Engineering Brightness Artifacts of Learning                                                Sabrina Sharifzada

 

 

For the past month and a half we have been working on a project called Engineering Brightness. Our class has been divided into groups and each group has been working very hard on raising awareness and responding to light poverty in various ways.

My group has been collaborating with Pitt River Middle School to help us fundraise in their school. The Pitt River Leadership team was very enthusiastic and passionate about this project and they really did want to make a change. We had two meetings (one meeting before winter break and one after winter break) with them so far to discuss what they want to do for fundraisers and we also talked about how we need to raise awareness around the community and not just one school. In this time we mostly have been planning. They said that they are having a bake sale on the week that semester two starts. We also are planning to go with Pitt River to school visits were they go to different schools in the community for their leadership program but they also asked us to come with them and talk about light poverty and Engineering Brightness, although they’re not sure of a date yet since not many schools have responded yet. Although we know what school to go to when the date it known. We did make posters for the Bake Sale in Pitt River and also made a PowerPoint to introduce light poverty to people that don’t know what it is and what they can do. This will also be the presentation that we will present at the school visits when the date is organized. When we go to the schools we are pretty much just going to talk about the light poverty in the Dominican Republic and what they can do about it. We also contacted the Eddy and our friend that is in the Eddy, interviewed us and spread the word throughout the school.

This project has helped us get better with our presentation and communication skills. It also helped us with critical thinking. Collaboration was key because if we never connected with Pitt River we probably wouldn’t be here. This also showed that it’s better to come together as a community and try to solve a problem where the results would be better than doing something alone. This did have us go out of our comfort zone and do big things in the community where we never really had done. Most of this time we have been panning out possible things we can do. We haven’t really got any money but we are still in the process of fundraising and raising the awareness. Pitt River is excited and this may be something that they would probably wanting to continue throughout the year. We have achieved most of our goals as far as raising awareness and collaborating with other school. However the raising money part is still going on and we also will reach that goal soon.

 

 

Throughout this project, we figured that the more that we spread the word around the community the better. In my opinion I think that collaborating with Pitt River was a very smart thing to do and it was something that nobody else in the class did. When we introduced this idea to Pitt River the were very excited and enthusiastic about it. In my opinion,  I think that we worked well in our group and that each of us helped each other to get this far. We could have improved on raising more money and planning more fundraisers but we didn’t have a lot of time to do everything. However we are still fundraising to cover the costs of the materials that is needed for the lights. Over all I think that we did an amazing job in this project. We did our best and did what we can to get the word out in the community. I am very proud with what we did in this period of time and I think that we did make a difference. This experience has been one of a kind and something I have never done. I am very happy because our class actually made and did things and had the chance to connect with other people in different schools on the other side of the earth. We are very fortunate to do something like this since many other science classes don’t do these type of projects. I believe that learning is not only what we do in school but take that and incorporate it in the real world.