Star Wars Exhibition

To wrap up both the first term and 2017 itself, PLP held its annual Winter Exhibtion, a night in which PLP students showcase the projects they have been preparing. The topic of your project depends on what grade you are in. For instance, this year, the grade 8 and 9s topic was Star Wars, and the grade 10 and 12s topic was Podcasts. As I am a grade 9 student, I created a project about one topic from Star Wars. More specifically, my inquiry question was “What is the driving factor behind ones decision to join the Empire?” I was curious how people joined the “bad guys” and why they felt like it was the right decision. So about three weeks prior to the exhibition, my question was approved and I began researching.

My research was mainly based on finding examples of my question throughout the Star Wars saga. There isn’t really one defined answer to my question because it’s not just asking why one specific person joined the Empire, but rather why do people in general join the Empire. After finishing up my research I narrowed down the many different reasons people may join to just three; For Power, For Family, or To Crush The Rebels. I decided to just choose three reasons because at this point I knew that I wanted to have a ballot at my table. I thought it would be a good idea because it would mean I could see how people reacted to my project, what they learned from it, and why they think people join the Empire.

To display my research more thoroughly and to have more than just a lone ballot at my table, I decided to make a keynote. At first I was contemplating doing a poster board, but then I realized how many people were doing one, and also how Ms. Willemse dislikes them. I also figured well I’m in an iPad program for a reason and a poster board is a pretty basic and straight forward thing to do (no offence to the dozens of people who decided to do one). To make my keynote interesting and enticing, I themed it very Star Warsy. The background of the title was a moving universe with my title zooming in to frame in big, bold Star Wars font. It included a visual depiction of Anakin being brought over to the Dark Side by Lord Sidious and turning in to Darth Vader, which I made in Explain Everything. Also, the whole thing was done in Star Wars font which was so annoying to do because of the way Phonto likes to format blocks of text. Anyways, it took a pretty long while to get everything to look nice. Once I was finished the Keynote I screen recorded myself going through the keynote at the speed I wanted, and then during the exhibition I put that video in to an app that loops it over and over so when I was away from my table running something else, people would still be able to follow along.

So let’s talk about the exhibition itself. I think it went well. I think everything went smoothly and nothing went wrong. I often switched between running our sections mini, arcade style game and being at my own table. We made our section (the Philosophy section) look really good as we had a very well drawn brain on the whiteboard, illuminated by a big red light that made the whole mood so much more fitting. We also had a continuous Star Wars intro-inspired video running on the projector so guests walking in to our section could understand our topic. The only thing that could have went better is the amount of traffic my project yielded. Because everybody else in my section did a poster board, me and my iPad/ballot combination didn’t make for a huge attraction compared to everyone else’s tall poster boards. I was also put on the end of the table which didn’t exactly help. The reason I’m not that upset is because I knew that the work I put in was just as strong if not stronger than others. If I’m being honest I don’t think having that many poster boards is a good idea, I don’t know, at least that’s not what PLP means to me.

But anyways, I’m not trying to crap on anybody’s project because all in all everybody did a good job and put a lot of effort in to their work, and as a collective group, we put on a very good display.