What is Project Utopia?
Project utopia was a project about building the perfect world. We worked in groups of two or three to build a model, either physical or digital, write a speech, and create a constitution for our utopia. The speech was first performed for our tutor group then presented to the parents of kids in the year and other members of the school. Our constitution was made to be shown with our speech with some other visual aids. Our model was shown through an in time flyover of the co space, the platform we created our model on. Though this task was a daunting one, with perseverance and good teamwork we managed to produce our take on a utopia. As this project comes to an end I look back and reflect on what I learnt from this experience, and how I can utilise these skills in the future.
The Global goals
The UN global goals were an important part, as they are what shaped the basis of our utopian society. Because we addressed the global goals we could see what the perfect world would need. The goals were shown in our utopia via accreditations. There was only way to achieve accreditations, that was to create innovative strategies to solve one specific goal, once you had created your strategies they were assessed by the teacher, who decided if they were good enough. After all this, only then did you get the accreditation. This was the main area of the project that my partner and I focused on, as we really enjoyed creating ideas to solve big problems. Along the way we also learned some useful skills, like how you must always consider the positives and negatives of every solution, and how to use those negatives and find solutions for them. This was taught to us when Shaz Rind, the managing director of Arra energy (a company focused on improving the employment options of Aboriginal Australians), came to our workspace and we discussed with him about our ideas. He thought they were well thought out, but explained to us we should always see both sides, referencing TAFE, a course for people who prefer to do more hands on work, using it to show us the other side of work preferences. This was my favorite part of this project as it allowed us to express our unique ideas. It also helped me learn better time management, as we had to plan how we would both spend our time throughout the two periods.
The Speech
Writing the speech was surprisingly fun, as we got to talk about our accreditations , a section we really focused on. The biggest challenge for our group, was making our speech short enough to fit into the 3-minute limit. My partner and I did a practice run through of our speech to our classmates, this helped us get a feel for what it would be like presenting in front of the parents. The performance was also videoed to allow us to re watch it and learn from it. I thought this was useful as it allowed us to see what we were doing wrong and how to correct it. Although practicing the speech was a tedious task, it helped us learn that you should always practice, I felt so much more prepared at the showcase because I had rehearsed every paragraph, even though I only realised it after the project. But if I were to do this again, I would remember to focus more on engaging the audience, then portraying the data, as my speech was rather monotone.
Collaboration
The part of this project that I think troubled some groups was collaboration. But surprisingly this was not a problem for us as we worked together well. Working with someone with similar views to you really helps when brainstorming ideas. Yet we both had different ways of approaching problems, resulting in well thought out solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. Even though we accomplished lots of work in school, we still continued to collaborate at home as well. Communicating through onenote we completed many accreditation scripts and worked to improve our constitution.
The presentation
On the night of the presentation we set up our desk, displaying our accreditation slips, our constitution in a plastic sleeve and some VR goggle connected to the co space. We also has some small pamphlets to hand out, about information that we didn’t cover in the speech. Altogether the night was a success, both of us presented calmly to each parent that came by and answered any questions they had. But some things did go wrong, as the VR goggles didn’t work. This was rather disappointing, but emphasised the fact that you always have the prepare. The VR goggles were not properly set up because we didn’t get them till 10 minutes before the presentation, while if we had time to prepare they would have worked. There was some positive feedback about how we presented, and our depth of knowledge when discussing our ideas. If I were to do this again, I would probably prepare a bit more, though nevertheless I was proud of my performance.
The End of Project Utopia?
Overall, this was a great learning experience. With many unique elements that I had never seen. This project presented us with the chance to talk with some industry professionals. It taught us many important skills that I know that I will utilize though out my life. Including time management, positives and negatives, always practice, and many more. Even though it was designed as a project I felt like working on it was a reward more than work. It may be over, but I will always remember this as one of the best school project I have ever done.