Project Utopia was a project all the year 7 students at ASC participated in. The goal of this project was for us to create a utopian society and then represent it by making a physical model or an online CoSpace.
Our finished Utopia Model
There are many subjects and learning areas that lead to this big project. First, during online learning, We read the giver in English. This introduced us to the whole idea of a utopia, and what a utopian society is like. After that in science, we built a sustainable house with 35 sustainable features in it. This helped us with improving the sustainability of our utopia because that is a very important aspect. During this time of making the house, we started to learn about livability. Livability is the whole of subjective and objective factors that add up to a person quality of life in a place. We used the liveability factors to help our utopia have a high liveability ranking for its citizens. The next thing we did was think of ideas for our own individual utopia. We had to fill out a table and draw a map of our utopia. Then, our HASS teachers put us into groups of 2-3 and we combined every group members ideas to start on our final group utopia. At that point, in InnovatED we started learning about the UN global goals. The Global Goals are a set of 17 goals and targets that outline a vision for the future for people and the planet. We used these in our utopia by choosing certain goals we felt passionate about and thinking of ways to solve these. This process is also known as getting an Accreditation. In InnovatED time, we also started constructing our physical model or CoSpace. At that point in English, we were preparing an oral presentation to present to the class and then present to the whole year group and parents at the showcase, and in HASS, we were writing a constitution for our utopia.
This project had lots of learning area connections. The first thing is that it helped us develop lots, if not all, of the ASC capabilities. Here are some examples of a few of them; Organization – we had to remember to bring in our materials to build, Collaboration – we had to work in groups chosen by the teachers so some students were put with people who they don’t usually work with which used collaboration skills, even if you were put in a group with people who you do usually work with, you still had to collaborate effectively with them to get the project done. Another learning area connection in this project was the geographical concepts we learnt about in HASS. There are 7 geographical concepts – place, sustainability, space, scale, environment, change and interconnection. We had to incorporate these concepts into our utopia because we want to have good geographical land in our utopia. One other learning area connection for this project was the area of sustainability. We had to use sustainability in our utopia because having bad sustainability can lead to climate change and just and overall not a very pleasant place, which is not like a utopia at all. The last learning area connection this project helped us to develop is our public speaking skills. We had to use our public speaking skills a lot because in InnovatED each week, special visitors came and asked us about our projects, and we had to use them to talk to them with confidence and to tell them about our utopia. We also had to use them greatly at the showcase, because we had to talk to adults and explain our utopia to them.
Speaking of the showcase, the utopia showcase was an event where we presented our utopia to our parents. It was on a Friday night, and during the day in InnovatED we set it all up. Each group had there own ‘booth’ where they could decorate it and put stuff up any way they liked. My group displayed our physical model, our sustainable house, our accreditations, our flyers that we made to hand out to people and our original planning map. As the showcase started, everyone’s parents arrived and started walking around checking put everyone’s booths. Some people just had a look and moved on, and some people asked us some challenging questions that didn’t quite have an answer for. The showcase was a really good opportunity to really show off our hard work and tell people about this project.
I really enjoyed this project, and I got a lot of things from it. Some of the most important information I learnt from this project were learning about the UN global goals and what they were because before this project I had no idea they even existed. In HASS, I also learnt a lot about the government and the constitution, even though it’s not an area I enjoy very much. I also learnt about liveability and I found that very interesting. In science, I loved learning about cool ways you can be sustainable in your home, and all the amazing things that have been invented such as vertical gardens. The things I enjoyed the most about this project were building the model of the utopia, getting accreditations, making the sustainable house, and creating cool innovative ideas about improving the world. I also enjoyed getting in a group with my friends, because it made it a whole lot easier to work on it out if school etc. But then working with my friends was also a bit of a challenge because it was easy to get distracted, and it’s sometimes hard to disagree with your friends and say no. Another challenge was that one of my group members was always away because she was sick, and it was a bit of a challenge trying to do stuff without her.
Overall, this project taught us so much and helped us develop so many new skills. I learnt so much and had a lot of fun.