Recently in maker class we have been working on the Star Wars exhibition. The exhibition is a biannual event were we show off our learning to the world. We do this by coming up with a interesting and open ended question on the given topic which was Star Wars in this case. Because it was Star Wars theme this year Everyone in grade eight and nine came up with unique inquiry questions about Star Wars.

If we go right back to the when thoughts of the winter exhibition were just barely floating around in our heads and we were just beginning to come up with exhibition ideas, I have having a bit of a hard time. For some some reason I couldn’t come up with an inquiry question. Even though I liked star wars and I think I have a fair amount of knowledge on the topic I couldn’t think of a good topic. I think the reason for this was because I wanted to come up with a question that could relate to real life. After a couple days I finally came up with a question that both me and the teachers liked. The question was “was creating the clones an ethical decision”. At first when I began to think about it I was immediately stuck because it’s a big question.

The next step for me was breaking down the question. I decided to break it down into three parts to solve, the parts were cloning, humanity and actions. These three categories did a good job of both breaking down the question into smaller solveable (somewhat) parts and making the project quite a bit more interesting to the audience I would be showing it to. The reason it would be more entertaining is because not all people know about star wars and this would do a better job of explaining it to those people.

 

First I decided to solve the “actions” part of the question. To solve this I had to research the clones actions and put what they did into consideration. I spent a good four days just compiling what they did and weighing the evidence. After a long session of contemplation and thinking I came to the conclusion that the actions the clones made were more good than evil. Although they did some evil things, those things were mostly out of there control so I thought that there actions were definitely mostly good.

 

Next, I had to work on the cloning section of my project. First I would look at how cloning works and the science behind it in today’s world. After learning that, I would look at how it is done in star wars and compare the two. Cloning is actually a fairly simple process once you can grasp the concept of how its done. In star wars cloning is actually very similar to how we clone today except at the end of the process they put the clones in giant tanks of liquid that we don’t have.

Lastly I had to research the clones humanity or how human they really were. For this portion of the research, finding the information was relatively quick, it was the opinion that really made the difference here. While I was looking at the facts it was hard to figure out how human they really were. At first they seemed to be regular humans, but upon looking deeper they were actually extremely modified and hardly human at all. In the end I decided that they weren’t very human at all.

After researching it was time to build. At first I thought I would just make a poster board explaining cloning and then I would talk about the clones and their ethics. When I was done it it looked nice but I felt I might have been missing something. I came to school with my one small poster board I realized if I really wanted to make this project great I would have to go deeper and add more. I went black home that day and I added a lot. I added a lego model of cloning tanks, another poster board explaining more in depth the ethics themselves. I also added two origami clone figures and some ominous red light. Once all this was done for my project, I was finally ready for exhibition!

Earlier on we were put into 2 groups, the dark side and light side groups. In our groups we divided into sub groups based on our questions, I was put into the philosophy subgroup because my question was related to ethics. Other people in my group also had very deep and open ended questions that could lead to more than one possible answer.

On exhibition day is was very ready to present. During last block and after school I was nonstop working on exhibition setup. We had to darkside-ify our room (the school library) by putting up black construction paper and red lights everywhere. During this part of the process I feel like I could have been a little bit more prepared but I think it turned out really great.

Finally it was time for the exhibition. I felt really prepared by the time the exhibition came as the setup went almost perfectly. The whole room felt dark and mysterious and on the personal side of things my project was looking great and I knew everything anyone could possibly ask about. As the exhibition came and started, lots of people came to my station and everyone thought it was great. Everyone thought the cloning side of my project was really great and they thought the star wars aspect of it was really well explained. The exhibition went by like a breeze! Hard work pays off!

Looking back on this project, it was super interesting and learning opportunity. The reason I found it so interesting is because I really thought cloning was super high tech and interesting. I also thought the idea of the clones and the clone wars were super cool. I would say it was a great learning opportunity because it really gave me a good, refreshed and clear idea of what I want to happen at the year end exhibition. I feel it was definitely the best way to learn the do’s and dont’s. I also learned a lot about the clones and the science and technology behind cloning. And after all, who doesn’t love Star Wars?