✰𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘌𝘹𝘩𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯: 𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳 𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺✰

How might we build an interactive exhibit which explains the hero’s journey? This is the question that drove our project, the story strikes back. This Star Wars themed project was meant for us to learn both literary analysis and how to take creative risks. It was a two part project. To break this down into categories, the literary analysis was all about the hero’s journey and the interactive exhibit all about creative risks.

Humanities: The Hero’s Journey

I wrote in a group a story that told the journey of an Ewok named Niki. We went through the process of creating many different forms of text to represent both our character and the hero’s journey. For example, we drew an outline of Niki to represent her appearance and then wrote about her personality inside of the outline to represent who she is. What skills when into creating text like this? Well we really focused on literary analysis skills for many tasks. This is recognizing the different components of a type of text that usually tells a story. As you read the story I wrote, you may notice some such as point of view (in this case its in the third person) or symbols. In this story specifically, Niki’s damaged hat is a symbol of her bravery. Try to find these in my story below!

Maker: An Interactive Exhibit

Now that you’re familiar with Niki and her hero’s journey, I can tell you how I took creative risks to bring this story to life. To do this, I created an artifact to represent something from my part of the story. Using the LAUNCH cycle I went through steps of designing it. Some of these steps like the L phase really helped me. The research I did in that phase helped me decide what I would create and how I would do it. Other phases though I ended up getting lost. There where parts where I had to make decisions that I ended up not sticking with. I think this is because the process was rushed, but with more organization that could have been avoided. Anyway, at the end of the cycle I had an artifact. The problem was that it was created out of a bunch of disorganized ideas. Here I put my problem solving to the test and made changes even after the LANCH cycle.

Finally, I got to show off my work in an interactive exhibit. After it all I could look back at everything I learned. From writing a story really improved my writing skills and got better at the writing process too. Going back to the competencies, I can now recognize literary terms in everything I read and use it in my own writing. I learned what works for me when designing and creating something and that organization is key. I learned that creative risks sometimes work out and sometimes don’t but you always learn from them. Last but not least, the driving question. How might we build an interactive exhibit which explains the hero’s journey? By collaborating, thinking and creating to build and create all the layers that go I to the interactive exhibit. Most importantly though, is by asking more questions. How might we use literary terms we know to create a story? How might we bring that story to life? How might we reflect on what we learned from it in a blog post? That’s what I learned from the story strikes back.

The end

-Asha