Project Utopia Reflection-English Assessment.

At the beginning of term 3 the year 7 cohort started a project called Project Utopia. This project involved 3 of our subjects, Hass, English and Innovated. The task was based on a book named The Giver by Lois Lowry about a community who think they are perfect and that they are living the best life, but really it was a dystopia. Our Project Utopia was to redesign the Fremantle port area and change it into a community where everyone could thrive as an individual. I thought it was a very creative way to use The Giver to think about Fremantle port and what we could learn about the difference between Jonas’s community and Fremantle port.

                              The area in Fremantle that we are redesigning.

Geographical Concepts & Fremantle Port Redesign

I realised that our Fremantle Port Utopia Project was a very special and important project. For our project we had to redesign the Fremantle Port area. Our school learning were applied to a real-life design. The Fremantle Port redesign was to focus on the area where the shipping containers and the Rottnest terminal are. All the shipping containers there will be moved to Kwinana in the future, so with all the containers moved, there will be lots of space to construct new things there. Our project was to think of interesting and suitable things to add there so it can be a place where people want to live and visit and where everyone can thrive as an individual and as a community. I learnt that these concepts were very important because, we had to apply them when thinking about ideas for the actual redesign of Fremantle Port.

United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development

In Hass we learnt about the United Nations’ global goals for Sustainable Development. This played a big role in the Project Utopia redesign. We did some rapid research on the global goals. From this I learnt that there are 17 goals in the United Nations global goals that they hope to achieve by 2030. These goals were made to ensure that the world can be a better and safer place.

                                            Global Goals for Sustainable Development .

I learnt that when redesigning Fremantle port all of these goals are important in order to create a community that is sustainable, safe and where all people can thrive as individuals.

Liveability & Sustainability

 During our project, we learnt about liveability which is the conditions of a decent life for all inhabitants of cities, religions, and communities. Liveability is based on the principle of sustainability; which is the idea that we as humans must interact with the environment in a way that ensures there will be enough resources left for future generations. When thinking of the Fremantle port redesign I thought about what I would include to make it very liveable. I specifically looked at the Objective Factors which are things that you can measure, such as climate and education and the Subjective Factors which are things that you cannot measure, like your emotions, personal likes and dislikes and spiritual beliefs or disbeliefs. I learnt that liveability was important for our project because we wanted to make sure we that we included all factors so we could make Fremantle port a place where people want to live and visit and where people can thrive as an individual and community.

Objective & Subjective Factors

I learnt that when redesigning Fremantle port I wanted to make sure that it was suitable for all age groups and interest.

ASC Capability Wheel

During the process I learnt how important the ASC Capability wheel was because it was a very good guide throughout the project as my group had to use all the capabilities if we wanted to work efficiently and smart as we had a short timeline to complete a big project. I think that my group used all the capabilities very well; the two capabilities we used the most were effective communication and we where organised. I think that our communication with each other was very good, therefore it enabled us to complete our work to a high standard. I also think that my group was extremely organised as we completed all the tasks on time.

The ASC capability wheel.

Public Speaking Skills

In project Utopia we had to present our ideas for the redesign on a vision board which we then had to present to teachers, parents, and special guests. In order to do this, we had to learn or improve our public speaking skills. The skills that I learnt were the importance of body language, vocal expressions, and pace/speed. Body language is the way you position your body and how you use your body to affect the audience (Whether it’s pacing up and down, hand gestures or body actions). I learnt that good body language makes the audience more engaged in your presentation. Vocal expressions is the way you use voice and how loud or low you are speaking (It could be when you are exaggerating something you could use a very high but excited pitch). I learnt that vocal expression keeps the audience interested. Pace/speed is how fast you speak, whether it is speaking at the same tone and speed the whole time (which is very boring) or you could be communicating in different tones and speeds throughout your speech which provides variety. These skills helped me to present my vision board with confidence at Showcase Day. I learnt that using these skills has a very good effect on the audience and it keeps them involved throughout the speech.

Vision Boards

Vision boards played one of the most important roles in Project Utopia as we had to show all our work of the Fremantle port redesign on them. I learnt that a vision board can also be called a Dream Board, and they are often personal and focused on a goal related to health, work, learning or life in general. On our vision boards we had to include images (photographs, drawing or sketches), inspiration (other places or people), questions and challenges, ideas, rationale (explanation of the choices we made), links to the global goals, connections to liveability and sustainability factors. It provided a good visual summary of what I had learnt from the project.

Showcase Day

After a long term of hard work, we had finally come to the end of Project Utopia. We had learnt so much after one term now we just had to teach others our ideas and designs. On showcase day we had parents and special guest come in to look at our vision boards and we had to use our public speaking skills to present our vision boards in an informative way. We talked about our learning and what ideas we want to include in the Fremantle port redesign. We were questioned about our ideas and why we decided to add them. Showcase day was a big success as we had lots of people come over to our vision board, they also enjoyed our ideas and thinking.

                        My group and I presenting our vision board during showcase day.

Conclusion

I felt like this project was a big success for my group as showcase day went very well and throughout the whole term we learnt the factors needed to create a community where everyone can thrive. If I could do one thing differently it would probably be to change the group numbers to groups of three because that meant everyone needed to participated equally. Overall, it was a very fun and new experience, I learnt many things and got to work with different people. I learnt that redesigning a place is a long process and requires lots of exploring different ideas and applying the liveability factors to ensure an ideal community where everyone can thrive as an individual.