The Beginning
The Utopia Project stretched out of 2 and-a-half terms. We were given the task of creating a Utopian Society, which we later learned was impossible, as no community is flawless. We were then introduced to the word “Protopia”. A Protopia is a world where everything is as close to perfect as can be, and that’s what we strived for. Our teachers helped us relate it back to everyday learning, and what we can do in the future, repeating this message tirelessly throughout our project.
Though we didn’t know it, this project started way back, when we went into Quarantine during March/April/May 2020. In English during these uncertain times, we read the book, “The Giver”. In this book, they had tried to create their perfect, Utopian Community, but had failed and ended up creating a Dystopian community, a community with many flaws in it. Once back at school, we continued this topic until we were introduced to the project that we didn’t know, but had started many weeks ago.
Sustainability & Liveability :
Right when we got back from school, this massive project was underway. We still had no clue about what we were really doing but started to get the impression that what we were doing was bigger than the small project we were being told about. In Science, we were put in pairs to create a sustainable house. I was in a pair with Mariana, it was heaps of fun. Our task was to create a sustainable house, that included 25 sustainable features, and 10 sustainable behaviors that we could implement in our house, then had to create a presentation and practice public speaking, so we could present it to the class. All of this played a major role in our project. At the same time, we were learning about sustainable cities in HASS. We watched plenty of videos, one I particularly remember was about the sustainable cities in Dubai, which had all these features that we ended up implementing in our sustainable house.
In HASS, we were also learning about the liveability factors and what makes a city livable. It was interesting to learn about how different things a city does can help or hinder their rating on the “World’s Most Liveable Cities List”.We looked into the cities at the top of the list, most of the time it was actually Melbourne, and looked into some of the least livable cities, most of the time it was places like Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
The UN Global Goals
During innovate Ed, we were also introduced to the United Nations Global Goals. I had vaguely heard of these before, but it was an interesting to re-learn about. These goals are expected to be reached by 2030 but will need everyone’s help to get there. That is when we realized how serious these problems really are. Some of these goals were stuff we take for granted, e.g., clean water and sanitation, zero hunger, good healthcare. This opened our eyes to the real problems of our world, and what we may be able to show in our Utopia’s that could help. I learned a lot about the different education systems of our world, and compared them in great detail.
ASC Capabilities Wheel
In Innovate Ed, we were introduced to the ASC Capabilities Wheel, which would lead us to success. Our Teachers explained that now, employers are not looking for academically gifted employees, but employees with other capabilities that are more useful than knowing your 20 times tables, e.g., being organized, a team player, be a problem solver, creative thinking. This drove parts of our thinking in ways we didn’t expect to go in and created us a new path to follow. Our teachers were extremely supportive in thinking in new and different ways, which help us prepare for life after school.
Public Speaking Skills
During English, we worked on our public speaking skills in anticipation for our upcoming presentation night. In our small groups that we were building the utopia in at the time, we prepared 3-minute presentations for the class. In English Extension, we prepared speeches on different topics, a personal favourite being; “Why do so many Americans struggle or cannot locate America on a world map?” This really made us think and prepare the best presentation possible and improved our public speaking skills. After this, we felt prepared and ready to present our models to guest, parents & siblings. Thinking back on this experience, my group realized that when we did the presentation to the class, we used and read off palm cards and a PowerPoint. When we did the presentation to the guests, parents and siblings on presentation night, we didn’t need to use palm cards and public speaking to our guests about Chloshammy came naturally.
The Building Stage
During Term 3 InnovatED, we had the chance to build a model of our utopia. We were given the choice of whether we wanted to create a physical model or a digital model on Co-Spaces. This expanded our thinking & we thought long and hard about which type of model we would use. We put a lot of thought into which model would be best to build, and my group spent time weighing up the best and the worst parts of the different model types and decided a physical model would be best suited to all of our abilities. During the InnovatED Mathias Cormann, Minister of Finance for Australia talked to us about the location of our Utopia, and asked why we thought that Sardinia would be a perfect place for a Utopia, we replied with how we went into weather patterns and looked at ideal temperatures and weather patterns for the most livable cities in our world. My group made the effort to use only recycled materials so that our city was completely recycled/recyclable items, unlike some other groups who went for a more “laser cut” or “3D printed” approach to the project.
This project has spread out over many subjects, terms and taken up heaps of time and this just pushed our knowledge that everything in life connects, even if it isn’t as obvious as it might be. Throughout the duration of this project, it made me question what we were doing in our world. This project made us think about our futures and what our world would look like. We watched ourselves find new ways to create a better world. During this project, we learned so much about how we can help our world, in Science, we discovered different things we can do to be more sustainable in our homes, in HASS, be learned about Liveability and Sustainability, in English, we learned about public speaking, all these different subjects helped us in this project & will help our knowledge as we continue through high school and life.
Links –
Sustainable House Project that was done with Mariana Kumar – Sustainable House Project
Group Members Reflections about this project =
Ishaan Gopalan- *unavailable at current time – will put this in when I am able to access this*
Sam Wallis – http://portfolio.ascollege.wa.edu.au/samuel.wallis/category/innovation-and-enterprise/utopia-project/