Category: Learning Project

Finally at the end of the semester and our learning journey for this class. At the beginning when I chose to learn how to braid, more specifically a three strand braid, I was not feeling the most confident because my previous attempts were not very successful. However I thought this was a good time to practice, take my time and learn from making mistakes. Four months felt like it was an eternity but it really feels like we just started recently. 

When I had decided on what I wanted to do for this assignment, I asked my partner and people I knew if any of them had a lead on a mannequin head I could use to practice. I didn’t really want to subject my partner to weeks of hair pulling pain as I learned step by step! So I was lucky enough to be able to find a friend who had one from her time as a hairstylist. 

For my first few weeks of my learning journey I looked to two Youtube videos, How To Braid Hair For Complete Beginners and 4 Basic Braids For Beginners  that helped me get started. As I kept learning and practicing I was able to use the videos to refer back to because they contained great tips on the basics. And really what i needed to keep practicing was the fundamentals to eventually get better at braiding.

The Rundown

My first and second weeks of my learning project posts were partly a reflection on what I thought beforehand, what I expected throughout the learning journey and what my goals were for the end of it. In week 2 is when I began to

• find resources like How To Braid Hair For Complete Beginners and 4 Basic Braids For Beginners 
• began to actually practice braiding

In week three I stumbled on a new resource, aiiprofessional.com,

One of the most useful bits of help came from this site because it had some very important tips that I would recommend to everyone trying to learn how to braid.

1)Practice as much as you can

2)Always prep the hair (slightly damp hair/combed)

3)Create neat, even sections when making your three strands

4)Find a rhythm: find a pattern that works for you when weaving the braid and repeat it

5)Maintain a solid grip on each section, especially the center section

In week four I chose Imovie as a form of technology I wanted to explore but had not used before.

My trailer actually turned out okay for someone who does not have much experience editing videos or making videos at all. As I have mentioned before I appreciated Imovie because of how intuitive and easy to use it felt, maybe it is because I am so used to the apple ecosystem?.. but thats a WHOLE other conversation about the digital world. In discussing the SAMR model, I commented on how Imovie could be used in both the substitution and modification section of the model which attests to its adaptability.

My week five post was a response to a helpful comment I had gotten on my previous post.

Being hard headed, I had figured that combing the hair would be good enough to get me through all my braiding practice. I had read on the websites I had been using for resources that you could comb/wash the hair to get better results and for some reason I decided it was either or.

Dumb mistake! But I knew it was easily corrected

So this week I decided I was going to start taking the advice and it was for sure a benefit to my overall practice as the semester went on.

In week six I found The Animated Knots website as a new resource to help my practice.

I liked this resource because it was a different material they were using for all their visual and instructions(rope) so I felt like it was a bit of a different perspective on what I was doing but using the same fundamental skills. Like a baseball athlete transferring their learned skills to the game of cricket, the fundamental skills remain the same.

Week seven was one of the harder weeks of the semester for me. A lot of things due, busy with work, busy with home life and not sleeping enough!

I decided to take a break from my normal three strand braiding because I was starting to get just a little bit frustrated. I thought that I could still practice the skills, try a different style of braid, and hopefully an easier style of braid so I could gain some confidence in my development.

It was a successful day and choice for me as I felt happy with my end product doing this style of braid, it was much messier than my previous tries. It was quicker to finish so I was able to practice more time and it is something I always try to do when I feel stumped, just do something similar but not exactly the same.

In my week eight post I did a review of the resources I had used this semester that I found the most useful. The four I landed on were

• How To Braid Hair For Complete Beginners and 4 Basic Braids For Beginners 
• aiirprofessional.com blog
• My braiding trailer / Imovie
• The Animated Knots

And in my ninth post it was finally time for the big test at the end of the journey, braiding real hair on a real person!

This was the goal I had set at the beginning of the semester, to try to braid my partners hair and it not be a terrible mess.

Overall it was a big improvement from my previous attempts before I started all this practicing. The beginning was probably the easiest part for me as I had started off in a good rhythm but towards the middle it started to fall off the rails a little bit. I think what happened was my partners hair is much longer than the doll I was practicing on so my finger and hand stamina unfortunately wavered towards the middle and end.

From my partners perspective, she complimented me on no longer pulling the hair so much from being stressed about not knowing what I was doing, making sure to comb it and keep it moist with a spray bottle or wash beforehand, and taking my time when I made mistakes.

For my tenth and final post, the one you are reading RIGHT NOW,  it goes through my learning journey through this class and the resources I have found along the way. I wont say too much about that because you have just finished reading it.

Final Comments

In the end, I found this journey to be rewarding and fun because we were able to choose what we wanted to do, how we wanted to document it and how we would go about learning it. Like we have learned many times in the education program, giving students agency and choice is very important to creating more confident and independent learners so that was a part I certainly enjoyed.

I found that online in the digital world the issue for me was trying to navigate through the endless amounts of videos and websites available to find the best ones that work for my learning style. Once I was able to filter through the stuff that I could see was not what I was looking for, my chosen resources carried me through the semester and I can say today that I do feel like I am a much better braider but also learner after this experience because I was able to take most of the control in my learning journey.

Thanks for reading everyone, all the best in your future !

Through my braiding journey this semester I have gathered a good pool of resources that have helped me go from mostly hopeless to somewhat proficient at braiding long hair! It was a great journey that felt like a mix between fun and work because of course I wanted to challenge myself a bit to see how much better I could really get.

If I could give it a number I would say I started at a 2 out of 10 for my braiding skills and am now sitting comfortably at a 6 out of 10! All in all I would call that a success.

These two videos were really the foundation for my braiding practice throughout the semester. I was lucky to have found them first week but it was after a search through youtube and instagram so a little persistence also paid off.
Both of these videos have clear instructions, visuals to match, and a clear explanation of what to do. I think for anybody trying to learn how to braid from almost scratch, they would find these videos to be exactly what they were looking for from a teacher. I referred back to them each week as I practiced and used the 4 basic braids for beginners video to help guide me trying to do a two strand braid near the end of the semester.

Another useful resource was the aiirprofessional.com blog called “How To Braid Hair: The Ultimate Guide For Beginners”

Complete with videos, step by step instructions and many styles to try out, the website had some handy tips for beginners.

1. Practice as much as you can
2. Always prep the hair (slightly damp hair/combed)
3. Create neat, even sections when making your three strands
4. Find a rhythm: find a pattern that works for you when weaving the braid and repeat it
5. Maintain a solid grip on each section, especially the center section

For me number the only ones I was getting right was 1 and 4, but the rest I found I had to work at. Keeping the hair neat was the bane of my existence for a few weeks and still is. But these tips were a big help for sure.

My braiding trailer using Imovie was one of my best creations of the semester

As someone who had never used Imovie before it was a fun, new experience that showed me how user friendly Imovie is. Those pre made templates really are amazing and now I can show others this easy to learn way to make cool visual representations.

My last resource I wanted to share was The Animated Knots website. This resource has instuctions and animations on how to different types of braids and knots.

While the instructions and visuals are all done with rope, the basic idea is still the same so it fit well with my learning project.

These resources provided a solid foundation for my learning project this semester and I encourage anyone looking to learn braiding to use one or more of them because they are easy to understand and encourage you to work on the basics.

So as the semester wraps up and we get closer to the end of our learning project, I think it makes sense to either challenge yourself with doing something new in your learning journey. For me, I have planned since the start of my journey to at the end attempt to do a good braid with real hair. This week I took my first run at taking the next step learning how to do a three strand braid and overall it is not the greatest first attempt but it honestly went better than I expected! As you can tell, it did not turn out like the picture I was using for a guide haha.

I wanted to get a picture of my first attempt as soon as I finished so I could get a good idea of where I have improved. I know that before doing this project I would not even have been able to keep the hair apart this well or do more than a few weaves before getting lost and a little frustrated. My partner mentioned that I was a lot more relaxed now when doing it and wasn’t just tugging her poor hair as much in my attempts to keep the hair apart and neat.

It is also important to note that my partners hair is like 4 feet long (slight exaggeration) so for my first try I think I may be punching above my weight class for where my braiding skills are at the moment. Nevertheless, it was a good experience for me this time around and I am aways someone who doesn’t mind messing up because it is good to learn from your own mistakes and come back better. As the semester wraps up, I am feeling happy and accomplished on where this project has taken me because I have been able to learn a skill that I previously did not have.

This week in the midst of practicing braiding, I started to feel a  bit frustrated and irritated with the whole process! Instead of just saying ‘F’ it , I felt like maybe doing something similar but not the same thing would help me stay on track but maybe be less frustrating to work on.

I figured I would go down to trying to make a braid with just two strands of hair because it seems like an easier process while still incorporating the same skills I use during the three strand braiding.

Recently the bane of my existence has been trying to keep the hair strands separated throughout the whole process. I don’t know if it is just me having clumsy fingers or being too careless but my biggest hurdle now is not the time it takes, the technique or know how but keeping everything apart. It is certainly frustrating at times because it seems like such an intuitive and easy part of the process when I watch videos of others braiding. I assume that like anything we do with our hands, proficiency comes with a lot of practice and consistency over time.

I am staying confident and staying the course because putting it in perspective when I first started braiding the whole process to me was unfamiliar and strenuous because it was not something I had much practice doing. Now that there is only one element of the process that I feel that way about I think shows the progress that has been made in these couple of months.

Practicing the two strand braiding was a nice break from the norm and I feel like it helped me brush up on my skills and confidence in the process of braiding. By the end of my 3rd attempt at 2 strand braiding I definitely felt more competent in my hair braiding abilities! (whether this was warranted is still to be seen lol) Below is my last attempt at it and i am fairly happy with the result, even the messiness of it is minimal compared to some of my three strand braids. I think this will be something I will throw in each time I practice to split up the tasks I am doing to not be the same thing everytime.

As the semester end approaches I am left with a few goals I want to accomplish through this project. First I would like to do one final braid that is tight, neat and not messy at all! God knows it will be an uphill battle. And secondly, I want to try to braid someone’s actual hair because I know it is so much different than using a mannequin especially cause you can’t just pull someone’s head around all care free. I am still using one of my original youtube resource from the first week and I am happy with that choice because it is simple and straightforward, but then if you look at that channels other videos they demonstrated how to do many different types of braids and hair styles. If I want to continue improving and expanding my braiding skills then it is a great resource that would help accomplish that.

This week has been a long one as I was sick for a few days but have finally been able to bounce back over the weekend. Today I was able to sit down and do some braiding and find another online resource to add to the growing list. The animated knots website is a cool resource that has instructions and animations on how to do many different types of braids and knots. While their instructions are done with ropes, the basic idea is still the same so it fits well with the project.

More than halfway through the semester and I am feeling  a lot more natural at braiding and I am happy to say my finger stamina has gone up quite a bit too. I did not expect to have tired and sore fingers from braiding but it happened haha. Now with the additional routine of washing the hair before each time and using the spray bottle to keep it damp it has become a lot smoother of a process.

My goals for the next few weeks is too practice at least 3 times a week then attempt to braid my partners hair towards the end of the month! Her hair is super long so I know it will be a challenge having tried before and failed miserably. But this time I will have had a lot more practice under my belt and not feel like I have no idea what I am doing.

SO this week I decided to take some good advice from Kacey and used more water, some shampoo and a good combing before practicing my braiding. In the beginning of the project I had started using a spray bottle with water because that is how my partner usually does it and she showed me first but for some reason I stopped doing it. I definitely will have to keep up with the whole routine because it made everything a lot easier.  Washing the hair first and combing it after made it so that it was much easier to keep the hair apart and together where I wanted it to be in between my fingers. Having a spray bottle with water is also very convenient and I would recommend doing this for anybody else trying to learn how to braid, it is a life saver! Also, keeping a few hair ties handy is a good because that is how you tie the braids off.

I can definitely say I feel a lot more natural and comfortable doing the braiding now although it still has been a bit of a steep learning curve. Here is a video from this week of the start of my braiding process. This week I did not use any videos or walkthroughs to do the braiding, I just worked myself through the process about 4 times. All in all I feel pretty good about the progress I am making.

For this weeks post and prompt I explored using Imovie for my first time ever to make a trailer kind of video from braiding process as I continue on my journey to improve my skills. (video in the post below!)

So for my first time using Imovie I used it on my Ipad which is about 5 years old now so it may be the old version of Imovie. Anyways, for a first time user I have to say it was very easy and user friendly in my opinion. All the controls and functions of the app were easy to find, easy to use and easy to use with each other as well which goes a long way to making a good user experience. Having the ability to use my Ipad to record, edit and format my video into a trailer style clip is a great convenience and I think that is a bonus for those looking to use this app. In Imovie you can use any video or image saved throughout your Icloud or apple devices to create different movies or clips.

I  believe Imovie would be a good tool to use in classrooms where you are learning the video making process or trying to get your students to dip their toes in making their own videos because it is very user friendly. It could be used by students for many other subjects and projects once they are able to build their skills using the application. On top of that many young kids here in North America are already very familiar with the apple ecosystem and functions so for those people they might be able to pick it up that much quicker. While there are many awesome things about Imovie I think one drawback would be that it is exclusively an apple product. This means if you want to be able to use these in your classrooms with your students then you will need access to multiple Ipads or imac or macbooks which could be a significant hurdle for classrooms where resources are already thin. Unless you are in a classroom that already is using mostly apple products, which is unlikely, then mostly having PC’s means you are not able to use this software without an investment of resources.

—- Here is my video, had to upload it to youtube to be able to post it here 

I think that Imovie would be able help students in all facets of the SAMR model depending on the grades you are teaching and how complex the use is. For example in the substitution section, a student could create a video essay in replacement of doing an oral presentation for their report, this way the change that is happening is we are replacing the live presentation with a video format. In the Modification section, you could have students create a specific type of film on their report, like a horror or documentary film. They would be asked to use Imovies many editing features to create their final product, so they are changing how they are completing their project.

Using Imovie to document my braiding this week was a cool change of pace and watching the videos back also helped me see some of the places I was going wrong.  As we are a few weeks into our learning journeys, I am happy to notice some improvements in my braiding. Starting the process is now fairly easy for me but once I get to the middle I still tend to struggle with keeping the hair apart and keeping the strands pulled tight. Still confident though that by the end of this semester I will be miles ahead of where I started.

So during this week I found a website called “aiirprofessional.com” which has been a great resource to help with my braiding practice. The site has sections with instructions on how to braid your own hair, other peoples hair and different styles of braids. Along with videos, the site has a step by step approach to making a simple braid (three-strand braid) which is the one I am focusing on for my project. It is simple and a site I would recommend to others if they were looking to learn the same skill.

First thing I had to get used to doing was combing the hair out enough so all the hair was straight and not tangled up. I can admit that I was not doing that before this week so I think that is why I was struggling a lot more than i should have! I think now the process should be a little easier and a little less messy.

I spent a couple hours on Wednesday and Thursday practicing and I included the best of the best in this post below. Sadly this was the best of the bunch… for now anyways. But comparing it to my first attempts this semester I think there is already progress being made, first because I was able to finish my last braid in one go without stopping. Also the braid is tighter where as my first few attempts it even the better ones were looser all throughout the braid.

A few important tips the site gave for learning to braid for beginners were

1. Practice as much as you can
2. Always prep the hair (slightly damp hair/combed)
3. Create neat, even sections when making your three strands
4. Find a rhythm: find a pattern that works for you when weaving the braid and repeat it
5. Maintain a solid grip on each section, especially the center section

One thing I was thinking about was if eventually will it become like muscle memory if I become good enough at it? If I were to stop practicing once the semester ends would I quickly lose this new skill? Definitely learning about patience doing small, tedious tasks doing this assignment and working out my fingers as well, did not expect for my hands to get as sore as they have been!

For the coming weeks my next few goals is to be able to do multiple braids like this or better and to cut down on the time it will take me to do so.  I also hope to be able to find more time to practice this next week as things have really been getting busy with school and work life ramping up.  That is another thing that I find having to work on, my time management ability. I am also doing semester long assignments in two other classes that ask us to keep notes/take pictures building towards a final summary of your learning so it has been a task on itself trying to balance time for everything. But I also consider that it is only for a few months so it is not all that bad.

https://aiirprofessional.com/blogs/braids/how-to-braid

For this week’s braiding practice I wanted to start somewhere that would me work on the basic parts of braiding at a slow pace. I ended up choosing two Youtube videos to help me start off my journey. One was called, “BEGINNERS START HERE! How To Braid Hair For Complete Beginners” and the other, “4 basic braids for beginners, How to Braid Hair, Easy hairstyle.” Now the second video is one I think I will be referring back to towards the end of this assignment. This is because I hope that if I get proficient enough at a “standard” braid then I will try to learn 1 or 2 different styles of braids.

(My videos from this week)

From where I left off at my last attempt to learn braiding, I picked up with a “three-strand braid” which will be the one style I will work on to really grasp and get good at. I never even knew it had a specific name always assuming that it was just a generic braid so learned something new already! Now where I really find I have to work on is keeping the hair strands separate as they go in between each other. As I attempted to do it the first few times using my hair mannequin, it mostly ended up in a fuzzy mess the first few attempts.

I tried to reflect on what I really hope to get from taking up this new skill and I think a few things come to my head. First, braiding hair is something I have almost no experience or familiarity with so I enjoy it gets me out of comfort zones. Second, as someone who hopes to be a dad one day to a little girl, I want to be able to do these things with them. Lastly, I feel that learning a new skill and documenting the process along the way is a valuable way to show people that we are all good learners, but maybe you or your classmate do better learning a different way. Let people see these processes so that it becomes more and more normal to accept different learning styles in the classrooms. This year I am actually doing a similar assignment in two other classes where we are choosing something to do over the semester and documenting the process.

I am not totally sure how much time I am going to need to dedicate to this weekly to get as good as I WANT to be. However, I am fairly confident by December I will be much better than today. But then I also tell myself that the biggest thing is not to stress about mastering  braiding but to improve little by little, to see what works and what does not and to connect my learning experiences to the kind of teacher I want to be in the future.

As I keep going with the braiding week by week, I think I am going to have to get spray bottle with water to mist the hair as I practice more and more. Hopefully this helps me figure out how to stop the fuzzy messy braids from appearing!

For my Learning Project this semester I have chosen to learn how to braid long hair, hoping that by the end I can make a braid quickly and neatly! I had come up with various options to pick up for this assignment but I narrowed it down to two options, learning how to play pool or learning how to braid long hair. I landed on braiding because I think it will be a skill I can use in my life having two young nieces and also a partner with really long hair. This is something that I actually attempted to do at the beginning of the summer but found myself having zero time and motivation to follow through with it. Another thing that pushed me towards choosing this is that I have minimal experience doing hair or working with hair so it is a pretty new endeavor for me that takes me out of my normal comfort zones.

This assignment is the perfect opportunity to take my time to learn how to braid while documenting all the ups and downs in the learning process. Right now I have a general outline of how I would like things to go and where I want to be by the end of the semester.

As I mentioned earlier I had attempted this before and back then I actually had managed to get a mannequin head with long hair from one of my hairdresser friends. Now I can actually put it to use and not let it get caked with dust ! I hope to spend the first few weeks of this journey working on doing a braid that is not a total frizzy mess, building towards being able to make a braid without too many pauses. At that point I would like to then start working on the time it takes me to do a braid because last time I tried it took forever, working on being quicker and quicker each week. The resources I will be using for this process will be mostly Youtube, websites and personal help from my partner.

By the end, if everything goes well, I will be making a braid in a neat and quick fashion and maybe even trying out different styles of braids. Looking forward to this assignment and also seeing everyone else’s progress and final results!