Project Utopia

Overview

Over the span of term two and three of year seven we were given a project that would test our thinking and creativity, as well as teaching us skills and strengths that we would soon take onto our future lives. This task mentally challenged us in many subjects and learning areas across the curriculum. We spent many weeks planning and learning new ways for a normal city to become a utopia, over this time we gained tonnes of information linking to the assignment to later help us in our construction phase. Overall, this project was a challenge that we had to face and complete, this assignment was also a great learning experience.

ASC Capabilities

Throughout this project we learned and developed skills to use our very own ASC Capabilities. One of these capabilities that I would like to single out now is Creativity, this challenging capability to show but it is useful when trying to stand out. I learned that our utopia had to be Unique from the others, so our group decided to think and come up with new ideas. I demonstrated creativity when I came up with the idea of our Utopian society to be the shape of a jellyfish. This is one of the capabilities that we learned about and had to implement into our work.

Another one of the ASC Capabilities that I learned and improved during this project was Collaboration. Not only did this assignment challenged us by ourselves but as a group as well. I learned that I had to collaborate with my group and that some of my ideas would not be demonstrated in our society. I learned a very good quote while working on this project, it is “there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians”, to me this quote means that there are too many people in one group trying to take lead and sometimes it benefits the group to let someone else lead for a bit. Throughout working on this project, I was able to demonstrate this and get our work done more efficiently and quicker.

UN Global Goals

The UN Global Goals is a very important topic that we had to implement into Project Utopia. Throughout the project we learned many interesting facts, we were able to learn and come up with strategies to design our Utopia using the Global Goals. Our group learned about Global Goal number nine, Industries, Innovation, and Infrastructure. We chose this goal to research because throughout Innovat[ED] session we learned valuable information about businesses and how each business relies on a primary industry. We then pitched to Accreditation of this goal and were able to achieve it. The UN Global Goals is something that every city should implement, I learned many things about each individual goal.

Another one of these goals that I was able to learn about was Global Goals number 7, Affordable and Clean Energy. I was able to learn how many countries suffer from having energy that is too expensive so the average person can’t use it, I also learned how rich companies buy energy power plants off the government and raise the prices. This also happens with water usage around the world. The way that we demonstrated having Affordable and Clean Energy in our community is by relying on renewable and sustainable resources (e.g. solar, hydro, and geothermal energy). Overall, this goal benefited our society and help us have Clean and Affordable Energy.

Speaking to Special Guests

Over the span of our Innovat[ED] sessions, our group was able to talk to some very well-known and knowledgeable people. One of these individuals is Anthony Spagnolo who is a Liberal Candidate for Riverton, he spoke to us about having a Primary and Secondary form of business. This topic linked to Global Goal number nine, from this information we learned that our community, to able to run properly and have a stable economy we had to choose one industry that will be able to support smaller businesses. We then chose that our primary industry would be a tourism-based. Overall talking to Mr. Spagnolo helped us learn important information that we would implement into our society.

Public Speaking skills

Throughout term three in English we developed our public speaking skills, we then later used these skills to present our speeches in our Utopian Showcase. This learning process began with writing our one-minute speech that we would later present to the class, we then learned about the four key terms of public speaking; Pause, Pace, Pitch, and Power. We learned that for a speech to be effective it must have all of these traits; this was challenging but useful when it came to the showcase.

Final Thoughts

Over the time working on this project, I have learned many skills that I would later take on into my future life. I think that this project challenged us throughout the curriculum and with our thinking, our task was straight forward but could go in many different ways. We put in the effort and created a Utopian Society. Overall, I think that our group were successful with creating our Utopia and that every single student in our year group learned something either from a teacher, outside visitor or maybe even google. I would like to thank our teachers for making this learning experience possible and also helping us grow and uphold this Project.

Thanks,

Jayden Pope