So, we just finished our year end blue sky projects.

This year it changed up a little bit. We had to make our projects around a problem that either pets, seniors, tweens, toddlers and babies faced.

My project was, How Might We Fix the Lack of Youth Ultimate Coaches to Provide Youth The Skills and Knowledge they Need to Play The Sport.

(Long question, I know)

Before even starting the project I had consulted with one of my coaches, asking if there were any problems with youth ultimate. At first I thought that there was a lack of youth interest in the sport but Ari, my coach, said that there is a lot of youth interest but there isn’t enough coaches to meet the demand.

After finding that out I started to put together a solution. At first my idea was to create a promotional piece of media asking players to coach youth or to create an online resource for wannabe coaches who don’t know what they’re doing.

That idea got rejected but I was able to come up with a slightly different idea. The idea was to “cut” out coaches and create an online course, like Kahn academy, to teach youth the basic skills to play the sport and then provide resources for them to explore teams to play for. This was barely approved.

After getting official approval I started to research different drills and other resources I could use for the course. I also started to explore different ways to make the course. At first I was planning on making an app but to make one I had to download a bunch of apple software but I don’t have a mac so that wouldn’t work. I went to Mr. Hughes for help and he asked if I had considered ItunesU, which is the app we use to access our courses in PLP.

After getting some research done and figuring out how I’m going to make the course, I started to build the course. I started by writing the many posts about terminology, skills and strategies. After most of the writing was done I decided to film instructional videos explaining and demonstrating the different skills that are key to Ultimate.

I got Ryan and Will to help me out and I spent about three classes filming the videos. For most of my videos I went over different throws but I also did cutting and catching.

I also used Explain everything to go over some of the formations used in games.

 

 

 

With all of that put together I sent it to my aunt, who is also an ultimate player. To make it easier I made a critique document that catagorized the feedback.

After receiving feedback for the first draft I started to work on the second.

I made some small changes here and there and I also added another formation video. I tried to send it to the youth coordinator of the league I play with but he never got back to me, so I sent it to my aunt again.

I made some small edits again and then it became my final product.

I now had to figure out a way to present it. So I destroyed my ewok village and made some frisbee stands to attract people to my project.

I grabbed my cleats and friction gloves and all 15 Frisbees. (Some of my friends say I have an addiction to collecting discs) I also printed out those critique pages to show the multiple drafts.

At the exhibition we were divided into our groups which was what age group our projects were geared towards. My group was the largest with 23 members.

We themed our area with balloons and brought in some food and put up some other decorations. I was right at the enterance to our area so I got a fair bit of people at my station.

It was was a great experience and I was really happy with my final product. The one big take-away from my project was the time management skills. I found that I was done the actual project almost a week before the exhibition. I found that as soon as I got approved I immediately started to work on the project, not knowing how long it would take.

Like I said I’m really proud of my project and I really enjoyed making it.