Ah, the last week of school before winter break. A time to unwind before the holidayes, as well as to work on the term’s final projects. Every year PLP has a winter exhibition to display projects based on a theme, and this years theme was the environment and Minecraft. Yep, you heard me right, Minecraft. With only a week to prepare, we had to work quite hard to have our exhibits done on time, but we managed.

The Minecraft Project 

This project was the first time I’ve heard a teacher order us to play Minecraft in class. This project was a science and math assignment to where are job was to build an earthquake proof structure. It had to be built in a place that represented an earthquake prone area, and needed to incorporate the style of that region into the architecture. We also needed to look into seismic upgrades for our building, as well as the materials we would use to build it and other risks that the region presented (like tsunamis or rock slides).

My Environment Project 

Every exhibition we do has a different theme, and this year’s winter one was environmental questions. We had to come up with a specific question about the environment (inspired by something we saw on our Oregon trip) and provide the answer to this question through an exhibit. The only problem was, is that we only had a week to work on it. Due to an injury, our Oregon trip had to be moved to up November, giving us less time to finish our advertising unit and only a week to work on our expo. It did take a lot of work, but we got our projects done in time and the exhibition went well.

My Question

My environmental question was What species of marine life in the lower mainland could go extinct in the next 20 years, and what effect would this have locally. I chose this question because I have always been interested in the butterfly effect where the smallest change can create massive damage. To find out the answer to my question, I looked at websites like these:

http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Education/factsheets/10_SSL_FS.pdf

http://www.lophelia.org/corals/basics/where-can-you-find-corals

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/cetaceans/about/blue_whale/

http://marinebio.org/oceans/threatened-endangered-species/

Building My Project 

The 5 days of school we had to work on our exhibition where spent reasearching, meaning we only had a weekend to put our project together. I spent all of Saturday finishing my Minecraft Project, leaving only Sunday to work on this one. My original plan was to have a model of Vancouver  and the environment around it, that could be destroyed and rebuilt as I presented my topic, but I realized that would take way to long to make in just one day. My next idea was to make a board game/interactive poster project, which ended up being my final product. I then got to work on making cards, info sheets, and backgrounds, and took pictures of my progress as I went.

What did I Learn from this?

Doing this exhibition did not only teach me more about the environment, but also how to make exhibitions run well and what people like to see and do. One thing I learned should not be included in an exhibit is anything that takes more than a minute. If it takes more than a minute, people loose interest. I also learned you can’t make instructions too complicated, and food is a good way to get people to come to your station. In terms of setting up, making a clear pathway for people to follow is good so that they will see every station. It is also helpful to have everyone around your station know what it’s about in case you need to go somewhere and they need to run it.

What would I do differently next time?

Overall I am happy with the way my project turned out, but there are some things that I would do differently next time. One thing I would change is how long it took for people to interact with my exhibit. My board game was pretty long and people seemed to get “board” playing it. I also should have made the game less complicated and the text on the cards bigger. In terms of preparing for the project, I should have made my research notes more oraginized, and been more careful glueing. I also should have helped my group prepare a bit more.