Project Utopia- Reflection

Main Question: How can You create a community where all people thrive?

Innovate Ed was about using The Capabilities Wheel as a guide to create big projects. I didn’t realise how complex some projects can be in Year 7 until Project Utopia. Our project this term was to redesign Fremantle Port since the present port was relocating and the existing space needed redevelopment. We had to create our vision of a utopia, “a perfect society”. This project meant focussing on capabilities like communication, organisation, and collaboration. We used these as building blocks to help create our utopia.

Collaboration

The teacher allocated us in groups of four students. I did not know what was expected of me and I was unsure of the expectations since I had never worked with these group members before. To be honest, at first I was quite sad since I was not with any of my close friends. I was not looking forward to this project because of this. We were also different people with different ideas, and we had to learn how to collaborate with our ideas efficiently. Our first task as a group was allocating different roles for different people. We allocated roles to each team member based on their strengths. This made us work more effectively and made me feel a bit more confident because we also collaborated. We each knew our expectations and achieved our outcomes quickly. My role in the group was team organiser and brain stormer. This was because I was the most organised and the neatest and most efficient writer. I was excited but also pressured since all the work was dependent on me to organise and make improvements on it.

Communication

Apart from good communication between group members, the time when this skill was essential was when important delegates like Fremantle Port representatives and the Port project manager visited us. Our communication skills had to be very effective in front of visitors because we were representing our school. We often had to communicate our plan clearly and elaborate on the history of Fremantle, Aboriginal rights and culture and the use of global goals in our redesign. Our communications skills were tested when we did the daunting task of publicly speaking in front of these delegates. When I had to speak in front of these people, I was worried I would mess up. However, I soon realised that they too were scared to speak to 108 students. Overall, I improved my communication skills and over-came the fear of speaking in front of others.

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Organisation  

As the team organiser, keeping everyone organised was vital. Without organisation we would not know our expectations for the next group meeting.  I had to assign what our goals and tasks would be for the week. This was frustrating at times because sometimes the group and I were not successful in doing our tasks. For example we sometimes ran out of time to complete different tasks. This would set us behind and often we would have to work outside of class time. However, getting this job was helpful to me not just while doing this project but also during my normal school life as it taught me the importance of organisation and completing tasks.

Achievement

Innovate Ed was about using the capabilities wheel as a guide to create big projects. However, after reviewing all my work I realised that the capabilities not only assisted in big projects also made them more successful. Most importantly the capabilities teach you to be a team leader and a team player. After this project I will always remember Fremantle as Utopia my vision of an almost perfect society.

Ideas and Successes

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