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The Launch Cycle: Sports Edition

Look, Listen, and Learn

We began a short unit in our Maker class just two weeks ago. It was about the Launch Cycle, a method of project working that follows seven steps. The first one is to look listen, and learn, so the class began by watching a video about the cycle itself. It explained the steps and what they could be, and had some inspiring background music. A Launch Notebook was sent out to everyone, and this would be where most of our work would take place. We then learned that in our groups (mine was Taylor, Jason, and Emerson) we would create a brand new, never before seen sport using at least four materials given to us. A roll of duct tape, two tennis rackets, a whiffle ball, a stack of cups, a bag of balloons, and a spool of string were included. Already we were excited and had many ideas, but first we needed to write down our observations and questions about the challenge that had been presented.

Ask Lots of Questions

Somewhat in between this step and the other one (it made more sense to me to put it in this section) was to create a survey for our class mates. Each person in my group came up with one question, as did everyone else in the class. My question was about the size of team people like to okay sports in. We then proceeded to frantically ask everyone else what their answers were. Once I had the data, I made a chart and saw that the majority of people preferred to play with large teams. Then I asked some more questions that needed to be answered in order for our sport to be thorough. The group then put all our questions on a web, to be answered later.

Understand the Problem or Process

Step number three was to understand that we had to make a sport that our classmates would enjoy. Each person chose four very popular sports and broke down what made them interesting and what made them boring. The point of this was to see how we could implement the good things and eliminate the uninteresting parts. Then, to visualize what the people playing our sport should look like, I drew a bad stick figure athlete who was fully engaged in a sport. This step was important because it allowed us to realize the things that make sports entertaining and exciting to play.

Navigate the Ideas

I began this step by individually making a web that was full of questions someone wanting to play a sport would have. The little rules are important, so I wrote down things like the scorekeeper, boundaries, and the name of the sport itself. Since each person did this, we then talked together and wrote all our ideas in a chart. The guide then went back to focusing on the materials we would have. They were limited, but I’d already had some ideas on how they could be incorporated. Next I wrote down four ideas about possibilities, as did the others in my group.

Create a Prototype 

Our Launch groups talked again and came to a vague consensus about the sport. It turns out that we had some similar ideas and we could expand on each other’s thoughts. I then drew a diagram with the rest if the group on how our sport works. We decided that we wanted four or five players on a team. One player would have the racket, two would have cups and one or two people would be available to pass the cups to. The object of the game was to toss the whiffle ball across an end zone/line to get a point. The cups could hold the whiffle ball, and the racket could hit it as well, so it could get passed along the field among your teams until it got intercepted. It was Taylor’s idea to call it Llama Ball. To actually move around and see how these sports would work every team went outside and played sound with the materials, while writing down anything that we noticed needed improving. 

Highlight What’s Working and Fix What’s Failing

This final step before the big launch was quite short in this instance, and looking back our class realized that much more revision could have been done. There was, however, a chart that we could fill out on what was working and what wasn’t. An example of something good was that out cup and ball passing idea worked well, but the extra player we had was standing pretty quite a bit. My group fixed a couple things and then we were moved onto the final step!

 

 

Launch It! 

After this whole process was done, the group’s were ready to get other people to play their sports! My group went with Paisley, Aedan, Fraser and Kiera, and we etched played each others sport. Before we did this though, we had to make a video explaining our sport to show to the other groups.

 

Once that was done, we began playing and I was surprised at how well it worked. The bad was in the setting up time of our sport, as it took too long and the other team was becoming bored.

Ultimately though, I was happy with the way it turned out, and playing the other team’s game was fun as well. A couple days later, Ms Maxwell, our Maker teacher picked what she thought was the best game and everyone played that (except for me, I filmed it). After finishing I realized this project was more interesting than others to me because it didn’t take as long, and the my group went through the steps at a fast enough pace to not become bored. Also, actually creating a sport that people could enjoy was fun and a good way to learn about the Launch Cycle.