How do ideas drive change?
Kouman fè chanjman lide kondwi? That means, How do ideas drive change, in Haitian Creole a spoken language of Haiti.
Well, ideas are the beginning thoughts. It’s how things are invented and shared amongst people and cultures around the world. Some of the greatest things ever invented or discovered were because of one idea that lead to an impact that changed the world. Some ideas even started revolutions. Like the industrial revolution. It was the idea of changing the way we manufacture products, and it led to the revolution that changed time. If it wasn’t for the idea that started the industrial revolution, life today wouldn’t be the same.
Introduction
We have been working on an incredible project called metaphor machines. Before I tell you anymore go check out my groups final video of the entire process of creating our metaphor machine. Together, Fraser, Jordyn, Caleb and I created this awesome machine!
Now I’ll explain a bit about this project. Every year the grade nines in PLP do a project called metaphor machines. Metaphor Machines is where science and humanities meet to create amazing Rube Goldburg machines. Check out one of Robe Goldburgs awesome machines:
We first chose which revolution we would like to do and were placed in a group of four accordingly. I chose the Haitian revolution and was placed in a group with Jordyn, Fraser and Caleb. We first created a timeline and drew out the causes and consequences of our revolution. Then we researched and wrote out the six most important stages of our revolution. When we finished our timeline and main events research, we moved on to creating our blueprint!
What is the Haitian Revolution About?
Below are the four main stages of the revolution that explain our six main events that occured during the Haitian Revolution. Below are also the metaphors that represent each event in the machine:
Stage 1 Incubation
In 1789 the French Revolution started and since things were starting to change in France the slaves thought that they were going to be freed. And since France had made the rights of man and citizen the coloured people were given hope The white poor people were mad because they thought there was inadequate discrimination and they started to fight.
Stage 2 Moderate
In 1791 the poor white people capture the city of Port Au Prince and since the wars of revolutionary France also took place in the colonies. France sent troops to Haiti and then france gave full citizenship to all free men of colour population (with many conditions) the poor white people don’t like that so fighting starts to break out between them and the newly free people of colour.
Stage 3 Crisis
Then in August of 1791 the Slaves revolted. One of the main leaders was Toussaint Louverture he helped make the slave into an actual army that could fight the French army’s. The Spanish consistently supported the slaves hoping the the weeknd the French and in 1793 Toussaint Louverture joined them and because the French were fighting the slaves, the Spanish and the British were going to invade. The French thought that there was no way they were going to win so the French freed the slaves so they were fighting less people. So Toussaint Louverture came back and turned the tide of the war and between 1794 and 1802 they became and independent Frencn colony.
Stage 4 Recovery
Since Haïti was still technically a French colony Napoleon tryed to reintroduce slavery in 1802 and started a gorilla war and the slaves won resulting in the victory for the slaves and the freedom of their country which was then known Haiti.1804
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METAPHORS:
- A Ball with a flag from France next to it gets catapulted to a cup/bowl with the saint Domingue flag next to it and when it lands in the cup it triggers a light to turn on representing the first ideas
- A ball rolls down stairs knocking something over as it rolls, into a funnel
- Something will knock over dominoes on a path and they are representing the French, Spanish, etc. They all get knocked over until the last one that falls of the edge pulling a string on a pulley
- The pulley pulls a cage up representing the slaves being freed
- On a platform with a saint domingue flag on it, something rolls off it triggering a pulley with a cage to fall on top of something at the bottom, representing Nepolian comeing back and trying to trap them back into slavery starting a gorilla war.
- However next to the cage something is triggered to slide off the lower platform and at the bottom get crushed by a rock representing the victory of the slaves and their new country Saint Domingue
History and cycle of a revolution
In the humanities side of this project we learned all about the history of revolutions. We learned about how it starts in the incubation stage where people start to disagree with things that are being said or laws being made etc and it continues from there. Next a revolution would move to the moderate stage where things start to happen and people start taking action. Things like protests or small riots fill the streets, which brings the revolution to the next stage. Crisis, the climax of the revolution, where things start to get brutal and violent. Wars brake out between groups or country’s. People get hurt and people die. When the violence slowly comes to and end or does the opposite, it means the final stage is here. Resolution and recovery stage, where either violence ends and disputes are resolved or another war breaks out. We learned that all revolutions follow Crane Brintons theory because there’s a beginning middle and end, kind of like the Freytags pyramid for storytelling.
For the machine we created, it followed the four stages of a a revolution while our six stages were representing metaphors about the revolution. We represented a series of metaphors throughout the machine while adding in a steampunk aesthetic.
On top of all this science and humanities, we read book called Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.
Leviathan
The book fits the steampunk aesthetic while following the story of two teenagers in the early days of World War 1. Deryn Sharp and Prince Aleksander live in an alternate society where everything and everyone is split into two groups. The Darwinists and The Clankers. Darwinists fabricate beasts using the theories of Charles Darwin who in our world discovered DNA and the idea of evolution. On the other hand, Clankers use their mechanic skills and use huge high tech steampunk machines. If you want to read more about steampunk go check out my post about the different genres of steampunk!
Creating electric circuits
Now for the science side of things, I’ll talk a bit about electric circuits and what we learned during the unit.
Part of the criteria for this project was all about circuits, it had to incorporate series and parallel circuits which we were learning all about in science. This is a picture of our final blueprint:
Way back at the very beginning of the project before the humanities side of things even played into this project, we learned about electric circuits. The two types of circuits we learned about were series and parallel. A series circuit looks like this:
A series circuit is when the electric current flows only one way through one path. The current goes one way and doesn’t have any other options other than going the same direction at the same speed. Parallel circuits are the exact opposite of this because they have two or more paths for the current to travel through before reconnecting with the full circuit. This is an example of a parallel circuit:
Conclusion
Overall this was a great project, lots of, collaboration, team work and effort went into this project. We learned lots and had lots of fun. Everyone in my group worked great together and we all are very proud of our final product!
Go learn how to construct an electric circuit at Colorado Interactive Simulations.