Cyneford City
The city name is derived from the word “Cynefin” which is a place where a being feels it is ought to live. It is where the nature surrounding a person is right and welcoming.
Values
The values that our group included in the city are Religion, Education, Privacy, Health, and Sport.
Religion: We chose to represent Religion in a Place of Worship for the town. This Place of Worship is for all religions and faiths, and can be found in the top left corner of the town, next to the blue school building. Both my partner and I consider our religions to be a core part of our values, so we wanted to reflect this in our city.
Education: We represented education in a town school building that can be found to the right of the blue Place of Worship. This school is for every child in the town. We chose education as one of our values because it has a big impact on our future, and has a big influence on the people that we become.
Privacy: We represented this value in the gated communities that the city neighborhoods are organized into, and the protective white walls that surround them. This allows for quiet, private neighborhoods. The houses are purple, which is the colour of the purple chakra. This symbolizes peace and serenity.
Health: Health is represented as a Hospital Care Center that can be found directly across from the school. Health is important to our group because the better one’s health is, the longer they live and the better their quality of life will be.
Sport: The last value included in our town is sport. My partner and I both come from families that are very passionate about basketball, and we both enjoy playing volleyball during the summer. This value can be found in the multisport town arena that is located directly across from the Place of Worship. The town arena encourages physical activity and engagement in any sporting events, which directly helps the health and mental well being of the citizens in the town.
Communication Reflection
The purpose of this project was to digitally design a city containing components that reflect the core values of our group. Kirsten and I worked together, and we used a program called “City Creator” to create the design of our city. In the process of creating our city and designing the values that were connected to it, we worked together side by side in class so that we could share ideas efficiently. If we needed to communicate outside of school, we used Instagram to text each other. When brainstorming ideas and giving feedback, we always listened to the other person’s point of view and made sure to understand where they were coming from with their ideas. We were always respectful with our feedback and kept things positive and constructive!
As the city was being created, we realized that the program that we had selected only let one computer work on the project, so my task was to build the city that we had designed. I was able to finish the city using the class time given, and this allowed me to get Kirsten’s ideas and support with the program. Kirsten’s task was to find a unique and meaningful name for the city, and she used her class time to do research to come up with a creative name that reflected both of our values.
Our work as a group was very efficient, and we were able to sort out our ideas quickly and complete our work on time. We used our class time very well and didn’t have to do much group work at home. When making decisions in this project, we took each other’s views into account, and usually came up with an idea or answer that reflected both of our values. An example of this is the values modeled in our project. Each of the values that we chose is a shared value, and we both took turns suggesting values that were important to us to find common ground. The only problem that we faced was with the program that we were using, and we solved this problem by dividing the tasks up evenly so that we would both be doing an equal amount of work.
Overall, I was very satisfied with the final product. We created a unique city that reflects our shared values, and we both worked well together. If I could improve this process for next time, I would use a software that allows multiple people to work on the same project simultaneously.