This week we worked on creating a story to bring to LCCS next week. After brainstorming and thinking about teaching, we spoke about our mission and extending our class goal to beyond earth day. We were given the task of coming up with keywords to make this goal more expanded beyond just our April 21st mission. Afterwords, Chris and I were paired up to work together to work together to create a story. Collaborating together was interesting, we both wanted to use a theme that neither of us had come up with so we could equally contribute and have equal ownership. We decided on contamination of water, and conversed on localized spots of contamination, as well as more broadly such as the overall water. After deciding to take the point of view of the water, we decided to use a wave as our character. We brainstormed some locations where water is being contaminated and I took notes on these for our story. When we first started to write the actual story, we realized we needed to make it more fun so Chris suggested that Wayne be the grandfather and have his home be contaminated by a garbage patch. Then he goes to visit his family in these other locations which are also being polluted. We wanted this story to teach a lesson, while also playing on the senses, and still being fun. I liked the idea of stemming from the broad and narrowing in, so going from the ocean to more localized sites inward to land, and ending in the middle of land where ocean pollution may be easily seen. Although I am not sure what prototype we will create for class next week (a storyboard,  a physical Wayne the wave, a puzzle etc.) I am excited to see what the students think of Wayne and our story so far.

In this week’s class, I catch up with the class. First, I get a general idea of what our class have done with the students from LCCS last week, it is really interesting to know we have achieved so much progress on our way to the project. Also we start to narrow down our ideas by written down analyze and classify the keywords. And we started to work on some deliverable stuffs in order to present it to the LCCS students next week. Really looking forward to meet them again!

I think it was helpful to narrow down low not themes and to organize our thoughts collectively. I would like to teach them something they don’t know with their concepts they already understand.

This week we generated a bunch of keywords related to water, pollution etc. Kristiana and I then discussed how to synthesize (sp?) some of these ideas into a digestible story. We eventually landed on an ARG (alternate reality game) idea where the user is a spy investigating the ways we’ve been brainwashed into using plastics in our daily routines. By observing and documenting plastics use in the immediate surroundings the spy learns that these problems dont have one single solution and can feel overwhelming. However by the end they leave with the sense that they have a keener awareness of the issue on a grassroot level and are able to make small changes in their daily life.

This week was ideation week. We started creating stories that will eventually culminate into an experience. Griffin and I are leaning towards a learning experience through investigation. Later after class we brainstormed more story elements and discussed what made this detective/spy idea interesting to us and then made up several prototype ideas. I think what we need to look out for is making sure that our story is flexible enough that the kids can contribute their ideas and become a viable experience for Earth Day. Some thoughts that crossed my mind: what do we personally want to teach to kids and those at the venue?