What is Project Utopia? Project Utopia was when the students of Year 7 were assigned groups to create a society as livable or perfect as possible. The idea of a perfect society came from a book we read in Term 2 called The Giver. This project was most probably the highlight of the year, as it had connections to a variety of learning area subjects.

Process At the start of the second term we started to read the Giver book, which is written by Lowis Lowry. The story was about a boy named Jonas who lived in a so-called ‘Utopia’. The people of this perfect society had made it so perfect by taking away the points of difference in their people, and their world.

Soon after this, we started to ideate plans for a sustainable house in Science. For this project, we had to research how we can make a house more improved and environmentally friendly at the same time. We also had to make the house by hand, and we had to make sure that we only used recyclable materials to construct it. 

After this in Digital ICT, we looked at an online platform called CoSpaces. This was a virtual world where we get to place down objects and people to make it look like a physical world. We can also code the objects to do certain things such as wave, walk and jump. 

Then in HASS, we had a look at Livability around the globe, and how countries are finding opportunities to improve theirs. Some countries I looked at were Finland, Canada, and the Netherlands. Some things that they were doing were setting up recycle stations for plastic bottles, cups, etc. This helped us to get an understanding of how we could make our Utopia’s more enhanced.

In English, we had to make a presentation about what our Utopia was, and the features about it. All the groups also had to include a fly-over their Utopia, and pictures of it. This activity was mainly made to improve our public speaking skills, which we would have needed at the Project Utopia presentation evening. 

Furthermore, in HASS, we had to consider that we needed a type of government for our Utopia. My group chose to do a Constitutional Monarchy. We also had to make a constitution, which is ultimately a written book which states the rules and responsibilities of the government and the citizens of the society.

Connections There were lots of associates between our learning area and Project Utopia. In English, we read The Giver, which enhanced our knowledge about a ‘perfect society’. We also needed to follow the ASC Capabilities, which includes the people in the group being organized, showing leadership when needed, having an inquisitive mind and much more. This helped improve our group work skills. Another subject the project had a connection to was HASS. In this learning area, we looked at the most livable countries, and what they were doing to improve their society. In English, we did the presentation of our Utopia’s, which we needed the speaking skills from. Then in Digital ICT, we looked at CoSpaces which we used as one of our tools to help create our Utopia.

Collaboration/Decisions For the Utopia Project, I worked in a group of 3 with Me, Seth, and Charlie. I thought that this was an important part of the project as we needed to listen and share our ideas with the rest of the team. Some decision that my group made was to use CoSpaces as the base of our Utopia creation, as it was easily accessible for everyone in my group. We also had to collaborate on the planning and making of the creation. 

Personal Reflection What I enjoyed about the project, was that we had the opportunity to collaborate in groups. I was also lucky enough to have friends that I closely knew of, in my group. This made the decision making more comfortable because we knew what each of us wanted. I also liked the use of making my groups Utopia on CoSpaces, as it was more portable than building it by hand. Also, because it was online, my group and I could work on it at school, and at home. One thing that held the memory of this project for me, was when the experts came to Project Utopia and gave us useful information from what they had experienced in their professions. What I could have done better was to get the information down for what I was going to say, when my group went to get the accreditations. 

Conclusion Overall, I enjoyed working with my friends, and just mainly taking part in Project Utopia. Plus, I also gained plenty of knowledge when I worked on different activities on different subjects. The Utopia project got me out of my comfort zone and made me think of things I had not thought of before.