If you don’t know, our class has just recently taken part in a project about revolutions. In this project, we had to create a machine that explains revolutions through metaphors. My group got to choose the Irish Revolution, or Easter Rising. I worked with Tatum, Michael and William and together we created a machine that functions like a Rube Goldberg machine and explains Crane Brinton’s Theory and metaphors. In this blog post, I will go through the process of this two month project and how my group handled the revolution and machine.

When we were first explained about revolutions, our teacher told us by first teaching us about Crane Brinton’s Theory. Crane Brinton was an author and wrote books on revolutions. His theory explains revolutions in his different stages. You can check out my blog post on Brinton’s Theory Here. We did a few assignments and mini projects on it and after our last assignment, we were told about a project, a big project. Our teachers told us we would be put into certain groups and create a machine that explains revolutions and metaphors.

The main goal of this project was to answer the driving question;

How Does an Idea Drive Change?

Our idea was to create a machine that guided potatoes through certain stages of Brinton’s Theory, while using metaphors. This is the revolution.

The Easter Rising, or Irish Revolution, was a war which lasted only five days, but impacted Ireland and the UK to what they are today. The revolution lasted over a hundred years. In 1845, a disease spread across Ireland which heavily affected crops and humans. This disease was known as the Great Famine. This disease put Ireland in a drought, and the people wanted a change. The government wasn’t doing anything about the disease, which forced the people to protest and rebel. Once the people came together, they created a group called the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or IRB. This groups goal was to overthrow the current government of Ireland. The years past and the IRB finally decided to launch and attack on the government. The war lasted five days, and ended up with the Irish Republican Brotherhood to surrender. The government then executed the rebel leaders of the IRB, and fled the country afterward, as it wasn’t worth the trouble it had caused them. This let the Irish people create their own country and democratic government. Later, they raised statues to commemorate the fallen soldiers. This helped Ireland recover from the revolution.

Now I will talk about some of the metaphors our group used in our project. When we were first introduced to metaphors, I thought I had a good understanding of them.

I was wrong. Metaphors were so much more than that. I couldn’t identify what metaphors even were at times! So coming up with them took a long, long time. We eventually did find some that we would incorporate into our machine though!

 

At the start of the machine, there is a broken ruler, which symbolizes the weak rulers at the time of the revolution. After the potatoes are let our by the “weak” ruler, there are two pipes that come together in our machine. This represents the coming together of the citizens of Ireland who plan to rebel against the government.

Next there is a funnel. The funnel, made out of a pringles can, is used to symbolize the slow coming of the war. We then added nails that represented the war and violence.

Nearing the end of the machine, we added a switch, which triggered lights that surrounded an Irish flag. The switch at the bottom represents a treaty being signed, as Britain decided to let go of the island and leave it alone. Once the switch activates lights appear surrounding an Irish flag. This represents the new country being formed. The last metaphor we used in our machine was a statue. The potatoes roll past a statue at the end of our machine, which represents the statues the Irish built to give respect to the fallen IRB leaders.

Now I will talk about the process of creating the machine.

We started off creating a blueprint for our machine. This gave us a brief idea of what metaphors we incorporate in our machine.

Here are the Drafts of the BluePrints-

After we finalized our blueprint and draft, we brought in supplies. Supplies varied from wood, to PVC pipe, etc.

We then began creating our bases and frame for the machine. The base and frame were made both out of wood, and we spent lots of time measuring and polishing off those pieces.

Once we finished cutting the boards, we continued on bringing supplies for the start of our machine. We finished in bringing in supplies around the time we started glueing the pipes. We had troubles glueing the pipes at first, but once we knew how to work the glue gun,  we were glueing about in no time.

Here is the First Draft of our Machine after around One Week-

After we were done the funnel, we started on the circuits. We got the circuits and batteries from the science room. We added them to our machine, and placed lights that surrounded the Irish flag. We then added a few more pieces of wood that guided the potatoes to the statue.

As a group, I thought we worked really well together. We didn’t start any conflicts or arguements and i thought we all did a good job of handling things if other people got distracted or off task. We all worked balanced, as in not one of us was carrying the entire group throughout the project. We all had something to do at any given moment.

Individually, I mainly focused on creating the iMovie. I felt like I had a lot of experience creating movies in the past, and so I thought I would be perfect for organizing and managing the iMovie. When needed, I did work on the machine with my fellow group members.

One of the things we could have done better as a group was add more ideas to our machine. Our machine goes really, really quick, and so even if we added a few more metaphors, it would be a lot more intriguing to people visiting our machine

iMovie-

Overall, I really enjoyed working on this project. I think the most fun aspect of it was we actually built the machine hands on. That was a lot of fun for our group. I loved this project, and I hope our class eats another oppritunity to have another great project like this one. Who knows, PLP always has a trick up its sleeve.

Thanks for Tuning in, Aiden