is about.