What is Blue Sky? I bet lots of you don’t know what Blue Sky is and want to know more about it (if you do stop reading this because it’ll be very boring for you). After reading this blog post you will probably know more about it than me.

Inquiry Question

Blue Sky projects are individual projects that are created to answer and support an inquiry question. An inquiry question is an open ended question, meaning it can be answered in many different ways and requires lots of research to solve.

A Good Inquiry Question:

• has more than one answer

• has a very deep meaning

• gives you lots of information

• doesn’t have a yes or no answer

• is hard to answer and takes a lot of thinking to understand the question

• contains exciting words that make you want to look for an answer

• is about something you can research

• takes a long time to figure out

• makes you think, know, and wonder

Answer Your Inquiry Question 

The end goal of a Blue Sky project is to have it answer your inquiry question through visuals, text and your presentation. You should answer the question in a fun way, while also effective and correct. Your whole project should be based on your inquiry question and there shouldn’t be any sidetrack objects that pull the attention off your inquiry question. The reason for the project is to learn about your subject or inquiry question and answer it.

Research
To answer you inquiry question you must do lots of research on your subject. The only reason for a project like this is to learn something new, interesting and educational. You must do research on your subject and take notes and references. Remember to show that you did lots of research by making your end product educational and understandable. Research is one of the main focuses of Blue Sky. Blue Sky is an opportunity to learn about something you don’t usually get to learn about in school.

Create
Create something that supports your inquiry question. This is a project, not an essay, be creative and make something that helps the audience understand your inquiry question and answer better. You should make this and it should support your question. You could create a game, a video, a picture, a model, makeup, a mask and anything else that supports your question.

Presentation 

Create a good, fun and educational presentation that engages the audience and effectively portrays the answer to your inquiry question. Keep your presentation at a good length and your project should be self explanatory even if you aren’t there presenting it.

Publish

There is an exhibition for all the projects to be viewed by an audience. There is usually a theme and you turn a room into your themed area and present with costumes on and food everywhere. Make sure to have a good presentation and answer your inquiry question.

In conclusion

In conclusion a Blue Sky project is a project where you choose an inquiry question, research it, create a project around it and answer the inquiry question through the project with lots of visuals. The project is published to the world at the P.L.P exhibition and on our blogs. Hope you know what a Blue Sky project is now. If you want to read about my Blue Sky experience CLICK HERE.

Until next time… Aedan Loughran