In my EDTC 300 class we were tasked with an assignment to pick a skill to learn all term and blog about our progress! You may have been following along and know how it went or you might be new and therefore I will recap it.

So when I needed to pick a skill I was trying to come up with something with meaning and that interested me. I landed on learning Ukrainian. This was important to me because my family is ukrainian but almost none of us know any ukrainian words. My grandma can understand some words but not speak it. I felt like I wanted something to be more connected to my grandma and the culture.

Week by Week Recap

Week One – Connecting To My Grandma: Learning Ukrainian

In week one I outlined my plan for the term and decided on some resources I wanted to use. I explained why my project was important to me and why I chose this skill to learn.

Week Two – Learning My ABC’S

I started the learning process with the basics of the alphabet. I learned 17 out of 33 letters this week and focused on learning the order and look of the letters. I printed a sheet and followed a video on YouTube to learn. I tried to practice each night to try remember but the memorization part came later in the term.

Week Three – Learning Project Inside A Learning Project

We were challenged this week to use a new medium to share our progress. I learned the entire alphabet this week, how to write the letters, the order, and the pronunciation. This was the first time I was ready to share my progress in a video. The medium I chose was iMovie and YouTube. I have used iMovie before but I tried some really cool editing features. I have never posted on YouTube before so that was also new.

Week Four – Duolingo не безкоштовний? (Duolingo isn’t free?)

I was humbled by Duolingo this week. I learned an assortment of new words with not much of a category to them. I came out of this week knowing random words like cat, home, and mother in Ukrainian. I was humbled because you need “hearts” to keep learning and I was quickly running out of them.

Week Five – It Was A Грубий (Rough) Week!

For my learning this week I dug out a Ukrainian/English/French childrens picture book dictionary. It was the week after thanksgiving and the only thing on my mind was the food I ate. Truly though, I really struggled this week with sickness and felt like I took a step back in my learning after the long weekend. I used this book to learn some common Ukrainian foods.

Week Six – Добрий день (Hello!)

I found my new favourite medium this week to learn with! It was a total twist from the week before and I learned some helpful phrases/words if I ever travelled to Ukraine. I put all my work together from the week in a video using the skills I learned in week three.

Week Seven – Ukrainian Lessons on Spotify!

I utilized my time well this week by listening to a podcast on Spotify during my commute to and from school on the bus. I tried and kind of succeeded at learning the numbers. This podcast was not ideal for learning but I still learned numbers one through nine and could use that to learn the rest just like english.

Week Eight – Hopping On The TikTok Trend

This week was inspired by other classmates blogs and I am glad I tried it. I found a creator that I loved to learn from because she had so many videos. The learning this week of specific words was limited but I feel like I learned about the possibilities on TikTok as well as some random information that the creator was sharing.

Week Nine – Ukrainian Colours and a Little History

I felt the pressure of the end of the term this week and wanted to make sure I learned the colours and some history. I regret not learning the history earlier but better late than never. I went back to the website that I used previously in week six since I liked it so much. The video linked in the blog is really awesome to give some history to the country.

When I review what I learned all term I am really proud of myself! I struggled some weeks more than others but still learned so much. I can now say I know the Ukrainian alphabet, colours, common phrases, and so much more! I can’t wait to share the videos I made with my grandma!

My Top Three Resources

YouTube:

My number one online resource to learn from is YouTube. There is millions of creators to learn from and endless things to learn. I learned from How To Read The Ukrainian Alphabet by Speak Ukrainian. I loved this resource becasue there is a visual and audio aspect. I struggled when I didn’t have both of these things to learn from. There is never a lack of content and if you don’t like one creator there will be another one.

TikTok:

I enjoyed learning from TikTok for three reasons.

• The convenience of it being on my phone and being able to learn anywhere.
• So many creators and lots of content.
• Audio and visual aspects.

TikTok is a great place to learn for the reasons listed above. I learned information I didn’t even know I was wondering because I found  @Ukrainian.with.ira TikTok page. I would just keep scrolling and scrolling until I learned so much information that I never would have thought to Google.

iMovie:

I am not a tech savy person and have never done video editing before but iMovie was so easy to use and has cool features. I used YouTube to learn how to use it and made a video showing how to add images on top of the video in week two. I’m not sure about the compatability on andorids or other devices but it works great on apple products.

I really enjoyed this project because I learned so much about time management, technology, and ukrainian!