Personal Project Exhibition Evening

On Wednesday the 15th of March MYP 5s (me included) showcased their personal projects at the BISS College. We spent most of the Tuesday prior to the evening creating our poster boards, stapling on card and paper, printing images, and getting everything ready for the evening. First, the PYP 6s came in the afternoon to look at everyones project. Then, for the official event, parents and teachers visited the school around 6pm for a couple of hours, where they walked around the room to look at the displays.

I put a lot of time and effort into making my display informative, interactive, creative and interesting. I wanted the theme of my display to match the theme of my topic, sustainability, so I chose earthy colours and printed everything on recycled paper. The background was a medium brown colour, the wavy border was a light green shade, the title was on orange paper, and i divided the board into four main areas linking to my product; energy, waste/trash, food/diet, products & services. For each I arranged four landscape A4 pages in a rectangle, with the icon representing their area in the middle. The top left page of the rectangle was about what is a sustainable lifestyle, whereas the bottom right page (diagonal to) was about the benefits of a sustainable lifestyle for each category. The other two pages for each square displayed images and/or diagrams to support my project. On a table in front of my boards I showed 'zero waste alternatives' to everyday products and tools. For example, I showed a plastic cooking spoon beside a wooden spoon, plastic-wrapped shampoo and conditioner beside solid shampoo and conditioner bars stored in aluminium containers. Many people were very intrigued and interested by these products.

Overall the exhibition was a great success. The PYP 6s asked many though-provoking and rather challenging questions; while the parents happily started long conversations about my project and sustainability. It was interesting to hear how many parents and other teenagers were interested in sustainability - and to hear about what individuals already do in their everyday life.

Work Experience

Each MYP 4 class is required to do a week of work experience in May, instead of a residential trip. After much research and application I was given the opportunity to visit Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and work there.

Video on education

This is an animated video written as an imagery background to the lecture by Ken Robinson, Changing education paradigms.

Ken Robinson is an author, speaker, advisor and educationalist. He has done many lectures in the past on education and education in arts. In the video he begins by discussing previous and current traditional educational systems worldwide. Specifically on what is taught to children, “if you work hard, do well, get a degree, you get a job. A degree is no longer a guarantee.” He also mentions dividing children by age and why we do this, ADHD and medication, anesthetic. He believes, “The system of education we use is modeled on the interest of industrialism and in the image of it”, and that the system we use, “was designed and conceived for a different age”. Robinson brings up divergent thinking, “An essential capacity for creativity”. He speaks of a test for divergent thinking tested on 1,500 kinder garden students. They scored 98%. They re-tested the students years later, and again following that. From the results the student’s percentage decreased of the years and became worse in divergent thinking. Most likely caused due to the system of education – “one answer is correct and it’s at the back.” The topic is very thought – provoking and captivating. It creates much debate with many different views.