Dacey Presnell

Mrs. Boyd

Humanities III

9 September 2022

9/11 Memorial Video

For this project, I learned more about the history of America than I had previously known

and how the events of 9/11 affected the entire world. I collaborated with a classmate to

memorialize this tragic event that occurred over twenty years ago and we helped to educate the

rest of the school. The essential question for this project asked, “How can we memorialize the

victims and honor the survivors of 9/11?” Through the creation of our video, my groupmate and I

were able to answer this question indirectly with tremendous amounts of research and dedication

to learning the true history of the attack. We analyzed the events before the tragedy occurred as

well as the aftermath. Our exploration of 9/11 helped put in perspective the expansive timeline

and how this event changed many individuals as well as entire families’ lives forever.

The beginning of this project started with everyone researching their information

individually before any of us knew what classmates we would be working with. I started by

asking myself a very broad question, “What happened on September 11th, 2001?” This question

helped guide me through the many websites and documents that explained the event in detail. I

spent a lot of time researching because I wanted to make a memorial video that truly

acknowledged and honored those who saved lives, passed away, and all of the American citizens

who were affected by the event. All of the information I added to my Google Document was

extensive and detailed, and my groupmate and I only ended up using about half. I do not regret

that I did the extra research because I will now forever remember the events of 9/11 and how
dreadful the catastrophe was for all. When planning our video layout, my groupmate and I

decided to make sections based on the timing of all the events on that day. We started with a brief

overview of what 9/11 was and continued by detailing the very beginning of the attacks. By the

end of the video, we had discussed the after-effects of the event years later and made sure to

include how we truly honored those affected by 9/11; these people included first responders,

firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical personnel, those who passed away, and all of

the citizens affected by the attacks. We knew if our video got chosen to be presented to the

school, the timeline of the event would help every grade understand exactly what happened on

that fateful day. We copied and pasted all of our prepared information onto the Google Document

we had created to help us stay organized, then we went back and deleted any unnecessary

information, which helped us plan out the video easier. We both worked on the script at different

times, which worked out for us because we both would edit each other's work and continue until

we felt that our script covered all of the information that was needed to memorialize 9/11. Once

we completed our writing, we both realized that we had a hard time organizing the photos, so my

groupmate created a Google Slide, which helped us stay more focused and organized.

Halfway through the creation of our slideshow, we had a guest speaker come in to talk to

the class about 911. Her name is Mrs. Jessica Ross, and she has been working at our school for

several years now. She told us the story of her brother, who was a part of the police force that

went to the World Trade Center Towers right after they were hit. Through teary eyes, she

explained to us how brave her brother was and how many lives he saved that day before he

passed away from the collapse of the buildings. This story not only put in perspective how

terrible 9/11 was and how many people the attack personally affected, but also how the event

brought America together. Mrs. Ross had shown us a very famous picture of her brother of him
saving a woman, taken on 9/11. My groupmate and I knew that including the photo in our video

was necessary, so we spent some time deciding on the placement. After that, we started piecing

the rest of the video together.

As I started to import photos and video clips, my groupmate recorded her voiceover parts

and sent them to me. Creating the video took a lot of time and dedication, but I was able to finish

thanks to the clips and photos my groupmate had sent me. Once I completed the editing, my

groupmate and I watched the video back before confirming we did not see any changes that

needed to be made. Transferring the video to my Chromebook using a cord was simple since our

project was already saved on my phone. When I had done this transfer at my house, the video

played successfully, but the next day at school the video would not play. The worst part about

this issue is that the class’s projects were to be presented that morning, so I quickly uploaded the

video to Google Drive, which fortunately worked. After presenting our video, all of my

classmates and I voted for which video we thought would be the best choice to be presented to

the school. Later that day, I was pulled out of class to show one of the administrators our video.

They then confirmed that the video could be presented to third/fourth grade through twelfth

grade.

Through this project, my groupmate and I were able to use communication, creativity,

problem-solving, and collaboration skills to complete the 9/11 video to the best of our abilities.

We communicated inside and out of school to plan out the project and decide how much we

needed to work on per day, plus we both agreed on the timeline idea before we moved forward

with our script, which helped the writing process go swiftly. When coming up with the timeline

concept, we both used our creativity to come up with the different parts of the video, which

included the times that all of the impactful events occurred, as well as before and after the event
itself. We found news clips that fit the periods we talked about, which helped add a new element

to our video. Not many problems arose, but the few we noticed were fixed quickly. The issues

we ran into were all technical, and one of them was the lack of storage available on my phone. I

was having a hard time with the website that was suggested to the class that could be used on the

Chromebook, and I knew how to edit better on my phone. I fixed this problem by opening up

some storage in various ways, which did not take long. Then the only other problem was on the

day of presenting. The night before, I uploaded our project onto my Chromebook using a cord,

and the video worked when I pressed play. The following day at school, the video would not

start, so I had to think of a solution quickly. I first tried to upload our project to the files app on

my phone, but the video would not load. I then tried to download the video to Google Drive.

This task took around 20 minutes, and thankfully, the process to download the video was the

perfect amount of time. We played our completed project off of the Chromebook for the class

and other guest faculty to watch. Trying to make the video work was very stressful, but

thankfully we were able to present without any issues in the end and our video got chosen to be

presented to the school. If I could change the process of creating the video or the format of the

video itself, I would have included my groupmate in the editing portion more. Figuring out how

to do that was difficult, so I ignorantly pushed the problem to the side when I should have tried

harder to find a way we both could have worked on the video. I learned that I tend to get carried

away and take control of group work and I want to change this habit.

This project had a huge impact on how I view the tragic event of 9/11 and how I view

America as a whole. Some soft skills that I applied during this project included communication,

organization, accountability, and delivery. We both communicated well throughout the process of

this project, even when we were not in person to work on the video together. The only time we
had bad communication was when I edited the video by myself, which I should have resolved

immediately. We were both very organized with our research and the video itself. We created a

chart in a Google Document as well as Google Slides to help organize our parts and the timeline

of the video. We were never unorganized and were able to work together well. Additionally, we

always held each other accountable for the information we had researched, as well as the video

creation itself. The video delivery was the most satisfying part because we had put a lot of time,

effort, and energy into creating the video that would memorialize 9/11 in the most impactful way

possible. Through this project, I have learned a lot about what happened on 9/11 and the

after-effects of the attack. At the end of this project, my personal takeaway was that I need to

work better on my collaboration skills and not allow myself to take over the project. My main

and arguably most important takeaway was how impactful 9/11 was on America and how those

affected by the tragic event should be honored and remembered in history. With this knowledge,

I will continue to learn and help others become educated on this impactful day while also helping

to spread the history of America to those unknowing.