For the past two months, we have been working on a project called Blue Sky. Blue Sky was created by a company called 3M, and has been used on a number of platforms since. It is a time period that companies give to employees to brainstorm and create an innovative invention!

For our projects, we had to come up with a problem for one of five demographics: Seniors, toddlers, babies, tweens and pets. I decided to go with pets, because I already had a problem I could fix. You see, lately, when my dog has been left unattended, she takes herself down to the beach. Because she is mostly left alone on the deck, I wanted to make something that would fit at the top of the stairs. I knew there were already things, like baby gates, that would slide up or down/left to right. I was thinking more collapsible, making it easier for people to get around. Once I pitched it to the teachers, and proved that it wasn’t already a thing, I got approved!

Once I got approved, started working on a design for it. I thought I had an idea that would work, but it didn’t. So I restarted, and with some critique, I got my idea.

I researched for a bit, and found what I thought to be the best materials. Got some interviews. So I started building!

https://youtu.be/G5iYcTtW0JI

Measuring, cutting, sawing, bending, glueing, etc was what followed. It took a while, but I was striving towards my goal.

https://youtu.be/LkwSlw_BbxA

https://youtu.be/Kmae_6OezzM

The first draft, made of cardboard, toothpicks and tissue paper, showed the basic idea. But I wanted to make it sturdier. So I tried wood. My second draft kept coming apart, but even when it wasn’t, it was not the right size. Numéro three, was blown up to twice the size. It was so big, that it wouldn’t support its own weight.

PLP is all about revision and edits, but sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to. That is what happened to my Blue Sky. If i had more time, I probably would have done more drafts. I explained this all at the exhibition in the PLP Pet Store!

Why do people explore? Fashion, power or money? This is what our unit was about.

We learned about the explorers, voyages, and geography in this unit. But the final project, oh. It was very interesting. We split into groups, of our own choosing I might add, and had to create a comic. I was with Tamara, Melanie, and Raina, and our person was Samuel du Champlain.

Using Comic Life, we split up into sections, using a story line creator.

First draft was homework. I worked very hard to get it done in the one day. But the next day, I found out almost no one else in the entire class had finished it. So the teacher extended the due date one day. So yay! Nothing really to do.

The next day, we had a critique session. We got a lot of good critique.

I changed a lot of my comic after the critique I got. The story line stayed the same, but the first illustrations sucked. So I spent that day after school working on and changing my comic.

More critique. It was very helpful, though we only had one thing on what to change.

Anyways, then we had to do this blog post, so we had no time time change it. The whole thing was very informative, although we never got to do the keynote (not saying to the teachers that we should do the keynote).

Imagine. You are an old woman in the 15th century. There is a dog in the village, presumed dead. But you know different. You take the dog home and heal it. Then you are burned at the stake for being a witch.

This was actually quite a common occurrence in the Dark Ages. People were afraid of change, so they outcasted the ones who inspired change. This has happened since the beginning of time, and still occurs today.

We did a project on this (of course). We started as teens in 14th century Italy. For a few weeks, we had different lessons on the Middle Ages. Black Death, Martin Luther, Feudalism, the Crusades, etc. A blog post too, a bunch of reading and guided notes. It was all quite fascinating.

Then we got into the nitty gritty. The Notebook. Don’t laugh, I’m not talking about the movie. No, I’m talking about books. Defence, agriculture and the environment, transportation, communication, and science and medicine. Five topics, five groups. I was put in the agriculture and the environment group. We used Book Creator for our book, the only group to do so.

It wasn’t as easy as you would think. Tons of research, photos, colour schemes, etc. And that was just the individual pages. We also needed to make a intro, conclusion, table of contents, and bibliography. And you know who had to do most of that cause it was on their iPad? Me. Since it was on my iPad, for homework when we hadn’t finishec if. Don’t get me wrong, the rest of my group was great. We all did a lot. I owe a lot to Raina, Owen and Jamie, cause I went away halfway through the project. I am very proud of how it turned out.

But we weren’t finished there, oh no. No, we had to be ‘forward thinking’ and invent something that would ld help our industry. We wouldn’t have to actually be able to make the thing, maybe a model. Not just inventing it either. We had to create a keynote to pitch the idea (I will not be including the keynote because it will not make sense without the presentation notes).

So we created ‘The Treebot’. The Treebot is a very advanced invention, the technology not yet available. The Treebot removes the need for fruit tree labourers, by being able to pick its own fruit. It would be a metal piece in the branch of the trees, specifically in the cambium layer. The tree would adapt to movement, and help the world as a whole!

I was away for a lot of this project, but I learned tons. The keynote portion taught me about revising, and making things realistic. But overal, I had a lot of fun with this.

I hope you enjoyed learning about change!