Hello everyone who reads my blog, probably not many of you, but that’s all good! This is a very sad time since *sniffle* this is my last post of the year. I know, you guys must be pretty sad to but it means I get to go on summer break!! Yaaaayyyyyyyyy! Maybe I will write one or two blog updates through out my summer vacation. So, let’s get down to business. This s a very special post, so if you are reading this you are very lucky. This post is going to be about our last epic Blue Sky exhibition. It was very similar to my Star Wars exhibition ( In a Galaxy Far Far Away) but bigger and better. Just like every other unit, we had a question to answer with our project, how can we solve a problem for one of our non-PLP peers. So let’s get started. Eeeeeeeee!!

WHAT IS BLUE SKY??

The first thing I am going to talk about is Blue Sky. Now, most of you probably have no clue what that is. It can also be called 20% Time or Genius Hour depending on the company. The original company to have created this time was 3M, they would give their employees 20% of their work hours to work on a project outside of their normal work. Many ideas from huge companies like Google and Apple have been thought of during this time. We call it Blue Sky because since PLP is an Apple based program and that is what they called it, that is what we will call it. It is a very fitting name, it means that the skies are the limit, we can do whatever we want.

A really cool example of a project that could have been something made in 20%time was the Cooler. It’s not any ordinary cooler, it is a cooler cooler. Here is a video that we watched in class that gave us a ton of inspiration, it made our whole class want to make something that has been the same for decades… NEW!!

Another really creative video about a young kid named Caine, who spent is whole summers in his dad’s car shop, makes a whole arcade out of cardboard boxes. It’s absolutely amazing. The reason I am showing you these videos is to give you an idea of just what you could do with time to make projects your own way!

THE LAUNCH PROCESS

If you are a long time follower of my blog, you will remember my post about our Launch Cycle (L.A.U.N.C.H). It is a way of organizing a project process.

As you can see it is very organized and easy to follow. We used the cycle for our whole Blue Sky project and it worked out very well. Here is a quick video with a great explanation of it:

This is what our post on ITunesU looked like, in the exact order of the Launch cycle!!

MY BOOK

Instead of writing a bunch of paragraphs about the stages of my cycle and my project, I made a book to explain it! It is very easy to follow and organized in the stages of the Launch Cycle which you should now be familiar with. So here it is, hope you enjoy my RipKit!!

To see each page as well as you can you will want to click on them so that they get bigger!!

SET UP OF OUR AWESOME ROOM

All three grades that participate in the exhibition (8,9,10) got split into several different groups. Each group was a category that the different projects could fit into and each category was a different UN goal. The UN goal we had to theme our room around was “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.”

It was a bit difficult at first but we came out with one of the best-looking rooms by far. We made a little road on the ground, leading people around our area, we had an innovation themed snack table, as well as games and signs. Here is a quick video tour of what our room looked like!

 

ISY’S AWESOME STATION

One of the wonderful people in my group was Isy Hummeny in Grade 9. She was the station directly next to me and had a super impactful project. You should check out her blog:

http://www.blog44.ca/isabelleh/

Her project was about animal cruelty and the truth about the testing of it in the products we love. I really connected to it since I absolutely love animals, and it was crazy to learn that brands such as L’Oréal use animal testing in their products.

THE END

Blue Sky was an experience, from my project to the actual set up of our room. I made many new friends in different grades, even though it was kind of scary having to collaborate with people as old as grade 10. I will never forget the experience and how much I learned from it, I can’t wait for next year’s!! It was a great way to end the year and just remember, skies the limit!!

 

~Jordyn 😁