“Hello again!” For the last time. Today for our final Maker post of grade 8, I will be talking about another Blue Sky. Unlike the last one, this one is not mini. Instead of all about Star Wars, Our question and solution had to fit under the umbrella of one of the UN Sustainable Goals.
I tried to fit my project under 10, Reduced Inequalities. Now of course, this project was oriented around a How Might We question that we came up with. Over the course of the project, my HMW question changed a lot. There are 3 examples, and so here they are!
- How might we change how people treat each other while still being in our own homes?
- How do looks impact the way we judge, look at, and categorize other people?
- How might we understand how chosen looks impact the way we talk to, treat and interact with other people?
As you can see, all my questions had the same tone, but the details are what changed. The first one is not specific enough, the second one is better, but not a HMW question, and the third one is just right. There’s enough detail for you to think about how to answer it, but not so much that an obvious answer just pops into your head.
Now onto the driving question:
Using one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a guide, how would you solve a problem facing our community/province/world?
During the start of the project I had a plan for what I would make. It was to create a survey with a bunch of people saying “hi”. Then I would ask other people what job they thought they had, and how old they thought they were. Then I would compare, and see why! Unfortunately, very late in the project I realized this wouldn’t work. Looking at the driving question, this would not answer it. All it would do is say what was happening, not why or how to stop it. And so I frantically sent Ms. Willemse a slightly incoherent text about drawing on leaves as my project. Thankfully, she was very reassuring and said that I just had to have something that I was proud of at the exhibition, that tried to answer the driving question.
And now onto the part that I’m really happy with. Last weekend, me and my mom did a lot of brainstorming on what to make. In fact, I even went back to brainstorming in my LAUNCH journal (will talk about it more later). Then, we came up with a great idea. There is the Harvard Implicit Bias test that my mom had heard of, so maybe we could do something based of the results of that. And so my product began. Instead of gathering data, it would be a way to share it. You could read it as a bedtime story, and everyone who read it would understand how to avoid implicit biases. It would be a a choose your own adventure story with 2 paths. They were both about Sam. To see what implicit biases I used, click here. On one path, Sam was a girl, and on the negative side of all these implicit biases. On the other, Sam was a boy and on the positive side of all these biases.
Has All of the Qualities Has None of the Qualities(click the links here to read my stories!)
Now onto some Milestones!
Milestone 1: Look, Listen and Learn
In this first Milestone, we had to come up with our HMW question. I talked a lot about it further up, so I won’t say to much here. Just that it’s harder than it looks to come up with a HMW question. You have to ask something, you have no idea how to get the answer to. And when you read the question, you should have no idea what you’re going to build to solve it.
Milestone 2: Ask tons of questions, Understand the process or problem, Navigate ideas
A= Need to knows
U= Do loads of research
N= Thin ideas into more plausible ones
Now we had to make a form, which described what we were going to make, and when we were going to make it by. I think here is where I really started to have a problem. I had this grand idea in my head about surveys, and “making the world a better place”. I filled out the form, and was so proud of my idea. In retrospect, I really should have thought it through.
Milestone 3: Create!
And it was at this Milestone that I went all the way back to Milestone 2. But no, I was still using the same idea. So all the research I had done for U was still helpful. All I had to do was just a bit more. And then I started writing my stories, based off all the implicit biases that I had come across. I started with my first story…
Milestone 4: Highlight and Fix
and it was way to long. And had way to many details. And so I shortened it. This one was the one about girl Sam. Oof. It was really tough to write, because I had to reference all the different biases, but still make the story make sense. Another draft I had was crazy. Sam was going to lifeguarding class, and then her car crashed but she was miraculously ok. Then someone in her class did an Olympic-like dive. Thankfully now, it’s a little more plausible. I also did a lot of Highlight and Fix at the start of the project, when I saw how my first idea wouldn’t work. Overall, I like highlight and fix because when I’m critiquing my own work, I don’t have to be nice. The thoughts of what I need to fix are already in my head, so I won’t offend myself if I say them!
Milestone 5: LAUNCH!
This Milestone was really fun! Of course because of COVID we couldn’t do our exhibition in person, so we did it online. I think the highest number of people watching we had was 78! It was super fun. First, there was so much planning that needed to be done. I was in a group with 12 other grade 8s, 9s and 10s. We were the economic inequalities group. We had to present our project in the form of a story line. The first idea that we came up with wasn’t a story. It was kind of with people popping into camera and sharing their story. Thankfully on the day of the exhibition after hours of practicing Ms. Willemse and Ms. Maxwell came in and watched our presentation. They were immediately like: “you need to change it. There is no story” and so we did. The story we came up with was about detectives trying to gather information on COVID-19, and how it’s impacted different types of people. You can take a look at Jordyn’s blog, which was like our case fileIt was really fun! My favorite part was Evelyn’s poem. It was about how people are scared of other people who are different, and it was really deep and thought provoking.
Of course, during this project we made a LAUNCH journal.
It’s pretty self explanatory, but in it I cover the steps I take in the LAUNCH 🚀 process to get to the night of the exhibition.
The competencies are next, and I promise, this post will not go over 2,000 words!
Research and Understand: How might I research and understand a problem, process, or challenge using different perspectives?
I think that I did an ok job on this competency. At the start, my whole project was based around research. I think that the problem with that is that you don’t have something fantastic to share at the end. During the research parts of our project though, I’m really proud of how I did. While gathering information for my stories, I stepped into the characters points of view and thought about how they would feel if they were being treated that way. I also tried to think about how to make it more realistic, so someone could relate.
Take Creative Risks: How might I use technology to create in new ways?
Before this project I had never used google forms before, and even thought it wasn’t in my final product, I’m stil happy with how much I learned. I started to understand that the only options for a project aren’t just physically making something or doing a slide show. There are many more forms. I think I started to get this last Blue Sky, but this time it really sunk in. I even wrote a story (which is something that I love) for my project! I was worried about how I would present it at the start, but then I got really excited and all the ideas just started coming!
Revise: How might I see this as a First Attempt In Learning and revise?
There was a lot of this competency in this project. Oof. Basically, my whole first idea had to be revised into something better. Waaaaaayyy better. And I’m proud that I was able to see that it wouldn’t work, and then com up with something better!
Thanks again for reading my blog, it’s been an awesome year,
– KATE!!!!