During the Collaboration Fluency presentation, my team and I were sure to make our Dragon’s Den presentation prepared and full of information, however there are still a couple of things that we could have done better. The first step to the begin our project was to dream. Our team sat together and brainstormed different ways that we could’ve made an innovation that would help our world a little more. Personally, I loved this step. I have always been a bit of a dreamer and I absolutely love to express creativity! My favorite part of this was how we weren’t afraid to pitch out any ideas no matter how unrealistic they were. I learnt that every single idea has the potential to become more, which I think is very important. Our invention, the Personal Healthcare Companion (PHCC) had started out as something that wasn’t exactly attainable. Like we had included in our presentation, the PHCC was inspired by the Disney character Baymax from the movie, “Big Hero 6”. We began by thinking of a robot that could do just as much as Baymax could. That includes being able to scan a patient and knowing what kind of treatment they needed. Obviously, this technology was not attainable for us, being four teenagers.
When presenting the project, I think that everything went exactly as we planned that it would. It had gone very smooth and we included all the information that we wanted to talk about. Our invention also seemed to be very clear and everyone seemed to understand what it was. In the end, we took from what the judges said. There were ways that we could make our invention even better.
Doing this project, we did come across some “bumps in the road”. Personally, one of the things that I would have stopped myself from doing was procrastinating as much as I did. This has been something that I do often and it doesn’t usually result in anything good. One of the things that I disliked about this project was that the class time was spread out and sometimes we’d go an entire week without working on the collaboration fluency project. This resulted in me not being as motivated to work on it as I was. I also found myself confused about which days we would be working on the project. As for us as a group, I think for the most part I wouldn’t change anything. We each supported each other and overall were a great team.
The slip of paper that I chose after our presentation had been one under the category of Personal Responsibility skill, “I practice self-determination”. I chose this slip because I used to often silence myself when doing group projects. This year I told myself to never do this. The first criteria on the slip was “advocate for myself and my ideas”. I do think that I am refining for this one. Every idea that I had during our project was never left unsaid. I found myself comfortable to say even the craziest ideas. The next criteria were “Imagine and work towards change in myself & the world”. Now if we were talking about my personal life outside of science class, I would 100% say refining. As for this project, I do want to change the world, but I don’t think that this project would be what would I want to change it with. But it is a step to something that could possibly become bigger in the future. As for change in myself, I think that this is a step towards that, as I think everything should be. I would say that this finds itself in between developing and refining. The final criteria on this sheet is “Take the initiative to inform myself about relevant issues”. I would say that for me, this is refining. I have always been very aware of the issues that are happening right now in this world. This was the first step to starting this project. But it’s not only this project that has made me think outside of what is happening to me personally. I think that this alone is something that everyone should try to take part in. How can we help an issue if we don’t know that much about it.
One thing that I wouldn’t change would be the people who I chose to do this project with, Shannon, Olivia and Elise. I feel as though we all clicked like pieces in a puzzle. Each one of us weren’t afraid to express our ideas and to help each other out. We each made it a priority to stay on track. We told ourselves that certain work would have to be done by a certain date and if one of us didn’t have their part finished, they would have to do more work to make up for it. I do think that this helped our work process since we were motivated to finish and were aware of the consequences that would come without work.
But in the end, I did learn a lot from this project. I learnt a lot about electricity, issues going on in our world and finally, teamwork. I do think that I will carry a lot of this information on for my future projects.