Spring Exhibition – the sky’s the limit

For this blog post I’m going to be talking about our Spring Exhibition. At the Exhibition, we present our final project in PLP for the year, so it is a big weight to get off your shoulders when it is done, but it is also my favourite project of the year.

Each year we finish the year with a Blue Sky project. A Blue Sky project could be classified as a passion project. We explore something we are passionate about and then address a problem we find. We use a process called a LAUNCH cycle to explore our passion, determine a problem, and then use our creativity to find a solution. We are not limited in what we can do for a solution so the sky is the limit for our creativity.

My passion this year, and pretty much every year, is military history, particularly the stories of veterans. I strongly believe we need to remember and learn from our past so we don’t repeat mistakes, and the sacrifices of our veterans are not in vain. The problem I identified was that the stories of our veterans are not reaching my generation, which I believe is the generation that should be hearing them. Not many people my age have the opportunities I have had to speak face to face with veterans.

In July, I am travelling to France with the Juno Beach Centre as one of 24 students chosen for their first student pilgrimage in honour of the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. The 4 students from BC were lucky enough to have the BC Veterans Commemorative Association (BCVCA) sponsor the student costs of this trip. Not only did they sponsor us, but they held a reception for us where we were tasked with reporting back to them about a veteran from WWI and WWII from a BC regiment that is buried in a war cemetery we are visiting on our trip. The BCVCA also arranged for several WWII veterans to be at this reception so we would have the opportunity to speak with them in person about their experiences. This was very powerful for me.

In the conversations with these veterans, one of them told me that they want to speak to more young people to tell their story so the younger generation can learn about the history so when they go (they are 95 or so), their stories get passed on to the younger generation. Their hope is  that we never forget their stories and what they sacrificed, and most importantly what their friends who never made it home sacrificed.

My problem then, was how to connect veterans with young people.

Here is a video of my LAUNCH cycle where I explored this problem.

You can see from this video, that I decided to create a prototype of an app that is designed to connect veterans and young people.

The reason why I came up with the app is because I feel an app can connect with the younger generation better than even a website or ebook. There are a lot of websites trying to help with veterans being remembered, but none of them are connected to an app that kids can carry around on their phones wherever they go. In the PLP program, we use a lot of apps for different parts in our schooling. I feel that the world is moving to using more tech stuff with learning and education. I think tech stuff and iPads are the way of the future, so having an app that could be used as an educational tool, and then capture the interest of those students to connect further with veterans, would ensure that their stories will definitely get passed around.

Here is a video of my app, myHISTORi, and its features that I presented at the Exhibition.

In order to draw people in to look at my app during the exhibition, I used pictures and stories from my own family’s military history. Here are a few pictures of my set up.

One of the ways I was thinking of continuing this project, is talking to the people at the Juno Center during my pilgrimage to present my idea and the prototype of the app I made to see if they might be interested in developing it further for the Center to use. It could then be advertised on their site, and at Remembrance Day Ceremonies, and in schools across Canada for use with school projects.

So that was my Bluesky Project this year. I felt it went really well on the day of the exhibition and a lot of people seemed to like it. Overall it was a good project to end the year on and I’m really proud of it.