What a roller coaster. I am here to tell you about the highs and lows of my recent experience with blue sky, so welcome.
If your reading this you most likely know what blue sky is, but for those of you exploring around, and just reading this out of curiosity, I’ll explain it for you.
Blue sky is a project where all of the students from grade 8-10 create a question based on different criteria, answer their question and show their learning to parents on the exhibition night.
For the grade 9’s and I, the criteria was to create an answer to a problem that expanded ourselves. What I mean by this is that our answer to our problem had to be something you could find at a department store, in a certain section.
Ms. Willemse got us to do question practices, to help us open our minds to the vast amount of options that we had. We asked How Might We questions and watched LAUNCH videos. Now you might be wondering what these things are and I would like to share with you what my opinion is on them and how they helped me and my project.
How might we questions are questions that we could ask that would provoke our learning. The structure to the question is enforced to push the student to think outside the box. An example of some how might we questions could be :
how might we entertain kids?
how might we speed up homework?
how might we engage children more?
You get the just of it. The questions cant be to broad, and they cant be to narrow, they need to offer a variety of answers. This helped me because when it came time fro me to write my questions, I was able to have a more open mind and be able to conjure and accept more of the ideas coming from my brain.
The LAUNCH cycle is a bit more complex then the “how might we” questions. Blue sky is built around the frame of “the LAUNCH cycle.” So let me explain what this cycle is. The LAUNCH cycle is a cycle of learning.
It begins with looking listening and learning, sort of taking in surroundings, creating empathy, awareness, and most importantly creativity.
The second step is asking questions, and tons of them. This is also the part where “how might we” questions come in, so in this step its important to ask important questions.
The third step is understanding the topic, and to do this research becomes a big part. It is vital that for research you use authentic, and trustworthy sources. What I mean is don’t ask your friends questions fro your project that they would not know anything about. Ask the proper source.
Step four is analyzing your ideas, and begging to navigate through them.
The fifth step is creating a prototype. This prototype can be digital and action event, a piece of art, engineered, etc.
Step six is revising the object that you created in the step below. Highlighting the pros to keep your self feeling productive, and remember every mistake takes you closer to success!
The seventh step is sharing your work with others. This step is very important, because after this step, you head right back to the beginning!
Now that I’ve explained these first few steps, I would like to get started on my actual journey through blue sky.
The first step for me once I had picked a topic was to fill out the Blue sky project pitch form. I had to create 2 of these because I changed my idea half way through! The pitch form is a form to help you begin your whole journey into this project, I do feel it is more for the teachers to understand your project, but it helps the students figure out things for the future of their projects as well.
After this step the kids are left to complete the main project itself. For this section I needed to complete my research and do my interviews. I also needed to create prototypes! For this section we had a bunch of time so we didn’t have to be super stressed but I was anyways. I had done a lot of my research just looking into this topic so research was not on my priority chart, but drawing my first prototype was. My first prototype was very simple, and did not really consist of to much back round knowledge. It was a rough drawing but I’m glad I didn’t go all out because I realized later that I did not even want to do this topic, so I had to scratch the whole thing and start again. This is a photo of my first prototype of my inflatable vest.
After I had changed topics to a more “adlih” topic, I had to make another pitch form and another prototype. It didn’t take to long and when I was done I was really happy I had made the switch!
After prototype 1 was finished it was time to move on to step 6, which is revising and finding some positive work. I can not tell you how long this step took. I don’t know what it was but I could not wrap my head around some of the solutions to the problems I’d been having with the filter. ( forgot to mention I switched my topics to a nano plastic filter!) I spent 2 whole days trying to figure out why so many new problems kept coming up, but finally I figured it out and created the second prototype.
After the second prototype the rest of the project just fell into place. I interviewed a man named Byron Gates. Dr. Gates works at SFU, and majors in the study of nano particles. The interview that I did with him went really well and I learned a lot of new information.
I also interviewed my long time friend, and owner of Room6, Megan. Megan told me a lot about the business side of products, but was also very interested in the science behind it.
I put the information together and created a poster board. I also nailed a sink to a box of wood to show how you use this filter, but in the end I didn’t even get to show anyone. I came down with the worst flu I have ever had the night before the exhibition and I didn’t get to share my project with anyone.
In the end I learned a lot about my topic and I really enjoyed the experience
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