INTRO
We recently finished a huge and exciting project called ‘Project Utopia’ where students were tasked with creating/designing a near perfect society incorporating other subject areas, the factors of livability and even ‘Global goals’. This is my account of project utopia.
PRE-PRODUCTIONS
Before we even knew there was a Project ‘Utopia’, we were introduced to assignments which would help us later in the creation of our utopia.
The first assignment we did was read the book ‘The Giver’ by Lois Lowry, in English. This book is about a utopian society that in order to create perfection, rid the world of all things that would make you a individual (i.e.: colour, music, choice, money…). It follows the life of a young boy as he realizes what he’s missing. Reading the book introduced the concept of a utopia and ‘Distopia’ and both showed us what to aim for and what to avoid, for instance, destroying humanity.
In science we had been in the construction of building a ‘sustainable house’ the aim of this project was introducing us to the idea of sustainability and how to make the most effective and efficient building or utopia out of the resources available. We would use this to make the most efficient community in our utopia.
Finally the last project we were introduced to in the ‘pre production’ was during @home learning we got given the HASS assignment on the factors of livability. The factors were split into Objective (measurable) and Subjective (personal preference). The objective factors were environmental quality, Infrastructure, education & health, safety & stability and climate. The most important factor for us, was environmental quality in the long run, because a massive amount of our decisions and compromises in our community, were with the health of the environment in mind. for instance our decision for having only clean/renewable.
PLANNING
At this point we had learnt about ‘Project Utopia’ , and as part of our HASS lessons we individually designed and created a island or country that was in our opinion our ‘perfect’ society. After all our planning on where our communities were located, what they would look like and how they would function we were told that we had to come together in groups, combine our utopias, and that utopia would be the finished product.
Simba Kojima, Jeremy Grogan and I were pared together. We were all good friends and luckily we all had an individual island utopia however ours were all very different community’s. One set in rings, one grouped into small sectors and mine was even on a volcano. Our island went through huge changes on the placement of the city, from in a lake to scattered around and even in giant platformed tiers on the volcano itself. Finally through some extremely helpful input from Ms. L (our tutor/HASS teacher) we moved the community off the island entirely, relocating and distributing the city amongst a new ring of smaller islands around our main one.
CREATION
Finally, after all the planning we entered the creation stage. We moved the majority of our Utopia time to InovateED, which we had a double period of every Friday. We first learnt about the ‘Global Goals’. These were a goals listed by the United Nations that, when achieved would create a near perfect world. The global goals would be integrated into our utopias in the form of Accreditations. These were the teachers and facilitators that in the form of a presentation we had addressed one of the global goals.
After this we started creation of the utopias. First creating a wire frames, then coating it in chicken wire finally paper mache-ing and painting/decorations. We kept the volcano not only because of its huge geothermal energy potential but also because of the fertile volcanic soil which would make us very wealthy through export of organic products. However we did take precautions to prevent the volcano from erupting.we would do this by pumping out the gasses from the antechamber to make the geothermal energy, thus reducing the pressure. We only ended up only getting goal seven and fifteen, however my group members and I thought that we should go for quality not quantity. Our roles had been divided really well, Jeremy was really good at technology aspect so he made us a digital model on Co-space (a digital creation platform), Simba was exceptional at the physical building whilst I did the research and planning which I then passed knowledge onto my peers. after all the creation we choose the name ‘Torus’ for our island because of the shape of it.
POST-PRODUCTION
Similar to the pre connections, we had some post connections. Projects that related directly to the utopia project.
First was the English oral presentation. This was a presentation about our Utopia we would present to the class and would be assessed by our English teachers. We each spoke for a minute covering different points. This was accompanied by a power point presentation.
The other presentation was in HASS. It was the creation of a constitution for our Utopias. This was a project that varied in length but my constitution was five pages and a cover page.
We used both of these assignments on presentation night both of the projects. Having the constitution on display and elements of our English presentation in our speeches.
THE ‘BIG’ NIGHT
On the big night we set up in our innovate ED period and arrived half an hour early and got ready for the guests to arrive. I, along with my fiends had some amazing questions asked however because of the extensive research I had done my friends and I could answer nearly every single one of them. Unfortunately though because of our positioning our main visitors were our own parents but we did have some teachers come along and ask some interesting questions. On reflection, we decided in future, it would be better to position ourselves near the main entry point so we were a better focal point for attendees.
SUMARY
Overall I think the project was a huge success and that my group and all the other groups I saw put in the maximum effort and the results were incredible. My favorite bits about the project was researching for the ‘clean and affordable energy’ goal, finding a way to reduce the likelihood of a eruption and paper mach-ing the wire frame. Despite the rush in the last few lessons and all the hours of research this has to be one of my all time favorite school projects.