Yet another year has passed, which means another year end blue sky project! If you haven’t the slightest clue of what blue sky is click here and here to catch up. Anyways I would say this year was a sucess, keep reading to find out why!

Blue sky is something that our class has been doing for quite a while. Many other company’s also use this idea in their offices. It’s essentially extra time where people invent things that may not have even been thought of yet, its a time when all big idea’s and dreams are taken into consideration. If I’m not mistaken an office actually invented saran-wrap during this time!

A big part of blue sky is understanding the LAUNCH process. Every year we watch this very detailed but quick paced video explaining the process, click here to watch it! The LAUNCH cycle is meant to be a process that can lead you to creating a successful project. At this point your probably wondering what the heck does LAUNCH stand for?

L- Look, Listen & Learn
A- Ask tons of questions
U- Understanding the process or problem
N- Navigate Ideas
C- Create a prototype
H- Highlight and fix
LAUNCH to the world!

Along the way I’ll be mentioning when a letter correlates to a step of my project so make sure you remember what each letter stands for!

First step to creating this process was being aware of the topic or theme. This theme acted as a creative constraint that would come into play during the L stage. The topic this year was surrounded around the UN’s development/sustainability goals. These goals were put under categories like “economy“. An example would be: Improve suicide prevention and educate about mental Illness. That goal would then go under the topic of “physical health and well being“. Each group of four that we created was then put into a topic, my groups topic was “physical health and well being“.

Next thing we dove into was the A step, asking tons of questions! During this stage we totally immersed ourselves into our topic goals. We researched tons of big ideas or questions we had, and every project idea we had was written down. This brought us to the next stage, U, understanding the process or problem. At this point we began to narrow down our ideas and figure out the true task at hand.

During the N stage we began to juggle ideas. Our first idea was an inflatable fanny pack for lifeguards. We then moved to the idea of creating carriages for babies in developing countries to prevent malaria, but quickly realized this would be to expensive for families in developing countries. Then we moved to improving babies immune system using vitamins, then a collapsible container that could turn salt water into drinkable water and finally a board game to increase physical activity! As you can tell we moved from one idea to the next very quickly, and no idea was ever a bad one. We finally settled on the challenge of decreasing anxiety in schools. After some light research we found out dogs actually release a hormone called oxytocin in our brain, this is a similar reaction to when we go outside or get exercise. This hormone has been known to decrease anxiety and create a more stress free environment.

After coming up with the inquiry question “How can we decrease anxiety in schools?” we wrote a pitch form to get approval from the teacher. Below will be a screenshot of that form!

Now moving on to the next stage: C, creating a prototype. Since our initial plan was to bring dogs into the school we obviously had to speak and get approval with the principal. To do this we wrote a pitch form and set up a meeting with her. Fortunately she allowed us to bring dogs in, which meant we could move onto the next step! This step was finding a class that was reluctant enough to partake in the experiment. After a lot of asking around we found a physics11 class that was more than happy to help us out. They also had weekly tests, which was perfect for our experiment! The final step for prototype 1 was creating the survey the students would take after doing the experiment. This survey asked simple questions like how much sleep you got, how much exercise you took part in and how much you studied for the test!

The second prototype was actually doing the experiment. Basically what happened is we took the classes average for each student, using this we split the classroom in two equal halves (both with a 92% average). Next we took half the class down to a secluded room filled with dogs. The students spent about 20 minutes with the dogs then went up to do the quiz with the other half of the class. At the end of the block they filled out the survey we had previously created!

The final prototype was our interview, analysis and creation of the poster. At this point we were also at the H phase, highlight and fix. For this we had a mini interview with our counselor, she shared with us that she feels dog therapy really works, and that she would like to do something just like this in the future with her dog! To figure our if this experiment really did work we analyzed the data from the test’s the students did. We found the average for both halves of the class and compared them. Turns out dogs really do help reduce stress! The class that visited the dogs shot up to a 98% average and the class that didn’t see the dogs stayed at a 92% average. With this data we created charts and graphs which we then put on a poster, along with a slideshow of the process.

“So many youth struggle with anxiety and I know that animal therapy really does work”

-Counsellor

Finally we had to LAUNCH our project to the world! This would be done at our yearly exhibition night, along with food, drinks, games and a theme. The theme was surrounded around the idea of the sustainable development goals of the UN. Since each group had a topic or goal, we used those as our themes. Usually at these exhibitions we have lots of decorations that don’t necessarily serve a purpose. So this year we had to have a thesis, and everything that we wanted to bring had to answer that thesis statement. For example our thesis statement was “The key to great mental health is to have limited stress and positive mental attitude“. If we wanted something like donuts we would have to find something like “donuts are comfort food that reduce stress“. I think by far my favorite part we created was the stress ball making station. Click on the names of my group members to check out more posts: Sydney, Robbie, Luca, Kai, Kiera, Fraser and. Paisley. Here’s a few of my favorite pictures from the exhibition night!

This anxiety experiment was a huge success! Not only did the grade averages improve for the students participating in the experiment, but the feedback we got was very positive. We have realized that this experiment made students more confident and relaxed before a test, which means that all aspects of this experiment went well. After receiving such a positive outcome, we hope to continue this program in the future at Seycove. Bringing dogs in for anxiety purposes is a very helpful idea that the majority of students agreed upon. Many students wrote that they wanted to do this program again in the future because it helped them with their stress and anxiety. Our counselor was also very excited by this experiment and has agreed to help us in the future. Overall I felt like the project exhibited a perfect LAUNCH process. Throughout the process I learned many new things and improved many of my everyday skills. Can’t wait until next year!