Delio Silvestri
TERM: Research
Ms. Maslanka
01 May 2023
Term Final Reflection
I completed my Term Project with goal 13 in mind (Climate Action). With a focus on target 13.3 (Education on Climate Change cause, effects, solutions, and adaptations needed). Originally, I planned to just focus on the education part. Gamify climate change, turn the information into a quick and simple video presentation to be presented to kids within the age range of 9-11 (based on peaks of creativity/writing skills/education graph peaks from A More Beautiful Question).
However, as I did my research, I realized that it would be much more effective to include/provide a platform for the kids to participate in thinking up solutions to the problem. That is where KICCS (Kids Innovative Climate Change Solutions) was born (after around 30 minutes brainstorming acronyms on an empty google doc). After going from just providing the educational piece, to providing a platform for solutions, I thought about combining the two. Once I thought of that, I bought the domain kiccsolutions.org (kiccs was too expensive) and started working on a website.
I was very excited about this once I started the task. I even spent a decent chunk of time designing a cool (I think) logo. But then I realized that I have no experience in web development besides my school weebly page. So, I spent hours of unaccounted for time just learning wordpress, and the web development landscape. Once I had a basic grasp, I had to make a choice between focusing on the website, solutions platform, or the video. I choose the website, going in with the mindset that I can add the other two onto the website, but it would be harder to do that the other way around.
Looking back, I think I could have spent more time dedicated to the video. It took me too long to understand web development (even though wordpress seems to be pretty simple). If I was to do this portion again, I would probably go with a simpler website development platform like wix, squarespace, or weebly. Wordpress by Bluehost (what I bought) is pretty barebones, and takes a decent amount of work to get anything done.
Regarding the website itself, I think it turned out okay. A little sparse, and I would probably format the pages differently if I could—but the amount of time it would take would be too great. I think the climate page format turned out great! It was fun completing an about page, timeline, and contact form as well.
It was tricky when it came to figuring out how the solutions platform would work. I tried multiple things, including a submission form on the kicc website, a discord, a gmail chat. But I kept running into issues of sign-up restrictions, age restrictions, or time constraints (manually sorting through submissions (assuming they are Rolling In).
Overall, I am happy with my project, and plan to upkeep the website and work on future projects regarding KICC (at least) up until next April in my spare time.
My TED Talk could have gone better, but it was adequate for a first attempt!
TERM: Research
Ms. Maslanka
01 May 2023
Term Final Reflection
I completed my Term Project with goal 13 in mind (Climate Action). With a focus on target 13.3 (Education on Climate Change cause, effects, solutions, and adaptations needed). Originally, I planned to just focus on the education part. Gamify climate change, turn the information into a quick and simple video presentation to be presented to kids within the age range of 9-11 (based on peaks of creativity/writing skills/education graph peaks from A More Beautiful Question).
However, as I did my research, I realized that it would be much more effective to include/provide a platform for the kids to participate in thinking up solutions to the problem. That is where KICCS (Kids Innovative Climate Change Solutions) was born (after around 30 minutes brainstorming acronyms on an empty google doc). After going from just providing the educational piece, to providing a platform for solutions, I thought about combining the two. Once I thought of that, I bought the domain kiccsolutions.org (kiccs was too expensive) and started working on a website.
I was very excited about this once I started the task. I even spent a decent chunk of time designing a cool (I think) logo. But then I realized that I have no experience in web development besides my school weebly page. So, I spent hours of unaccounted for time just learning wordpress, and the web development landscape. Once I had a basic grasp, I had to make a choice between focusing on the website, solutions platform, or the video. I choose the website, going in with the mindset that I can add the other two onto the website, but it would be harder to do that the other way around.
Looking back, I think I could have spent more time dedicated to the video. It took me too long to understand web development (even though wordpress seems to be pretty simple). If I was to do this portion again, I would probably go with a simpler website development platform like wix, squarespace, or weebly. Wordpress by Bluehost (what I bought) is pretty barebones, and takes a decent amount of work to get anything done.
Regarding the website itself, I think it turned out okay. A little sparse, and I would probably format the pages differently if I could—but the amount of time it would take would be too great. I think the climate page format turned out great! It was fun completing an about page, timeline, and contact form as well.
It was tricky when it came to figuring out how the solutions platform would work. I tried multiple things, including a submission form on the kicc website, a discord, a gmail chat. But I kept running into issues of sign-up restrictions, age restrictions, or time constraints (manually sorting through submissions (assuming they are Rolling In).
Overall, I am happy with my project, and plan to upkeep the website and work on future projects regarding KICC (at least) up until next April in my spare time.
My TED Talk could have gone better, but it was adequate for a first attempt!