Overview

Over the last two terms, us year 7’s have been working on a utopia project where we worked on creating a flawless society. Our task was to design a community applying the liveability factors, global goals and all our other learning. This project started in English analyzing The Giver and as the Term progressed we learnt about the liveability factors in Humanities and built sustainable houses in Science. Our goal to accomplish by the presentation night was to create a society where we could implement as many of the Global Goals in it and eliminate some of the world problems. By the showcase we presented our models, speeches, accreditations and more to parents and special quests to end Project Utopia.

UN Global Goals

We used the global goals in this project to create a perfect society as the 17 goals had been created based on global issues and they were used to guide as they gave us something to work towards. We had the chance to receive an accreditation in each goal, meaning we could find a way implement that goal into our utopia and have the evidence to support us and prove that a strategy would improve our society. In Innovat[ED] we gained five accreditations of the 17 global goals as we displayed them throughout our utopia and proved we solved them. For example we achieved the accreditation of goal number 6, Clean Water and Sanitation by designing a grey water recycling plant. Working on the global goals gave me an insight into the real word, an understanding about global issues and about different strategies that are currently in act to achieve this goal making a difference in our world.

Sustainability

A lot of our project was closely related to sustainability either directly or through another topic. We first started looking at sustainability in Science Term 2 when we were asked to design and build a sustainable house implementing many different water or energy-saving features. But as the year went on we continued learning about sustainability until we could find a way for each feature in our community to be sustainable. Sustainability links to many of the global goals including a few we received accreditations in.

Liveability Factors

During Term 2 we learnt about the 7 different liveability factors, how they make cities more liveable and how we could apply them to ours. From this I chose three I was most interested in, Environmental quality, community and healthcare and researched more in depth about them until I was confident enough to apply what I learnt to my society and have the evidence to show that it would make a positive difference. This was a long process of trial and error but from it I learnt more about how and why each town is planned like that and that there is a reason behind everything.

Donna Cross

During the project we were visited by many important people including Donna Cross from the Beyond Boundaries Institute who came and talked to our group. Donna talked to us about health and wellbeing and inspired us to look into an accreditation for Goal Number 3 of the Global Goals, Good Health and Wellbeing and how we could achieve this. We learnt we don’t necessarily have to focus on everyone’s health but instead on their wellbeing as that will ultimately lead to a happy community but also boost their health. We used this meeting fairly wisely as it was our only visit from the special quests.

Public Speaking

Public speaking played an important role in Project Utopia as we were required to write a speech that summarised our society in 3 minutes. We first presented these speeches in class to practice in front of an audience and while this relaxed my nerves a little bit it also made me feel unprepared. As we still had to present out speech to the parents I knew I would have practice if I wanted to get any better and sound confident when I spoke.  We had lots of times to practice our public speaking skills in real life scenarios. For example when we were in the process of receiving an accreditation we would write a small speech and present to teacher or when we had special guests such as Donna Cross. I found this helpful as I could work on some of the unspecific things that my speech needed improving such as, keeping consistent eye contact, using appropriate hand gestures and experimenting with facial expressions of emotions. On the presentation night I felt much more relaxed knowing I was prepared and knew what I was going to say. I found talking to the parents easier as I could engage with them when they asked questions. The public speaking element of the task was a journey for me as it was challenging but in the end I got it.

ASC Capabilities

The ASC capabilities are split up into 3 main sections, positive relationships, spirited agency, and powerful thinking and then further divided into 10 more specific concepts. In Project Utopia I used the capabilities to help improve the way our group worked together and individually. While we did show some of these skills throughout the project there were definitely some that our group lacked. I think most of our strengths where in the concepts of resilience and problem solving and towards the end of the project collaboration. Our group struggled with organisation and leadership as each week in Innovat[ED] we wouldn’t have a plan our anyone brave enough to take leadership to move us forward so this presented a real problem. Moving in to the last few weeks before presentation night we really had to focus and use our Innovat[ED] and class time wisely. I’ve learnt from this experience that its easier to make a plan up before rather than during the project even if its just a short list of things you want to get finished in that lesson because it gives you a goal to work towards. Besides our lack of organisation our group came through a few weeks before the showcase and really showed the problem solving side of ourselves to get the work done. Next project I will try to take the ASC Capabilities into consideration more so I can work in a functional group.The ASC capabilities are split up into 3 sections and then further split up into 10. I used the capabilities to help improve the way our group worked together and individually. While we did show some of these skills throughout the project there were definitely some that our group lacked.

Showcase

Therefore, Project Utopia was very valuable for our learning and gave us an understanding of global problems as we creatively tried to solve them. By the presentation night I felt accomplished of the society I designed and all the accreditations I achieved but also of pushing my learning as the project allowed me to practice my capabilities and develop my public speaking skills. In the end, I feel like I definitely could have focused on our organisation more and spent time on model building because our building process was very rushed and we had to compromise some things we wanted to put on it because of our time management. While the whole process was stressful especially coming down to the last weeks I enjoyed it a lot and it was a fun different way to teach us a few things.