Another requirement for MYP 10 at my high school is to complete the Exploitation Project. It isn’t as big as the Personal Project and doesn’t contribute to your final grade for MYP. However, we are MYP kids so we freaked out  and the project became a test of how far we could go to overachieve.

At my high school both AP and MYP kids do the Exploitation Project with one significant difference - there are major requirements for each class for the project for MYP kids and the project is only one class grade for AP kids.

The topic is chosen based on human’s exploitation of our planet.  All in, we were given 2 weeks to complete all of the requirements that culminate in a 45 minute presentation.  The requirements include:

• Outline (English Class Grade)
• Annotated Bibliography (English Class Grade)
• Power Point (English/History Class Grade)
• Tech Log (Technology Grade)
• Visual (Language B Class Grade)
• Plan of Action (Language B Class Grade)
• Presentation (English Class Grade)
• Individual and Group Evaluations (Technology Grade)
• Graphs and Statistics (Math Class Grade)
• References to the Benefits and Limitations of the Use of Technology for Exploitation of Your Topic (Science Class Grade)

There are also a bunch of fancy and horribly specific rubrics to follow. Even though meeting all of the requirements in just 2 weeks was an arduous task, our group still had fun.

Our assigned topic was the Exploitation of biotic resources: plants and animals in eastern Asia.  I was elected Project Manager by our team, probably because I am the only one who LOVES public speaking.

We had fun creating of our visual. We made three rigs to show our three subtopics (deforestation, wildlife trafficking, and threatened species). We used paper mache and enough clay to make a pottery teacher jealous. The idea of 6 teenagers with paper mache, clay, and lots of paint could make any parent cringe, and we proved why. It was a huge mess (however, we did clean it up).

Our plan of action included raising awareness about biotic resources by creating brochures and handing them out at the mall.   The whole time we were at the mall we were on alert for mall cops (we didn’t have the money for the permit fee, so we decided to do our research on the sly).  Every time we saw a mall cop someone would say “the po-po” or “the fuzz” and we’d all stealthily walk in the other direction hiding our camera and brochures in my friends backpack. It was a great experience and I loved every second of it. Below is the video we created:

After all was said and done we presented all the information that we’d gathered. I initially thought that giving a 45 minute presentation on our topic would be difficult but there was so much information out there that it was actually hard to cover everything in a 45 minute window.

I heard through the grapevine that we received an A.  Keeping my fingers crossed!