Project-MOONSHOT ACADEMY

Family Memoirs: Recording the individual stories of ordinary families in the big time

Disciplines/Subjects: History, Chinese, Media, Design Key Themes: Nonfiction Writing, Modern Chinese History, Microhistory “What can a small individual or a small family tell us? How much can it aid our understanding of Chinese history? We believe that the experiences of ordinary people can reflect the changes of an entire era, and we can genuinely feel the turning points of significant times through the vivid, detailed small histories. Without a micro perspective, our history would be unbalanced and incomplete.”—History does not float in the air; it is all around us, in the daily meals and routines of every family. Each family is a book, and if we can salvage and collect these memories, they too can be the magnificent voice of the times. In this project, learners explore modern Chinese history by tracing family stories and ultimately complete a “family memoir.” The project integrates multiple disciplines such as history, language arts, media, and design, aiming to document the individual stories of ordinary families against the backdrop of significant historical periods.

STEM for Girls

Disciplines/Subjects: sociology, education，design thinkings Key Themes: girls，gender equality, STEM/Math，pedagogy, learning interest The Incubator Track in MSA is a year-long, interdisciplinary program that empowers students to develop and launch social impact projects. Students will first define and understand a social problem, and then initiate an action to promote changes around that problem. Along with a variety of social science research and problem-solving methods, learners will also enhance their project management, leadership, and communication skills. The problem we want to solve is that middle school girls cannot maintain their interest in math through school courses. We have done several surveys, which include 50 students and 10 teachers to investigate high school students and middle school students about whether they are good at math or not and their score of interest towards math on a scale of 1-10. Girls have shown a distinct interest in math in middle school and the interest score of math for middle school girls is slightly higher than high school girls, which indicates that girls can not persist in interest in math. The reasons behind this question, include multiple factors, such as parents, teachers, grades, and environment. Our goal is to design a complete action that is effective for middle school girls to maintain their interest in math. The action would be developed based on the interests and hobbies of middle school girls. Our action design will be based on one of the factors that will affect the interest we find.

Moonshot Academy High School Commencement 2024

Disciplines/Subjects: Graphic Design Key Themes: Graduation Ceremony, Branding Design, Packaging Design, Book Design Graduation is one of the most important events in a school, and we created a full set of branded visual identities for the ceremony. The main visual design centered around the “Orange Ladder”, an element derived from Moonshot Academy(MSA)'s landmark, the Little Theater, which is the most familiar symbol to every MSA learner. We abstracted the theater as a three-step ladder, echoing the graduation ceremony theme of “3, 2, 1”. We simulated the projection of the light on the stairs from a vertically downward perspective and summarized it as a minimalist graphic with only orange and black. The orange steps remain unchanged, while the shadows cycle through time, from no shadow at all to a narrow projection, symbolizing the graduation of each student from the MSA, leaving behind a trail of shadows, echoing the time of the graduation ceremony, the Summer Solstice. Utilizing 3D printing technology, we pasted the physical ladder onto part of the material to create a realistic projection through natural light, breaking the boundaries between static and dynamic, two-dimensional and three-dimensional.

Sustainable lifestyle for youth

Disciplines/Subjects: sociology, environmental studies, design thinkings Key Themes: teenager, sustainable lifestyle, citywalk The Incubator Track in MSA is a year-long, interdisciplinary program that empowers students to develop and launch social impact projects. Students will first define and understand a social problem, and then initiate an action to promote changes around that problem. Along with a variety of social science research and problem-solving methods, learners will also enhance their project management, leadership, and communication skills. People’s exploits of natural resources and destruction of the environment are causing drastic climate change. However climate change sounds like such a big problem, and individuals can hardly relate to it (Markman, 2018). Specific and personal changes need to be made by individuals to combat climate change. Discover the power of sustainable lifestyles with me. I’m dedicated to inspiring and supporting teenagers in embracing eco-friendly choices every day. Let’s team up to build a greener, more sustainable world for everyone.

Entering the world of elderly

Disciplines/Subjects: sociology, design thinkings Key Themes: elderly, teenager, empathy The Incubator Track in MSA is a year-long, interdisciplinary program that empowers students to develop and launch social impact projects. Students will first define and understand a social problem, and then initiate an action to promote changes around that problem. Along with a variety of social science research and problem-solving methods, learners will also enhance their project management, leadership, and communication skills. The rapidly developing technology is convenient for citizens’ lives, but trouble has been brought to the elderly at the same time. Due to their dissatisfaction with social and emotional needs, the elderly suffer from loneliness and a series of severe consequences brought by loneliness. Loneliness may cause a variety of dangers that can threaten the health of the elderly. We discovered that providing support for the elderly to express and communicate with others reduces their sense of loneliness. We decided to aim at reducing the loneliness of the elderly by building a connection between them.

Lost & Found: Leaving our campus memories in 99 lost items

Disciplines/Subjects: Graphic Design Key Themes: Creative Design, Exhibition Design These are 99 lost items that were left behind at 129 Nangao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, a place once called Moonshot Academy(MSA). The school was forced to move out due to the Covid-19. Most of the campus is now empty, but there are still a lot of items that no one packed or were just too hard to move, so they were left there forever. We chose 99 of these lost items, the largest being graffiti on a wall and the smallest being a marble on a bookshelf. No matter how big or small, each item was a testimony to our real life there. Later, we launched a special “Lost & Found” campaign: we collected all the stories of people with these 99 lost objects, and as long as you have a story with one of them, you can be one of the “adopters” of it. After the event, we designed a set of postcards with all the “adopters” and stories collected at the exhibition. We used four different styles of fonts to form the main visual of “Lost & Found”, as if the 99 different items were piled up together, twisted and turned, seemingly unappreciated and about to be abandoned. The 99 items have also been individually keyed out of the photographs they were originally in and filled in with gray squares that represent “transparent, no content” in the design software to indicate that they are all lost. When you hold each card up to the light, you can retrieve the lost objects and stories, and we hope to convey the idea that although most of these objects are indeed lost, as long as we can find memories of them, their appearance will always be there.

Kapuscinski's Iran: A Poland in Disguise?

Disciplines/Subjects: AP English Language and Composition Key Themes: In his reporting on the Iranian revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinki created a narrative that seemed to speak beyond that singular moment. Under the surface, readers found allegories, parallels, and universal truths about the nature of revolutions, political power, continuity, and change. Framing these (and controversially potentially compromising the reportage on them) is the artistic power of Kapuscinski's poetic imagination which in turn opens questions about the conventions and responsibilities of the artist and reporter in their relationship to language itself. We read this text in the second semester as a way to deepen our reading and writing skills for the course. It allowed for the presentation of a range of texts (historical writing, speeches, conventional journalism, opinion writing, and literary work) and allowed for a deep examination of the conventions of them - something we began in the previous unit with the conventions of scientific texts. At the same time, this unit allowed students to learn about two important parts of the world that they might not be too familiar with. The summative assessment for the unit provides the learners with the opportunity to refine and extend their skills on an AP-style assessment: either the synthesis or analytical essay.

A Collection of Micro Novels "One Corner, One Observation, One Writing"

Disciplines/Subjects: Chinese Language Arts Key Themes: Fiction, Creative writing, Exaggeration, Alienation, Metaphor From a corner of the world, observing people and society. Art originates from life, higher than life. "Novelists from ancient and modern times, both domestic and foreign, reflect social reality through their writing, describe it with warmth, criticize it sharply, or depict human nature through unique artistic techniques. They transport readers to a whole new world and showcase different life experiences. This power is not based on argumentation or facts, but on the illusion that life is happening on paper, which is the life of their characters. Through the intensive reading of each unit's representative novel and relevant supplementary materials, learners can understand the expression techniques and techniques of various novels, choose one of the following three topics, imitate and learn from its artistic techniques, understand the basic methods of novel creation, create a mini-novel, and present their attitudes and reflections on certain social phenomena, trends of thought or popular culture. A. What phenomena in real society do you want to criticize? Please shape a typical character based on this, using exaggeration, contrast, and satire techniques, designing necessary plot conflicts, showcasing their core characteristics, and writing their story and your stance B. The alienation of human beings "reflects the alienation of the body and the misalignment of thoughts, as well as the dilemma of human survival. Based on your observation, in real life, which person/individuals have you seen facing survival difficulties? Please write a story about 'human alienation transformation' through passive explicit transformation, showcasing their struggles and difficulties, as well as the inner world of the characters. C. The metaphorical technique helps us better understand the connections or behaviors between specific things. By observing and experiencing life (historical events, small things that reflect truth in life, social hotspots), you can choose a theme and use metaphorical techniques to create a group story through the setting of images, scenes, plots, and details. This will reveal the essence of something or the truth of life, or subtly express your views and positions on a sensitive event.

Project

Real-world projects creating positive impacts for self, others, communities, and the planet.