In this project we were tasked to design, budget and build an earthquake resistant building out of spaghetti and blu-tac. To start this project we made up small groups of around four and we had to complete a design sprint and make a quick tower. This stage was important as it showed us what we lacked and the flaws of our design. After this we used the information that we learnt from the design sprint and we made a stronger more firm design that we then had to budget. In this challenge we had $60 dollars to spend on the tower where each stick of spaghetti costs $1 and each gram of blu-tac costs $1. Once we had the design and budget we began making it. We had worked out roles before-hand to ensure that everyone was working to their own strengths. I was assigned to do the budget and help construct the tower. Once we had finished the construction we put it onto a shake table to simulate an earthquake. The point of this was to see how earthquakes affect many people worldwide and to see how well we can design a tower. Our tower lasted the whole ten seconds on the table.
Engineering process
This project required a strong design that could withstand an ‘earthquake’. Because of this we needed a strong design that would stay standing during the tests. After a couple of designs that went over budget or weren’t strong enough we decided on the design above. We decided on this design as it slightly slants inwards meaning that the tower will be harder to fall sideways or on itself. We also used triangles as they are the strongest shape and will strengthen our build. We had support beams throughout the design that also formed the shape of a triangle and they ended up being the main reason our tower was so strong. We also used a triangle base as it would save on money because there was one less side while also being strong.
For the past semester I have been in an elective called global goals. In this elective you get to choose one of seventeen global goals and work on a project to help the world get closer to accomplishing it. The global goals are made by the United nations which aim to change the world and make it a better place. The United Nations are an intergovernmental organization which was founded in 1945 and aim to bring more peace and security to the world. All
In the first term for the first few weeks we gained an idea of what the Global Goals are. We found out that there are 17 goals created by an organization called the United Nations(UN) whose sole aim is to make the world a better place. I partnered up with Charlie and we began deciding which Global Goal we would like to help, it did not have to be on a large scale but within a community, we chose our school community of All Saints’ College, now we had to decide on a exact goal to help. Of those 17 goals we decided on something that could help the schools environment and from that we decided on UN Global Goal number 11.
Goal number 11 is sustainable cities and communities, our community was All Saints’ college, initially we though of fundraising and putting it towards the schools aquaponics area, then to a sustainable garden on the school oval and then finally hosting a tree planting day in partnership with the schools grounds keeping and maintenance staff. Planting trees on the eastern side of the oval, where it is empty space unutilized planting native trees and plants would help save water which brings us to our goal of sustainable cities and communities.
Our partnership with Mr. Gale, and Mr. Guy has allowed us to put this tree planting day into action, with there help we have As well as our partnership with the grounds and maintenance staff, we have organized what will happen on the day, how many plants and a choice of plants all native. We also have our partnership with the college’s advertising committee alongside them we have managed to advertise our day across many platforms including the college courier, the schools social media pages as well as on the college screens.
Our tree planting day will occur on the 31st of July 2022, this date is specially chosen because on the 30th of July it is world plant a tree day and the 1st of August is school tree planting day so by having our planting day on the 31st it gives reason and motivation to plant.
Overall I believe that this semester was very fun and I believe that my partner and I were very helpful for the tree planting day. We helped organize the event but also advertised it and went to an expo where we gave out information. I think it was a great project to work on and it was very fun all semester long. I would definitely recommend this project for other students to take part in.
The Australian legal system is built up of courts, tribunals and legal procedures. All of these are protected and ran by many people such as the police force, legal representatives and judges. All of these places and people use seven principles to make sure that while crimes are committed, accused people and defendants are all given fair and equal treatment by the law. These are used in courts and tribunals to ensure everyone is fair and equal. The seven principles are
Equality before the law – This makes sure that all people are equally protected by the law and that no individuals or groups are above others.
Right to a fair hearing – This ensures that there are unbiased trials, and the judiciary is independent and impartial meaning they must be unbiased and separate from parliament.
Right to appeal – This means that if a person is unhappy with the outcome of their trial they can appeal to a higher court.
Right to silence – This protects people from saying something under pressure to incriminate themselves and protects people that may struggle to communicate with law enforcement.
Presumption of innocence – This means that everyone is equal and considered innocent until it is beyond reasonable doubt that they are guilty.
High quality evidence – This ensures that the person convicted is found guilty beyond reasonable doubt
To ensure that everyone is protected by the law there are some things that police officers can say to people to ensure that they know what their rights. These are the right to remain silent to make sure that the person doesn’t say anything they shouldn’t, The right to a present adult/guardian if under 18, the right to be warned that anything they say can be used against them in court, the right to have a translator/interpreter if they don’t understand English and the presumption of innocence which ensures that no guilt can be presumed.
In this case that I am looking at a man called Lloyd Rayney was falsely accused of murdering his wife Corryn Rayney. On August 8, 2007, Corryn Rayney was reported missing by her husband. After a couple of days of searching the police found her body buried in Kings Park and she was pronounced dead. As the investigation went on and their was a lack of evidence the blame quickly turned toward her husband. On December 8, 2010, Lloyd Rayney was formally charged with his wife’s murder.
In this case is will be mainly speaking about the principles of justice that are High quality evidence, Presumption of Innocence and The right to appeal. In this case I feel that there is a lack of high quality evidence but also a lack of fairness when they found Lloyd guilty but I believe that they held up the right to appeal as they let him appeal.
In this Lloyd Rayney case one of the principles of justice that was compromised was high quality evidence. This Principle is used to make sure only high quality evidence is used and to avoid wrong convictions. In this case a large portion of the evidence was not high quality and lots of clues did not add up or make much sense. For example of the pieces of evidence was a card from the game celebrity heads which had the words “The queen” on one side and “Lloyd Rayney on the other.” Another one of the examples of this was that the night that they think he killed her the police estimated that he would have needed to walk a 90 minutes to get home from Kings Park (where she was buried), although nobody saw him during that walk. Another moment when they didn’t use high quality evidence was when they didn’t find a single bit of blood around their house but after all of it still convicted him of the crime. To correctly follow this principle the police would have to ensure that all of the evidence that they use makes sense and that it links up to the suspect. These instances demonstrate how seriously this principle was compromised throughout the course of the case.
This principle was comprimised as the police suspected that he was guilty of the murder before they had any evidence on him and as a result the case was all focused on him. This principle says that no guilt can be presumed until the charge is beyond a reasonable doubt which in this case it wasn’t. The police put out a statement saying that Lloyd Rayney was “the prime and only suspect.” This lead the police to launch many searches of his house where they found nothing. Throughout the investigations of Mr Rayney, the police did not treat him like an innocent man and Mr Rayney’s defence team said that the police were “single-minded and bias.” This principle was heavily compromised and the police did not follow any part of that principle. The police should not have released that statement and they should have kept an open mind that Lloyd Rayney may have not been guilty.
Although in this case many of the principles of justice were comprimised there was a few that were supported such as the right to appeal. Lloyd Rayney appealed his defamation case to a higher court so that he could receive a bigger payout for “damages and economic loss.” He won the case and won a then record payout of 2.6 million dollars. He was allowed to appeal his defamation without any problems which meant that the court allowed him the right to appeal. This principle of justice was supported and courts allowed him to fairly appeal his defamation.
The principles of justice are so important to ensure that the Australian legal system is fair and treats everyone equally. In this case exploring Corryn Rayney’s murder lots of the principles of justice were heavily compromised throughout the case such as, presumption of innocence and high quality evidence. These principles affected the case a massive amount and the police did not do a great job of handling his case. One of the principles of justice that they did do the right thing for was the right to appeal. This case overall was not handled very well but there was some things that the police did right.
As one of my electives this year I chose Global goals which is a program where you have to choose a global goal and do a project on it. I chose this because I enjoy being creative and finding innovative solutions. The global goals is a group of 17 goals that was made by the United nations which aim to change the world and make it a better place. The United Nations are an intergovernmental organization which was founded in 1945 and aim to bring more peace and security to the world.
The Sustainable development goals are the blueprint to achieving a sustainable future, they are the overarch of the United Nations goals. The concept was described in 1987 in the Brundland Commission Report as developing the needs of the present-day without compromising the needs of the future generations.
The United Nations sustainable development goals or the Global goals consist of 17 different goals with each goal consisting of sub-goals. The 17 main Global Goals are:
No Poverty
Zero Hunger
Good Health and well being
Quality Education
Gender equality
Clean Water and sanitation
Affordable and clean energy
Decent Work and Economic growth
Industry Innovation and Infrastructure
Reduced Inequalities
Sustainable Cities and Communities
Responsible consumption and production
Climate action
Life below water
Life on Land
Peace Justice and Strong institutions
Partnerships for the goals
These goals are important as they will change the world. The Goals also affect all people on Earth, it is crucial that everyone is aware of and have knowledge of them. Only then can we take action and contribute to making the world a better place.
As a part of the media, we had had to make a surreal film. To do this we first, we had to brainstorm. For the brainstorm we were trying to think of the most weird and surreal thing we could think of that would make the viewers confused and make them think about the concept a lot. We ended up with a movie where a scientist accidentally creates an infected tape that kills people when they touch it due to the cringe.
Once we had our idea we started planning and writing the script and the storyboard which is a frame by frame drawing which shows what you will do in different frames. We then we learnt how to use the cameras and then we were allowed to go out and start filming. Once we had finished all the filming we started editing our video and started to add affects and cut out the bad takes. We were editing our video on Adobe Premier Pro.
Some of the setbacks we had was that we couldn’t film because we couldn’t get our hands on a cassette tape which was the main prop in our film, sometimes people weren’t at school and even though we did what we could for some of the scenes we needed everyone and during the editing phase, only one person can edit the film so that slowed us down quite a lot. If I could do this again, I would try to film all of our scenes a bit quicker so that we can have more editing time and increase the quality of the final product.
On Wednesday the 16th of June, 2021, I took part in an Innovate ED program called $20 Boss. $20 Boss is where you get into groups and receive 20 dollars each. You then have to use many different design thinking processes that will help you develop an idea that you can sell at markets. Our group went through many different products but ended up making laser-cut keychains. In my group, I had Simba, Xander, Max, and me. We were then thinking and making many designs that we can cut but were having some problems with copyright. After a long time of thinking, we decided that we would laser cut letters for people’s names as it wasn’t copyrighted and we thought that it would sell well. Me and one of the other group members went to bunnings on the weekend and bought the keyrings. After making those outlines and getting ready to cut I stayed a couple of days after school and got the cutting done. We had some problems with how easily it would break on the vulnerable parts. The vulnerable parts were where the hole for the ring was and the outside as we thought it might snap. After changing the design a bit we came up with our final product. While I was doing all the cutting Simba was making posters and Xander was making an excel document to keep track of purchases and sales.
Market
The market was in the morning and I went early to set up. Not long after that, all our group members were there and we started the market. It started slow with a few sales but we got running and we started selling more. We had sold out of a product that a customer wanted and they placed an order. We sold lots of our stock and made a solid profit so that we didn’t have to pay any money back to the school that gave us the loan.
What we learnt
Overall it was a very fun project and we learned a lot. Although there were many challenges along the way our team persevered and got through it. After the challenges, there was always a bright side which was either getting through a hard time or getting through to a fun time.
Project Utopia is a project that the year seven cohort had been assigned. The aim of the project was to create a utopia (that is a perfect society) with your group and then present it on presentation night. This covered a lot of subjects as there were a lot of parts to it and it took a long time but on the 18th of September, we presented the project to visiting parents and grandparents. This was very hard but fun so here is my reflection of this experience.
The Process
The process of this Utopia Project started with reading The Giver in English which taught us about Utopias and Dystopias which was something really important for this project as it is about a utopia. Then in science, we started learning about sustainability and made a sustainable house where we learnt a lot about how we should make our houses. After that there was Hass, This taught us about livability factors and what types of things would make countries more and less livable. This helped as it showed us some things that we could focus on so our utopia will be very livable. Then also in Hass, we made individual utopias. These were only drawn and were not as big of a project but helped us understand a lot more about utopias and what we would be doing. After all of that, in InnovatED we started to create our utopias. My group used CoSpaces to build our model. Creating the cities consisted of planning, learning about global goals and gaining accreditation for them, and constructing the cities. While this was happening in Hass we started learning about civics and citizenship. This knowledge helped us learn more about how government works so that we could make better decisions about our government structure. After that, in Hass, we learnt about constitutions and wrote one for our utopia. Lastly in English our group presented a little presentation about our city. This gave us some feedback for the presentation afternoon and gave us an idea about what the presentation would be like. After all this, we finally got onto the presentation.
The Presentation
On the 18th of September, we were all finished and were ready to present. Eventually, they opened the doors and parents started coming in. As the evening went on parents and family would come up to our table and we would tell them about our utopia. We talked about our reasons for certain parts of our utopia, such as green power, community interaction, sustainability, quality education, and community services. Guests would ask questions and we would respond. I think our group did well as we were able to respond to all the questions with good detail and clarity. Some of the questions were a bit hard to answer (such as “where does the money come from to build the utopia?”) but most of the questions we had already thought of. The presentation went for a long time but in the end, everyone felt accomplished and proud of what they did.
My Utopia
My group consisted of Seth, Ayneschkanna, and me. I think we did well with our utopia as our utopia was very sustainable and had some amazing features like having 60% green areas,
My Reflection
Learning area connections:
I think that this is connected to a lot of different learning areas. The first one that comes to mind is science because we learnt about sustainability and made sustainable houses. We implemented the sustainable houses into our community and some people even brought a house for the showcase. Another one was English as we read The Giver which was about living in a utopia. This was the first thing we did that had anything to with utopias.
Most important information you have learnt:
The most important information that I learnt during this was that when you think outside the box you think of some ideas that work. Even if this idea is way too expensive or big to do because you don’t have to pay for it or build it so you can do it.
What you enjoyed the most:
Something that I enjoyed the most was being able to think freely without there being certain things that you have to do. There was only a brief goal saying that you needed to make a utopia but everything else you could do however you wanted to and you made your own decisions.
What aspects did you find most challenging:
Probably working as a team. Some decisions that you thought were good your team may not have liked. Also sometimes they can get angry because their idea didn`t make it into the final product. Although this was quite challenging, without the team I would have struggled a lot.
What would I do differently:
Next time what I might do differently is I might try to focus on gaining accreditation more than the building because in the end we didn`t have that many accreditations and we wanted to get more. Another thing that I would do differently is to maybe do a physical model instead of one on CoSpaces because on CoSpaces there is only a certain amount of things that you can build, but for a physical model, you can build whatever you want.
