Project Reflection
The Project
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The Project rolled out with a documentary called The 11th Hour, which is about the state of our planet and what we need to do to fix it. Turns out, our planet ain’t in good shape. They talked about consumerism, and how that’s affecting our impact on the planet, polar ice caps melting, greenhouse gases, stuff like that. They described our planet as being on it’s 11th hour, like almost the end of a 12-hour day, hence the name The 11th Hour. When my Humanities teacher, described what we were going to do, I thought “How is this gonna help?” But I guess at that time I was looking on too large of a scale.
So anyways, after that we went on a couple field trips. One was up to Twin Buttes, where we learned about sustainable building practices and materials. This one material really interested me. I can’t remember exactly what it was called, but it was dark gray, cool to the touch, and had the same weight and texture of cinder block. But what was so interesting about it was that it was made of recycled wood chips mixed with a little bit of concrete, which is relatively inexpensive, much stronger than you’d think, and a really good insulator to boot. The other one was to the Turtle Lake Refuge permaculture farm. On this one we learned about sustainable agriculture practices. I don’t remember most of the specifics on this one, but one thing that I thought was pretty cool was their food “forest” that they were working on. They were growing all kinds of fruit and nut trees, and using some kind of plant to fertilize them.
What I learned from these field trips has led me to define sustainable design as a design which is built mostly from recycled or repurposed materials, and/or powered through sustainable means (solar, wind, etc.).
What we did
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First, to build lists of needs and values for our potential users, we conducted observations and interviewed people. What we found was a general need/desire for quiet, relaxing outdoor spaces. Building off this, we brainstormed designs for these spaces. There were all kinds of ideas, from an owl-house with a small rooftop garden to a geodesic dome.
After that, we built physical prototypes of our top concept, and created an accompanying poster. Then the whole 9th grade did a big gallery walk, and students sat around the one they liked most. That’s how we were sorted into our groups.
When my group started building, our original intention was to build a pergola-type structure over the creek by our school. However, half of the creek was owned by the Colorado Department Of Transportation, so we had to move our location. We decided on the west amphitheater. By then the weather had gotten hot and the amphitheater gets a lot of sun, so we decided to build a shady area for the people who ate lunch out there to enjoy. The structure was built almost entirely of materials that were already on campus. We used two four-by-fours for the front supports and a two-by-four for the top of the frame, and it went with the natural slope of the hill, so the hill was supporting the back. There are three lengths of about 1-by-three inch wood coming from the frame, into the hill to support the roof. We reused some old tin roofing from campus for that, but I noticed the weight of the metal was causing the top on the right side to sag really bad. The beam seriously looked on the verge of cracking, so I cut some braces from a strong two-by-four and a two-by-six (it was all I could find at the time) to shore it up. When the structure was finished, we spray-painted our initials on the inside roof, decorated the outside with green and yellow spray paint (school colors), and I coated it with waterproofing spray. I know it’s not super visually appealing, but it does its job very well, and that’s what matters.
Reflection
During this project, I found that I was taking more initiative to get things done than I usually do. A perfect example of this was when I shored up the right-hand roof support after quite a while of no one fixing it. It was a safety hazard, because it was sagging really bad. It looked like it would crack at any second and the roof would fall on whoever was sitting under it, and sheet metal is actually pretty heavy.
I’m still not the best Project Based Learner I can be, though. I need to be more of an effective communicator, because I had a lot of moments where I was idle and didn’t ask my group or other groups what I could do to help. I got reprimanded a lot by my Humanities teacher for being idle, but other than that I made some good contributions.
Things weren’t all sunshine and roses, though. There were a few obstacles. The biggest one was when we found out that the creek was technically owned by CDOT. We tried to contact someone from CDOT, but we were on the very bottom of the priorities list so who knows how long it would’ve taken them to get to us. So we decided to move location and stop wasting our time.
I would call our group lucky, because we were able to solve all our problems, so our project was successful.
Initially, I thought of success as getting to build exactly what we wanted. But now I see success as getting a quality structure built that fits our goal as best as possible. I learned that even if it’s not exactly what you want, as long as it does what you want it to and does it well it will be fine.
That is the best piece of advice I would give someone who is about to begin this project, but another thing I would like to say is that it’s not always the best idea to work with your friends because, from my past experiences, your friends can either be good working buddies, or distract you and keep you from doing work. In addition, choosing not to work with your usual friend group can make you new friends.
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The Project rolled out with a documentary called The 11th Hour, which is about the state of our planet and what we need to do to fix it. Turns out, our planet ain’t in good shape. They talked about consumerism, and how that’s affecting our impact on the planet, polar ice caps melting, greenhouse gases, stuff like that. They described our planet as being on it’s 11th hour, like almost the end of a 12-hour day, hence the name The 11th Hour. When my Humanities teacher, described what we were going to do, I thought “How is this gonna help?” But I guess at that time I was looking on too large of a scale.
So anyways, after that we went on a couple field trips. One was up to Twin Buttes, where we learned about sustainable building practices and materials. This one material really interested me. I can’t remember exactly what it was called, but it was dark gray, cool to the touch, and had the same weight and texture of cinder block. But what was so interesting about it was that it was made of recycled wood chips mixed with a little bit of concrete, which is relatively inexpensive, much stronger than you’d think, and a really good insulator to boot. The other one was to the Turtle Lake Refuge permaculture farm. On this one we learned about sustainable agriculture practices. I don’t remember most of the specifics on this one, but one thing that I thought was pretty cool was their food “forest” that they were working on. They were growing all kinds of fruit and nut trees, and using some kind of plant to fertilize them.
What I learned from these field trips has led me to define sustainable design as a design which is built mostly from recycled or repurposed materials, and/or powered through sustainable means (solar, wind, etc.).
What we did
/\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\
First, to build lists of needs and values for our potential users, we conducted observations and interviewed people. What we found was a general need/desire for quiet, relaxing outdoor spaces. Building off this, we brainstormed designs for these spaces. There were all kinds of ideas, from an owl-house with a small rooftop garden to a geodesic dome.
After that, we built physical prototypes of our top concept, and created an accompanying poster. Then the whole 9th grade did a big gallery walk, and students sat around the one they liked most. That’s how we were sorted into our groups.
When my group started building, our original intention was to build a pergola-type structure over the creek by our school. However, half of the creek was owned by the Colorado Department Of Transportation, so we had to move our location. We decided on the west amphitheater. By then the weather had gotten hot and the amphitheater gets a lot of sun, so we decided to build a shady area for the people who ate lunch out there to enjoy. The structure was built almost entirely of materials that were already on campus. We used two four-by-fours for the front supports and a two-by-four for the top of the frame, and it went with the natural slope of the hill, so the hill was supporting the back. There are three lengths of about 1-by-three inch wood coming from the frame, into the hill to support the roof. We reused some old tin roofing from campus for that, but I noticed the weight of the metal was causing the top on the right side to sag really bad. The beam seriously looked on the verge of cracking, so I cut some braces from a strong two-by-four and a two-by-six (it was all I could find at the time) to shore it up. When the structure was finished, we spray-painted our initials on the inside roof, decorated the outside with green and yellow spray paint (school colors), and I coated it with waterproofing spray. I know it’s not super visually appealing, but it does its job very well, and that’s what matters.
Reflection
During this project, I found that I was taking more initiative to get things done than I usually do. A perfect example of this was when I shored up the right-hand roof support after quite a while of no one fixing it. It was a safety hazard, because it was sagging really bad. It looked like it would crack at any second and the roof would fall on whoever was sitting under it, and sheet metal is actually pretty heavy.
I’m still not the best Project Based Learner I can be, though. I need to be more of an effective communicator, because I had a lot of moments where I was idle and didn’t ask my group or other groups what I could do to help. I got reprimanded a lot by my Humanities teacher for being idle, but other than that I made some good contributions.
Things weren’t all sunshine and roses, though. There were a few obstacles. The biggest one was when we found out that the creek was technically owned by CDOT. We tried to contact someone from CDOT, but we were on the very bottom of the priorities list so who knows how long it would’ve taken them to get to us. So we decided to move location and stop wasting our time.
I would call our group lucky, because we were able to solve all our problems, so our project was successful.
Initially, I thought of success as getting to build exactly what we wanted. But now I see success as getting a quality structure built that fits our goal as best as possible. I learned that even if it’s not exactly what you want, as long as it does what you want it to and does it well it will be fine.
That is the best piece of advice I would give someone who is about to begin this project, but another thing I would like to say is that it’s not always the best idea to work with your friends because, from my past experiences, your friends can either be good working buddies, or distract you and keep you from doing work. In addition, choosing not to work with your usual friend group can make you new friends.