The FoodTopia project stretched from spring break until POLs just before the end of school. It incorporated Humanities, Chemistry, and Art; each class had its own focus in the project. In Art class, the focus was on creating physical products that could be displayed at HTMNC and HTeNC (HTHNC was originally going to have a final product as well, but this product was removed due to time and budget constraints). We split off into groups, and each group decided on a food-based focus with an inquiry question. Our group decided that we wanted to focus on the chemistry of gluten. Our inquiry question became: "How do different styles of cooking utilize and influence gluten production?" The biggest focus in Art class was on the elementary school, as the 2nd-grade classes became our "primary clients" for the project; we worked with the 2nd grade because they had done a nutrition project just before we started ours.
For the elementary school, we made tiles that could be placed in the garden for people to walk on. These tiles, of course, had graphics that would provide information to viewers. The really tricky part about these tiles: the information and graphics from a high-school project had to be made accessible to elementary schoolers. To this end, we conducted multiple interviews with the second-graders, in an attempt to discover what they would understand and what they already knew, as well as what they wanted the tiles to look like (since they were the clients). We also wanted to find out what they knew about our groups' specific subjects, since in Humanities we were creating videos about our specific subjects. Even creating interview questions that the elementary schoolers would understand proved a challenge, though. The main challenge for our group was the extent of the 2nd-graders' knowledge; no one knew what gluten was when we tried to interview them. One kid had a family member with celiac disease, and one kid whom we interviewed had studied grains for his nutrition project, but that was about it. Thus, we had to stick to questions such as: (each question has the various answers we received underneath)
Q: Can you explain to me what you did for your nutrition project?
A: The 2nd-graders made recipes for healthy snacks for kindergardeners, and made videos explaining how they made their snacks. They also studied certain parts of the food pyramid; one 2nd-grader studied grains for his project.
Q: What is your favorite food?
A: Everyone said that they liked fruits and vegetables a lot. We also received answers such as pancakes, pasta, and ramen noodles.
Q: Have you heard of allergies? Can you explain what they are? What about something called celiac disease?
A: The 2nd-graders had mainly heard of allergies, but didn't know much about them. There was one girl in the class with a nut allergy, although she was not in any of our interview groups. One 2nd-grader had a sister who was gluten-free.
Q: Have you heard of gluten? Can you explain what it is?
A: No one had heard of gluten.
Q: How often do you eat bread?
A: Answers varied, from eating bread for lunch to eating bread often, daily.
Q: What's the first thing that you think of when you heard the word "bread?"
A: Answers varied, from pasta to loaves of bread to pancakes.
Q: What do you know about bread?
A: Bread has wheat in it. It is a part of the grains section of the food pyramid.
*We explained our project on gluten and explained in basic terms what gluten is, basing our explanations off of the 2nd-graders' understanding of protein from their nutrition project.
Q: How do you cook bread? Can you think of any other ways to cook bread?
A: Pancakes are cooked on a pan, whereas bread is cooked in an oven.
Q: Are some breads fluffier than others? Could these differences be related to the amount of gluten in the bread? (This was more of a leading/probing question.)
A: Bread cooked in an oven is fluffier than a pancake, and knowing that gluten is responsible for the fluffiness of bread, it probably is related.
We also spent some time explaining in basic terms what gluten is, basing our explanations off of the 2nd-graders' understanding of protein from their nutrition project. Besides explaining and asking about gluten, we asked the 2nd-graders what colors they wanted the tiles to be painted. After the interviews, we took a team poll and came up with green as the most popular color.
For the elementary school, we made tiles that could be placed in the garden for people to walk on. These tiles, of course, had graphics that would provide information to viewers. The really tricky part about these tiles: the information and graphics from a high-school project had to be made accessible to elementary schoolers. To this end, we conducted multiple interviews with the second-graders, in an attempt to discover what they would understand and what they already knew, as well as what they wanted the tiles to look like (since they were the clients). We also wanted to find out what they knew about our groups' specific subjects, since in Humanities we were creating videos about our specific subjects. Even creating interview questions that the elementary schoolers would understand proved a challenge, though. The main challenge for our group was the extent of the 2nd-graders' knowledge; no one knew what gluten was when we tried to interview them. One kid had a family member with celiac disease, and one kid whom we interviewed had studied grains for his nutrition project, but that was about it. Thus, we had to stick to questions such as: (each question has the various answers we received underneath)
Q: Can you explain to me what you did for your nutrition project?
A: The 2nd-graders made recipes for healthy snacks for kindergardeners, and made videos explaining how they made their snacks. They also studied certain parts of the food pyramid; one 2nd-grader studied grains for his project.
Q: What is your favorite food?
A: Everyone said that they liked fruits and vegetables a lot. We also received answers such as pancakes, pasta, and ramen noodles.
Q: Have you heard of allergies? Can you explain what they are? What about something called celiac disease?
A: The 2nd-graders had mainly heard of allergies, but didn't know much about them. There was one girl in the class with a nut allergy, although she was not in any of our interview groups. One 2nd-grader had a sister who was gluten-free.
Q: Have you heard of gluten? Can you explain what it is?
A: No one had heard of gluten.
Q: How often do you eat bread?
A: Answers varied, from eating bread for lunch to eating bread often, daily.
Q: What's the first thing that you think of when you heard the word "bread?"
A: Answers varied, from pasta to loaves of bread to pancakes.
Q: What do you know about bread?
A: Bread has wheat in it. It is a part of the grains section of the food pyramid.
*We explained our project on gluten and explained in basic terms what gluten is, basing our explanations off of the 2nd-graders' understanding of protein from their nutrition project.
Q: How do you cook bread? Can you think of any other ways to cook bread?
A: Pancakes are cooked on a pan, whereas bread is cooked in an oven.
Q: Are some breads fluffier than others? Could these differences be related to the amount of gluten in the bread? (This was more of a leading/probing question.)
A: Bread cooked in an oven is fluffier than a pancake, and knowing that gluten is responsible for the fluffiness of bread, it probably is related.
We also spent some time explaining in basic terms what gluten is, basing our explanations off of the 2nd-graders' understanding of protein from their nutrition project. Besides explaining and asking about gluten, we asked the 2nd-graders what colors they wanted the tiles to be painted. After the interviews, we took a team poll and came up with green as the most popular color.
During this time, in class we were building the tiles and designing the graphics. The tiles were made from recycled materials found in HTHNC's wood shed, and consisted of pieces of 2x3 and 2x4 wood held side by side by thin ribs on the undersides of the tiles, cut into hexagons. After this, the sides and undersides of the tiles were painted with a water-proof varnish, and the tops of the tiles were painted with the background color. To the right are some pictures from this process. Below are photos of the graphic being transferred onto the tile - we shaded the back of the graphic with a pencil and traced the image to press the graphite into the tile in the shape of the graphic - and our final tile after the graphic was painted.
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We asked one 2nd-grader what he wanted to see on our graphic. This 2nd-grader had studied grains for his nutrition project and understood more about our topic than most. He suggested putting information about the amount of sugar found in processed bread products, like ramen noodles, to show how they were unhealthy. We decided to go with this idea, and from this our first draft was born, comparing whole wheat bread to Cup-o-Noodles. We had to get information on fat rather than sugar because Cup-o-Noodles, although relatively fatty, has no sugar. However, when we got feedback on our design, we were told that the viewer didn't really get anything out of the comparison between bread and Cup-o-Noodles, and that it might be a better idea to research unprocessed v.s. processed breads. Thus, we made our second draft, which, to stick to the subject of gluten, compared the amount of protein in sourdough bread to the amount in whole wheat bread. Eventually, in our final draft, this was shortened to just the amount of protein in sourdough bread. Below are our three drafts, from first to last.
The tiles were only for the elementary school, though. For the middle school, the original plan was a large wheel made by our entire team, with a slice for each group to decorate for their project. Each group's slice would include a QR code that would link to that group's Humanities video on their topic. To the right is our group's slice design. The gray box with "QR Code" written in red letters is a placeholder, because our group did not yet have a QR code at the time the slice design was made. Below are the two rough drafts that we did on paper.
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These pieces were meant to be laser-cut and -engraved from plywood at OSML, a local maker lab with a laser cutter. However, due to difficulties contacting the owner of OSML, the wheel was dropped and transformed into a simpler product. Instead of a wooden wheel, the entire team would just have a big poster that could be framed and hung in the hallways at school. This poster would have the same background color as the tiles, and each group would have a little white hexagon on the poster containing its QR code.
In Humanities, as mentioned before, we were creating videos on our topics. Not just boring educational videos, though; these had to have stories and/or backstories, and they needed to be interesting. Why? So that elementary schoolers wouldn't get bored watching the videos. We decided that we would focus on the gluten-free "fad diet" for our video, which is a gluten-free diet for people without eating restrictions, who just think that gluten makes them fat for whatever preposterous reason. This diet has gained in popularity over recent years, so we decided to set our video in the not-too-distant future when essentially everyone in America is on a gluten-free diet, and thus food companies have stopped producing food with gluten and started producing only gluten-free food. The protagonist is on a Man-v.s.-Wild-style hunt through Wal-mart, searching for the Last Loaf of Wheat Bread.
Please click here to view the treatment for our video. We had a couple of other concepts, some with complete treatments and some with unfinished treatments, that we considered for our video: treatment 1, treatment 3, and treatment 4. In addition to these treatments, we needed to put together a shot list that would lay out exactly which scenes needed to be shot where, when, how, and with who and what. We also wrote a script. We went through three revisions: our first draft was seven pages and, when we timed it, 8:03, which is 7:03 over the tentative time limit; when we trimmed it down as much as we could, our second draft emerged, which was still five pages long but was about as short as we could get it; Mr. Marshall read our script and agreed that it was about as short as it was going to get, and made a few suggestions but lifted the time restriction, and thus our final script was born. Finally, we had a storyboard, which illustrated each scene, and would be a useful tool to reference while we were filming. Below is a photograph of the first draft of our storyboard (modeled after the first draft of our script) followed by the final draft of our storyboard (modeled after the final draft of our script).
Please click here to view the treatment for our video. We had a couple of other concepts, some with complete treatments and some with unfinished treatments, that we considered for our video: treatment 1, treatment 3, and treatment 4. In addition to these treatments, we needed to put together a shot list that would lay out exactly which scenes needed to be shot where, when, how, and with who and what. We also wrote a script. We went through three revisions: our first draft was seven pages and, when we timed it, 8:03, which is 7:03 over the tentative time limit; when we trimmed it down as much as we could, our second draft emerged, which was still five pages long but was about as short as we could get it; Mr. Marshall read our script and agreed that it was about as short as it was going to get, and made a few suggestions but lifted the time restriction, and thus our final script was born. Finally, we had a storyboard, which illustrated each scene, and would be a useful tool to reference while we were filming. Below is a photograph of the first draft of our storyboard (modeled after the first draft of our script) followed by the final draft of our storyboard (modeled after the final draft of our script).