What would we do differently (to prevent global warming)?
Leonora Milán Fe, Graduate student, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
leos19_at_yahoo.com
This activity consists of a scenario that intends to help students reflect on the problem of anthropogenic global warming: what it is, what causes it and what we can do to prevent it.
The scenario posed is of a situation of global emergency, where scientists have determined that the human race has only two weeks until the world as we know it now ends, due to anthropocentric global warming, and all human beings (or most of them) will perish at the end of said period.
In case some humans survived the catastrophe, or in case some intelligent life form evolves again in the planet, the international governments have decided to organize a group of global warming experts, including scientists, and make them write a list of recommendations for the survivors or next generations, as for them to avoid the mistakes we made, causing global warming. This is where the students come in: the teacher will tell them that they are the group of experts in charge of writing the list of recommendations.
The students will have to do a research project on what is global warming, what causes it, the warning signs that global warming was occurring (increased number of hurricanes, for example), its effects on the planet and in life, and of course how it can be prevented. The student should find and process information about the connections between human actions, their impact on Earth, and global warming as a cause of it.
The activity is planned as a class discussion/research project—ideally as group research and an individual activity. It is a two-week project: 1 week will be destined for the actual research (in groups), and 1 week for the practical part of the project (to be done individually). This practical part consists in asking the students to take the list of recommendations they created and putting them into practice (as many as they can) for a week, as a part of their daily lives. The first week’s activity will include the research and the creation of a report of that research (in the form of a paper) and a the second week’s activity, the practical one, will consist in the creation of a “log” or journal for the second week’s activities, plus a final reflexive process in class.
It is important to emphasize the importance of focusing on the big picture (major human activities that cause global warming) but also on the small differences that we as individuals can make to avoid the warming process. This is important for writing the list of recommendations and also in the practical portion. For example, it would be useful to ask the students to try not to focus only on small-scale actions for the second week, but tell them that if they can actually do large-scale actions as well, it will be even better.
The depth of the research and the list of recommendations can vary depending on the age level of the students, making the activity very flexible, accommodating many possible differences in complexity that allow it’s adjustment for students in junior high, high school or even college. The grading process should focus on things like the amount of creativity the students put in their work, the amount of research done, and the analysis of the global warming process as a result of human activities. As a suggestion, the teacher should keep the second week’s activity hidden from the students during the first week. This way, the student during the final reflection process will have more insight on things such as how do you get individuals to change? What does and doesn’t work in changing people’s habits to make them more environmental-friendly, based on personal experience. The secrecy will ideally make them write up a list of recommendations that will be deeper and probably longer due to the fact that they don’t know that they will have to put them in practice themselves. If they know this beforehand, there are increased possibilities of their list being shallower and easier to follow.
The rationale behind this activity is the creation of awareness of the depth of our connections with nature, and human-human-nature connections; and of the involvement of social issues in nature studies. Other interesting awareness that can be generated is of the interdisciplinarity needed to solve a problem so large and urgent, for example, or the consequences that the unequal resource distribution among societies can also contribute to global warming. It is an activity that essentially tries to raise awareness in students of the things that we do that contribute to global warming.
This activity was put into practice with first-semester students of UNAM’s Faculty of Chemistry, as part of a course called “Science and Society”, during the 2007-1 term, with very satisfying results. The objectives followed were mostly fulfilled, and many students were profoundly convinced that a change in their lives to make them contribute less to global warming was possible, that they could help convince others, and that this has to be done as soon as possible because global warming is an urgent situation that must be dealt with immediately. They ended convinced that they could, and should, make a difference.
Activity/Scenario
What would we do differently (to prevent global warming)?
Leonora Milán Fe, Graduate student, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Méxicoleos19_at_yahoo.com
This activity consists of a scenario that intends to help students reflect on the problem of anthropogenic global warming: what it is, what causes it and what we can do to prevent it.
The scenario posed is of a situation of global emergency, where scientists have determined that the human race has only two weeks until the world as we know it now ends, due to anthropocentric global warming, and all human beings (or most of them) will perish at the end of said period.
In case some humans survived the catastrophe, or in case some intelligent life form evolves again in the planet, the international governments have decided to organize a group of global warming experts, including scientists, and make them write a list of recommendations for the survivors or next generations, as for them to avoid the mistakes we made, causing global warming. This is where the students come in: the teacher will tell them that they are the group of experts in charge of writing the list of recommendations.
The students will have to do a research project on what is global warming, what causes it, the warning signs that global warming was occurring (increased number of hurricanes, for example), its effects on the planet and in life, and of course how it can be prevented. The student should find and process information about the connections between human actions, their impact on Earth, and global warming as a cause of it.
The activity is planned as a class discussion/research project—ideally as group research and an individual activity. It is a two-week project: 1 week will be destined for the actual research (in groups), and 1 week for the practical part of the project (to be done individually). This practical part consists in asking the students to take the list of recommendations they created and putting them into practice (as many as they can) for a week, as a part of their daily lives. The first week’s activity will include the research and the creation of a report of that research (in the form of a paper) and a the second week’s activity, the practical one, will consist in the creation of a “log” or journal for the second week’s activities, plus a final reflexive process in class.
It is important to emphasize the importance of focusing on the big picture (major human activities that cause global warming) but also on the small differences that we as individuals can make to avoid the warming process. This is important for writing the list of recommendations and also in the practical portion. For example, it would be useful to ask the students to try not to focus only on small-scale actions for the second week, but tell them that if they can actually do large-scale actions as well, it will be even better.
The depth of the research and the list of recommendations can vary depending on the age level of the students, making the activity very flexible, accommodating many possible differences in complexity that allow it’s adjustment for students in junior high, high school or even college. The grading process should focus on things like the amount of creativity the students put in their work, the amount of research done, and the analysis of the global warming process as a result of human activities. As a suggestion, the teacher should keep the second week’s activity hidden from the students during the first week. This way, the student during the final reflection process will have more insight on things such as how do you get individuals to change? What does and doesn’t work in changing people’s habits to make them more environmental-friendly, based on personal experience. The secrecy will ideally make them write up a list of recommendations that will be deeper and probably longer due to the fact that they don’t know that they will have to put them in practice themselves. If they know this beforehand, there are increased possibilities of their list being shallower and easier to follow.
The rationale behind this activity is the creation of awareness of the depth of our connections with nature, and human-human-nature connections; and of the involvement of social issues in nature studies. Other interesting awareness that can be generated is of the interdisciplinarity needed to solve a problem so large and urgent, for example, or the consequences that the unequal resource distribution among societies can also contribute to global warming. It is an activity that essentially tries to raise awareness in students of the things that we do that contribute to global warming.
This activity was put into practice with first-semester students of UNAM’s Faculty of Chemistry, as part of a course called “Science and Society”, during the 2007-1 term, with very satisfying results. The objectives followed were mostly fulfilled, and many students were profoundly convinced that a change in their lives to make them contribute less to global warming was possible, that they could help convince others, and that this has to be done as soon as possible because global warming is an urgent situation that must be dealt with immediately. They ended convinced that they could, and should, make a difference.