Engineering Brightness Artifacts of Learning

Connection Based Learning

Our Science 9 class this year had the opportunity to work on REAL SCIENCE. Not the kind of science where you take tests once every two weeks and learn information that even though it is useful you probably  won’t remember afterwards. We had the opportunity to experience science hands on. And not only that but we were able to find our new passions even if they weren’t directly science, through these science projects. This year my science 9 class worked on Engineering Brightness. Engineering brightness is an organizer which basically lets science students build lights and ship them out to places that are in light poverty. Our class got the dominican republic.

My group decided that we wanted to support another group thats goal was to make shakable lights using magnets we set out to raise some money and more that that awareness on our cause. I made a video that was played in RAP classes all around the school, and we put on a photo booth fundraiser. To be critical I wish that we got more publicity and that the location of the photo was better. Because it was in the corner of the library it was harder for people to know where to go. However we did raise some money and were able to take some cool photos.

I am very proud of my group and how we were able to put together a fundraiser, we were the only group in the class that was able to put on a fundraiser at our own school and I thought that that was exciting to be part of the group that raised some money. On short notice and 2 days time we were able to book the library, make a video, put it in the announcements and get the word out to a few people.

RAP video was our main goal and we accomplished it right away with this video that was played all throughout the school:

My experience of how I helped address this issue is basically that through my class we got introduced to Mr. Fogarty’s class in New Brunswick and he talked to us about the different things we could do to succeed. As I mentioned before my group fundraised, so here is a photo of me introducing my self as I am about to ask what fundraising tips worked for him and what didn’t. I thought it was so cool to be able to connect with a class all the way in New Brunswick.

Dedicating three lunch hours to fundraise for this cause made me feel really good about helping them. I was glad that even though my impact was small I tried my best and even if we didn’t raise as much money as we had hoped we were able to spread awareness. Before they saw the video we played I wonder how many kids knew about light poverty in the dominican republic. I didn’t know about it at all and when we learned about it from Eladio and Dennis I was incredibly sad to here about it. It was a real eye opener to know that kids our age aren’t having the same life as us. Obviously I’ve known about poverty but it was very touching when we skype called with a school that was so close to the poverty. It made it real. Another group in my class actually did a powerpoint to raise awareness and they challenged “How long can you go without electricity.” I really don’t know how long I could last and to know that there are thousands of people going through light poverty was hard to here.

This project definitely improved my organizing skills, having a plan and executing it in two days. I also learned a few tips about video editing, fading the music better, keeping the slides longer for more people to be able to read the information better. I definitely feel that I met my learning goals, we spread awareness, held a photo booth, connected with other people and was able to put it all out in a blog post. For connecting with others I spoke with Mr. Fogarty, Eladio and Dennis, who are planning to send me some interviews of there students so that I can make a new video to play at there bake sale fundraiser. One of the students that came to watch us skype chat asked me about my videos and I thought it was cool to have someone I didn’t know come and ask me about the programming I had used. I wasn’t even into videography before this project and I’m glad I was able to find out about it through this. I also received a comment on my plan blog post from a lady in the Dominican Republic who was interested in what we were doing and said that it was awesome how we were working on this. I received around 6 comments on my proposal post.My group also created tow social media accounts to spread awareness about our fundraiser and the my class needs page. We even got featured on the school’s Instagram page a few times.

I have been working on a video for Eladio and Dennis to play at there fundraiser. Once it’s fully done I’m planning on tweeting it out, putting it on my blog and also on our Instagram page. The plan is for them to send me some videos for me to include and have them share it with there school. I think out of all the things I’ve done with this project this will feel the most fulfilling, if my video could get played in a different country? How amazing would that be!

Examining our experience, the collaboration went awesome, I think if we had maybe had more communication with Eladio and Dennis maybe we could have received some videos sooner so that the second video could have them in it sooner, but overall I just think it was amazing how to different classes could get together and even think about creating something bigger than ourselves. I am so glad to be a part of this project. It was great to be able to collaborate with a school in New Brunswick and a school in the Dominican Republic.