Exhibitions are a great way to show your learning in visually appealing way. Considering the vast amounts of projects that we make in the PLP program, we take these few exhibitions as a chance to really show off our growth as learners.

As you might remember, we have had one other exhibition this year: the winter exhibition. That exhibition was focussed on the theme of podcasts and listening to other peoples stories. For a recap, click here to see my winter exhibition blog post! Using what we learned from that experience would allow this new exhibition to run much smoother. This exhibition was called Blue Sky, and it focused on physical models instead of podcasts.

My group originally was Mimi, Will, and Robbie as we worked towards the goal of good health and well-being. All of our projects needed to tie into that main idea, but we could go any way we wanted. We got our goal by using the UN Sustainable Development Goals! These goals are important because they focus on large problems that we can work towards solving, but they also include smaller and more attainable goals that individuals can achieve. That’s where my class comes in! We were given the opportunity to pick a sustainable goal and create a project for the Blue Sky Exhibition. To learn more about the UN, click here!

Although we were meant to work individually, I had the opportunity to pick a harder project and work with a partner, so my friend Mimi and I decided to work towards reducing mental anxiety in schools. Although we did come to this conclusion eventually, it took many critiques and revisions before we came up with this idea!

Before getting to my work and revisions, I needed to understand the main goal of this exhibition! The main aspects of the Blue Sky exhibition were:

– Showing evidence of your learning

– Exhibit drafts and prototypes (what you did to get to where you are now)

– Being prepared with your project and able to present

– Create a driving statement for your room

– Set up your room to fit your theme

The groups in my room decided that a good theme for mental health would be a vacation (as you can see by our tourist outfits) because people go on vacation to get away from stress. This is how my room displayed our driving statement:

An additional idea that we needed to keep in mind before making our projects for the exhibition, was the LAUNCH cycle. Here is what that means:

L- Look, listen, and learn
Goal: Awareness, seeing a problem and having a sense of empathy

A- Ask tons of questions
Goal: Sparked by curiosity, leads to understanding the process or problem.

U- Understand the problem or process
Goal: Use authentic research experience (interviews, analyzing data, articles, watching videos)

N- Navigate ideas
Goal: Brainstorm, combine, analyze, and navigate ideas to generate a concept for what they might create

C- Create (a prototype)
Goal: Could be an action, digital work, tangible project, work of art, or event

H- Highlight and fix
Goal: Fix what is failing, for every mistake brings you closer to your final product

Launch to Audience- To an authentic audience

Throughout the past few weeks, I have gone through all of these steps before creating my final product. Let’s look a little closer at how I went through these steps during the production stages of my project. I saw a problem (anxiety in schools) and empathized, I asked students if anxiety is a common problem in their lives, and then I researched anxiety to come up with solutions.

One solution that Mimi and I came up with was dog therapy. We wondered how we could introduce dog therapy into a controlled school environment to complete our project. The first step was getting permission and approval! After getting our project pitch approved by Ms. Willemse, we needed to get permission from our principal to bring dogs on to school property.

Project Pitch:

Next, we got critiques and revised our ideas. Class critiques are a great way to get feedback because receiving different perspectives is very important if you want a well rounded project. One important aspect that Robbie and Will pointed out to us was the diversity of dogs. We needed to make sure that we had young, old, small, big, female, and male dogs so that every student could enjoy the dogs.

Now that everything was well thought out and planned, it was time to test our idea through an experiment and receive results! We talked to a grade 11 physics class, and they agreed to be a part of our experiment.

Mimi and I split the class in half based on the student grade averages, so that it would be fair. One half of the class would get to spend fifteen minutes with five dogs in a controlled environment before a physics test, while the other half of the class would not. Hopefully, the students would become calm and more focussed so that they do better on their test after seeing the dogs!

We gave the students who saw the dogs a survey that would allow for them to express how they felt after seeing the dogs and if it improved their confidence and focus. This survey focussed on experimental aspects that could effect the experiment, like the amount of sleep and excersize they had before the test. Read our survey below!

Quotes we received from the class:

“The dogs made me happy and relaxed instead of sad and stressed”
“The project was a good idea and it was very well done”
“My mood was significantly improved after meeting the dogs”
“I felt more calm”
“The dogs helped me feel more confident”
“I felt so much happier after playing with the dogs”
“My energy was restored by the positive aura of the dogs”
“The dogs have changed my life and life is great”
“Do it again for every test”

“So many youth struggle with anxiety and I know that animal therapy really does work”
-Ruby Willems (our counsellor)

Mimi and I were able to show all of the steps and LAUNCH cycle stages we took in one extensive poster. This poster included all three prototypes and included charts and pictures to support our information. Our driving question is clearly stated at the top of the poster and is answered throughout our writing. Below is a picture of our poster!

Once our project was finished, it was time to get together with our group of grade 8’s and grade 9’s to form a theme for our room. My group included Kai, Kiera, Fraser, Luca, and Paisley. As I said before, since our topic was mental health, our theme was going on a vacation to get away from stress. We worked very hard as a team to transform our room into a tropical getaway!

Every part of our room represented mental health in some way. For example, we had waves and palm trees on the walls to represent the feeling of being on a vacation to a tropical place. We had iced tea, twinkies, and donuts to represent comfort foods. After doing research, we found out that comfort food really does relieve stress and make you calmer. The last part of our rooms decorations was the music we played. We played anything from Bobby McFerrin to Jack Johnson, which set a calming vibe in our vacation room.

The last thing that my room had to think about was an activity. This would be a section in our room where people could do an activity that relates to the topic. We decided to have a station where you can create your own stress balls. For obvious reasons, this related to mental health because the stress ball could be used after the exhibition.

If you would like to learn more about my Blue Sky project through a different perspective, click here to read my partners blog!

Overall, this expirience was great! I really enjoyed my first Blue Sky exhibition because I got to show off my skills in research, revision, and presentation. By following the LAUNCH cycle, I was able to achieve all of my original goals and more!

Bibliography:

“Sustainable Development Goals.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 June 2018, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals.

“LAUNCH Into Design Thinking.” The Launch Cycle, thelaunchcycle.com/.