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1.
WHAT KIND OF A FUTURE ...?
Looking 50 years, 100 years into the future. (1-2 days)
Students, or teams of
students, describe a future world in which they would like to
live. The purpose is to invite the students to imagine the future
in a flexible way, first investing themselves in the future with
the elements of life they care about, and then looking at the
constraints.
Questions
to investigate
about conceptualizing
the future include:
1. What kind of future
would you like for you?
2. What kind of future
would you like for your friends, town, region, country?
3. What kind of future
do you see? Is it the same as the one you want? What are
your biggest concerns?
Handheld
Activities
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2.
WITH WHOM DO YOU SHARE THE FUTURE? PLANTS and ANIMALS
We will
all be called upon to watch over the plant and animal life in
our area, as we depend upon each other.
Questions
to investigate
about sharing
the land and its resources include:
1. With whom do we share
our local resources?
2. Are these populations
changing, and if so, how and why?
3. What resources (e.g.
water, soil nutrients) do these plants and aniamls depend upon?
Handheld
Activities
To get
a sense of your animal and plant neighbors, you can prepare a
local
FIELD
GUIDE.
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3.
WITH WHOM DO YOU SHARE THE FUTURE? LOCAL PEOPLE Discover your neighbors, their
history, and their observations of your local area.
Questions
to investigate
include:
1. How has the neighborhood
changed over the last 20 years?
2. What is important
to them?
3. Are sources of locally
produced food being protected? Do people value this food?
Handheld
activities
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4. WILL THERE BE ENOUGH TO GO AROUND? - The example of one pressure
(population rise) and one resource: water (2 days)
What are the forces that
will exert pressure on our future world? How do they exert their
influence? Again students look 50 years, 100 years into the future.
This activity allows students to focus on two critical variables,
population and a critical resource - water, and the connection
between them.
Questions
to investigate
about population
growth and water include:
1. How fast are we/have
we been growing (locally, nationally, internationally)?
2. Will
there be enough water for us (local, national) and for the world's
population (international) in 10 years? in 50 years? 100 years?
Handheld
activities
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5. WHAT IS YOUR OWN ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT?
Students take the Ecological
Footprint Survey (for the first time; they will do it twice).Their
estimates do not yet have an empirical basis. For homework they
will share the same survey with their parents (print version).
Questions
to investigate
in the
Ecological Footprint include:
1. How much of the world
resources do you consume?
2. What impact does your
style of consumption have on the world? What if everyone was
like you?
3. What are the differences
around the world in the amounts people consume?
Handheld
activities
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6. COUNTING 1 -2-3
Students
predict numbers related to the Ecological Footprint, and then
go out and count factors in the field to check their predictions.
Questions
to investigate
include:
1. What
is the average traffic pattern at a certain location? How does
it change by time of day, or day of the week?
2. What
appears to be the most polluting vehicle in traffic? the least?
How might you measure this?
3. How
efficiently are cars being used? For example, how many passengers
travel in each car?
4. What
is the ratio of luxury cars to total traffic? What is a good
definition of a luxury car? What is the ratio
of bicycles to total traffic? How much energy does one save by
using a bicycle and not a car?
Handheld
activities
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7. PLACING YOUR FINDINGS IN GLOBAL
CONTEXT
Students discuss their
findings. They compare their local data with global data. http://earthtrends.wri.org/
Questions
to investigate
include:
1. How
close is your use of resources to the world average?
2. Where
in the world are the extremes of use?
3. What
one change could you make in your footprint that would bring
you closer to the world average?
Handheld
activities
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8.
TAKING THE FOOTPRINT SURVEY (a second time) and DISCUSSION
Questions
to investigate
include:
1. Where were your predictions
about your footprint wrong? Where right?
2. Which footprint behavior
do you most want to change?
3. What factors would
you add to a revised Footprint survey?
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9. MAKING YOUR FUTURE SUSTAINABLE
Students consider how
to develop a way of life that can be maintained one hundred years
at least into the future.
Questions
to investigate
include:
1. Why is sustainability
important?
2. What is changing in
your community in an unsustainable direction?
3. What is changing in
your community to make life more sustainable?
Handheld
activities
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