Metaphor Machine Progress Report

As you know in PLP we have been doing a unit on revolutions and steampunk. It is now finally time for the big end of the unit project. For the project in this unit we are making a Rube Goldberg Machine. A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine that makes a doing a simple task more complicated by using a domino effect. Here is and example of a Rube Goldberg Machine. We were all put in groups of 4 people and assigned a revolution. For this project we have to make a machine that uses metaphors to show the revolution. We also have to include a steampunk aspect into our machine. In my group is Simon, Sofia, and Reid. We were assigned the Haitian Revolution.

We started this project a couple of weeks ago by doing research on our revolution and making a timeline for it. In the timeline we had to include the big events in the revolution, metaphors to relate the revolution to our machine, and how the revolution followed Crane Brinton’s Theory. We all put a lot of effort into making our timelines perfect so after they were done we did a Mini project as a break.

After the break we got to start building the machine. My group had lots of great ideas and how to make our machine so we ended up combing our ideas to make the best machine we could. We all brought in our supplies as soon as we could so we could start building. The first day of building was spent mostly planning out the machine with the parts we had and cutting them so they would work better with our idea. There were a couple parts of our machine that we had to alter because they weren’t working. So far our machine is turning out very nicely and is almost working.

While we’ve been working on our machine we have been working on a storyboard for a video. We have to make a video about our machine. We have to explain our revolution, show how we built the machine, and show the machine working. Normally half of our group would work on the machine and the other half would work on the storyboard. We just finished the storyboard today and Sofia and I started working on the video. Everything is coming along very nicely and I think our machine is going to turn out great.  

Check out my groups blog posts

Sofia’s Blog post

Simon’s Blog post

Reid’s Blog post