A large part of the project was the United Nations Global Goals. One of the goals I learnt a lot about was Global Goal 9, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. Before this project, I looked at this Global Goal and had no clue what it meant, or what it covered. However, from the learning the accreditations provided, I learned a lot about what this, and many other accreditations are. I have learned that the Industry side of this global goal means the major businesses that support the economy, and the city/town, with an example being a port/harbour. Another thing I have learned about this goal is that the Innovation aspect of this goal means and promotes new and modernized solutions and additions and/or alterations of buildings, systems, etc. Overall, the accreditations of the global goals we needed to get as a part of this project helped me a lot to understand and learn lots of different information about different goals and learn what the goals are.
Something that Project Utopia helped me a lot to improve on was my public speaking skills. Before Project Utopia, and especially before the showcase night, my public speaking skills were pretty much hopeless. I would struggle to be even slightly confident with what I was saying, this also applied when I was speaking in front of my peers. Through this project’s public peaking aspect, the main thing I learnt was what to do while speaking. This meant that while you were speaking to others, or others were speaking to you, too keep eye contact, and to try not to fidget. I used to be awful at keeping eye contact during conversations, which I found made them more awkward. The other big thing I learnt was to be confident, or if you weren’t, to at least sound it, during conversations, and especially to give yourself the confidence to maintain eye contact. From all the public speaking I was required to do as a part of this project during presentation night, I learnt a lot of valuable information that I will find useful in the near, and far future.
During the duration of the project, I used many of the capabilities on the ASC Capabilities Wheel, though I used Resilience, Problem Solving and Effective Communication the most. I had used these capabilities multiple times in my life before this project had started, so I already knew quite a bit about them, but Project Utopia allowed me to extend my understanding and skill level of these capabilities. I was able to improve my resilience when my group and I found things tough, we powered through our problems, using and improving our communication skills while we were talking out what we would do to overcome this problem, before doing it. Problem solving also ties into resilience because when we found a problem or an obstacle that pushed us back, while we were being resilient about it, we problem solved to overcome this challenge, using our communication skills. I improved on my communication a lot in a way I hadn’t done before, I improved during the showcase night when I had to explain things to adults and visitors and come up with what I would say and answer with on the spot. Although I used pretty much all of the capabilities on the ASC Capabilities Wheel, I improved a lot on the resilience, problem solving and especially effective communication capabilities during this project.
Project Utopia was a very enjoyable project and one that has taught me a lot. The group I was in worked together very well, communicating effectively during and outside of the allocated sessions we were given to work on the project. My group also had even roles and input, so the workload ended up being close to equal. Overall, I think my Project Utopia group worked and collaborated effectively, and worked together efficiently to get the project complete. Although I if we were to do this project again, I wouldn’t change the group I was in, I would try to have more accreditations by spending more time on them outside of school while someone was working on the model. I would also change what we included and how we formatted the constitution, so instead of listing rules, rights, responsibilities, etc., I would change it so they were instead paragraphs containing what was listed so that the constitution would become and look more official, as well as less rushed.