ICTeD Services

The Biggest Reducer: Student Website Authoring about Food Miles

Kara and I have just finished our second day with students from years 5 - 7  [10  to 13 year olds] from three different schools, who were constructing websites on the environmental impact of Food Miles on the environment. See my blogposts for 29/3/2009 & 25/4/2009 on the background and preparation on this activity. As seems the case with these two day events, the first day is about content background, team building and ICT skill building and with not much website content. However, by lunchtime on the second day it all comes together amazingly! The 24 students we had were just great!

Background to curriculum planning for this event is at
http://www.ictedservices.info/biggest_reducer/index.htm

The completed school Food Miles websites are below
School One
School Two
School Three

Hope this of use to other teachers doing environmental activities on food miles!!

Student Website Authoring Activity - The Environmental Effect of Food Miles /2

 Gathering resources for this activity on "Food Miles" for this activity [see blogpost 29/3]. Have come across some great videos on You Tube These are the five I am using [some have been edited in length, so to enhance their use in the activity]. I hope the makers don't mind them being posted here. They are all great videos and will be a great stimulus for the start of the activity.

[QuickTime required - Don't have Quicktime? Click here]

Will write how the activity went in the next week or two.

Student Website Authoring Activity - The Environmental Effect of Food Miles

The final draft of the Environmental Neighbourhood Cluster's 2009 ICT Project is nearly complete.

It's called The Biggest Reducer

In this activity eight students from three schools will each make a website on the environmental impact of  food miles.

The focus questions are

• Why are “food miles” an environmental issue?
• How can we easily assess the “food miles” of a weekly shopping list?
• What are some strategies we can use to reduce the “food miles” of a weekly shopping list?

Activity will be held of May 4th & May 11th, 2009
Workshop Outline

Food Miles and the Environment: Ideas to Help Our Planet. An Action Based Internet Project by Students of The Environmental Neighbourhood Cluster

Monday May 4th 2009
9.00 Welcome – Overview of program, outline of expectations & housekeeping.
Introduction to the project, background data, group thinking, team protocols
and planning.
11.10 – Recess
11.40 – Workshop time 1
12.50 – Lunch break
1.50 – Workshop time 2
3.20 – Wrap up of program for Day 1

Monday May 11th 2009
9.00 – Where are we up to? What do we need to finish?
9:30 – Workshop time 3
11.10 – Recess
11.40 – Workshop time 4
12.50 – Lunch break
1.50 – Final session - Presentation of final products & student evaluation
3.25 – Wrap up of program

Multimedia Activities

Students will address the issue of food miles and the environment using the
multimedia forms below [students will be in school groups of 8 and working
with students from the two other local schools].
Website [iWeb]
Developing a website on food miles and the environment
Comic or posters [Comic Life]
Making a comic or poster food miles and the environment
Podcast [GarageBand]
Plan and conduct a podcast food miles and the environment [maybe a debate
with a moderator]
Movies [iMovie] Create a short movie on food miles and the environment  for
inclusion in a website.
Wiki [Wikispaces] Used as a tool to reflect
Publishing [Pages] poster about food miles and the environment

This is the fourth year we have run student constructed websites using iWeb workshops on Enviromental themes. Previous activities were Water Wise in Williamstown: A Student Website for the Environment & Sustainability [2006]
, Sustainable Housing: A Student Website for the Environment & Sustainability [2007]
 and Big Wrapper '08: Student Consumption & Packaging Websites for the Environment & Sustainability [2008]

More info at http://www.ictedservices.info/biggest_reducer/index.htm. I'll also write a blogpost on how the activity went.

Milk Powder: the Movie & Intercept Poverty Fundraiser

Intercept Poverty are having a fundraiser at Harambe Restaurant, in Footscray, March 8th, 2009 from 6:30 p.m.. This will be an International Women's  Day event. See Tanya's blogpost for more information. Tickets are still available if you read this before the event!
My contribution was to do the post-production on video tape that Tanya and Ivon took in Addis Ababa in January. [See my earlier blogposts of the MIlk Powder project.]
This resulted in two videos, "Milk Powder for African Babies" [3mins] and "Monica's Angel Chidren's Home for Boys" [ 6 mins].
Both will be shown at the above fundraiser.
Here is a clip from "Milk Powder".

There are some amazing projects in the world people a doing! If you get a chance to support any small scale projects, particularly in the Third World, then do it"

P.S. The amazing soundtrack "Problem Solving People is by Tanya and the Mudcakes!

P.P.S. Apparently over $2500 was raised!

Milk Powder for African Babies: The Video

Last year you may have read about fundraising activities at my school to provide formula for the orphan babies at the Kidane Mehret orphanage in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. The school raised a large amount of money through various fundraising activities. Tanya and Ivon from Intercept Poverty [read their blog for more information] in Melbourne, Australia, took this money back to Ethiopia and personally purchased the formula and took it to the orphanage. They took some great video of their trip and in particular, this event of visiting the orphanage. It was filmed on a great little camera a JVC Everio. The footage looked great on the DVDs burnt from the SD card. The only issue was they wanted two edited DVDs. A three minute dv to show the students about what happened to the money they raised and an eight minute dv to show guests at an International Women's Day fundraiser.

Then the fun started, Handbrake wouldn't break the DVDs they made apart. Then web research found out that Everios and Macs just don't like talking to one another much. So, eventually a solution, the .MOD files of the Everio are MPEG2. Firstly a free download of MPEG Streamclip 1.9.2, well done so far [and free!]. But that was only half of it, I then had to purchase from Apple a MPEG2 Playback component for Quicktime [This was $29.99 AUD, and after I have shelled out for QT Pro a while back, it makes QT an expensive 'free' app!]

Then the process of coverting the 150 clips to Quicktime. After mucking around for 3 nights, I'm ready to import the clips into iMovie!! Let you know how the editing goes.

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Sunday 01.03.2009. Finished the rough cut

Energyville: Online Environmental Game

I came across this Sim City like environmental game, Energyville, mentioned on a tweet by a Twitter follower. Looks like a great resource, developed for Chevron by the Economist Group. It has to be stated, [and some Australians may not be aware of this], that Chevron is an oil company [the parent of Chevron, Texaco & Caltex]. It has a webpage is complete with a counter showing the barrels of global oil / gas consumption used during your visit to their website! Click here for Energyville. There is a critique published by Greenpeace that I found, so the use of the Energyville & the Greenpeace blog would be good background materials for high/secondary students to debate. As the homepage of the simulation states "There are many valid and varying points-of-view on the future of energy. We encourage you to add your voice to the debate." So do I.

Meet the Greens

I haven't written on environmental education resources for a while, but have come across this website recently, which looks great for primary/elementary school students. Meet the Greens. Just read their promo!

The GREENS: a cool kids' site about looking after the planet. MeetTheGreens.org is produced by the award-winning kids team at WGBH Interactive in Boston.MeetTheGreens.org is a new kids' guide to looking after the planet. Kids can watch The GREENS' cartoon adventures and discover related green games, news, downloads, a blog, action tips, links, and much more. This innovative, Web-only project comes from WGBH in Boston, the producer of shows like ZOOM, ARTHUR, Frontline & NOVA.

Big Wrapper '08 & Children's Book Week [The Completed Websites]

Today I finally completed assembling four websites made groups of students as special projects this term [not including the eTrain one finished last Friday]. These were three from Big Wrapper '08 - see earlier blogposts on this activity [one from each school involved] and the Children's Book Week 2008 website about the visit and writing workshops given by Andy Griffiths at my school. These were all constructed using iWeb and each showed a wide range of Multimedia content.

The Big Wrapper '08 Sites [all on inequalities of food consumption throughout the world an food packaging are at:

Click here for School One

Click here for School Two

Click here for School Three

Teacher notes for the activity are here.

The Andy Griffiths site is here,

Go and have a look!

De Bono's Six Thinking Hats & Six Action Shoes

I just purchased a copy of De Bono's Six Thinking Hats. Just re-released in the Popular Penguins series.
The Six Thinking Hats are widely used in primary school education. I haven't been a big fan of the thinking hats up to now. [I've tended to use other tools instead.] So I will be interested to read to the book to re-evaluate my thinking about Six Thinking Hats.

However, a De Bono tool I have used during this term, and one which I am impressed with, are the Six Action Shoes. I used this in the Big Wrapper '08 web design activity we ran earlier this term. Read more about them here. Download debono_six_action_shoes.pdf

Third World Farmer & Buddhist Economics

I came across this game through a link that someone had posted to one of the Diigo groups I subscribe too. This is a great simulation that would be suitable for middle years students up to an adult. Go play it!  You play online at http://www.3rdworldfarmer.com/. This game would give you and your students a great insight into Third World poverty. There is a video tutorial at http://www.technogogy.org.uk/games/farmer.html. It will readily lead to thinking and discussion about resource inequality in the world.

On a similar theme. I recently picked up a copy of E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful at a second hand bookshop for 30 cents. I remember this book in the early 1970's, but never read it. Schumacher was a protege of J.M. Keynes, but developed some very different ideas. He was one of the first to write on the environmental impact of economics. The cover says over 750000 copies sold. So many bought it, most read it [probably], but not enough acted!

Of particular interest was Chapter Four, Buddhist Economics, which looks at our materialist Western Society compared with the Buddhist point of view. [And how much more materialistic are we since Small is Beautiful was written over 30 years ago? Much more!]
"It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man's work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products."
More links to E.F. Schumacher & Small is Beautiful are at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful
http://www.alteich.com/links/schumach.htm
http://www.schumachersociety.org/