Summary: In this activity students look into the
future, consider how the future will differ from the present,
prioritize the changes, and focus upon population, and how population
change will impact transportation.
Materials:
Example
of brainstorming ideas about the future
Population Calculator (on project
CD)
Class Management:
If you are so fortunate as to
have a telephone in your classroom, you might want to prepare
for the day's investigation by asking a town or public health
official to be ready for a call containing some questions about
population trends in your neighborhood. Such visible investigation
is lively and enpowering, especially when the students are the
ones asking the questions. If there is no phone, you may have
students prepare some questions that you send to a local expert.
You may need to have some of the sources of statistics on hand
before the start of class.
If you cannot gather statistics
for your neighborhood, you can obtain them for your region and
estimate your neighborhood percentage of those figures.
Activity Steps:
1. Brainstorm: How and why will the future be different
from the present? Make a list.
You might want to read
Example of brainstorming ideas by students
2. Set priorities:
Which of these predicted changes on your list are the most fundamental?
You can test this by taking
one away and seeing if other factors are strongly effected.
Cars, population growth, pollution,
and new technologies should emerge among the powerful agents
of change. Students may not think of climate change unless it
is raised by the teacher.
If you have not focused on population,
work out the following challenge together: What happens to a
neighborhood of four families if each family has one child, or
if each family has two children, or if each has three or four
children? Now what about our own neighborhood...
3. Find out:
How will population
be different in your neighborhood in the next hundred years?
the next 200 years? Earlier you found out the numbers for your
continent. Now what about closer to home; what about your neighborhood?
Consult a Town Hall or Public
Health official to find out:
- the number of live births per
woman in your neighborhood;
- the life expectancy of an infant
at birth (how long the child is expected to live) in your neighborhood;
- the starting total population
of the neighborhood.
You may have to make estimations
from regional statistics.
In the U.S. you can find out
more than you thought you ever wanted to know by typing in your
zip code at U.S.
Gazateer. http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer In the
US, the Bureau of Census has population by voting blocks, but
you will need to consult the town officials to obtain a definition
of your block. http://www.census.gov/datamap/www/ [ get map and
click state and county; go to Tigermap and see a map of your
neighborhood:
Search for a place in the US
Name: State (optional):
or for a zip code:
You can ask for number of persons,
male and female, how they travel to work, commuting time, number
who carpooled, number who were born somewhere else (by region)-
an interesting statistic of migration
From non-US students, you may
find what you need via the Census list of International
Statistical Centers http://www.census.gov/main/www/stat_int.html
http://www.census.gov/main/www/stat_int.html
International Statistical Centers
Make predictions for your neighborhood.
Estimations are fine at this point.
Use a population counter to
explore future population levels. You can download a simple one
we made one from _________