Quality Global Citizenship online games

While varied, entertaining, and delightful, we have a general policy that excludes computer games from our classroom. With rare exception, the educational value of most games is overshadowed by other opportunities offered by the classroom. Most online games (especially those with educational value) tend to be fairly solitary, so the feeling is that they're best left for home. 

However, occasionally we come across some gems that line up nicely with what we're studying. Here are two games that I've introduced to the class that not only reinforce a lot of what we've been studying this month, but are also challenging and a lot of fun. (They're also free!)  

Garbage Dreams

Garbage Dreams is a game developed as a tie-in to a documentary of the same name. The film chronicles the lives of three teenagers in Cairo who make their living recycling the trash of others. The game tasks the player with matching their impressive recycling rate: They are able to recycle 80% of the trash that they collect. The player has to use limited resources to turn a profit, then use that money wisely to invest in better technology. In the process of playing, you learn quite a bit about what can and cannot be recycled and why. Investing resources in different technologies allows you to recycle more items, which (ideally) justifies the expense. It effectively illustrates that recycling is not makes ecological sense, but economic sense as well. 

Also, you get to feed old sandwiches and banana peels to a cartoon goat. 

It's fun and informative! 

Play Garbage Dreams

Some more background on Garbage Dreams can be found here. 

ElectroCity

ElectroCity challenges the player to take a small sleepy town on a resource-rich patch of land and develop it sustainably and responsibly. You are given numerous opportunities to balance short term gains with longterm growth. For example, clear cutting a forest may yield some much needed cash, but turning it into a national forest may be a better course for longterm success. It's an extremely open-ended game that allows the player to experience the pros and cons of a number of real world conundrums. 

Play ElectroCity 

Where does the recycling go?

The conversations that grew from our biodegradation and Great Pacific Garbage Patch activities were excellent background for our first field trip of the year: The Ann Arbor Materials Recycling Facility (MRF, often referred to as "the Murph").

We joined with Karl's class and visited on Wednesday, January 16th for a guided tour of the facility, accompanied by an informative talk and Q & A session with our guide. We learned exactly what can and cannot be put into curbside recycling bins in Ann Arbor (check out a handy list here), and we also learned where the materials go once they've been sorted. For example, newspaper and magazines end up in a paper mill in Kalamazoo, while boxboard is sent to a company in Rittman, Ohio. #1 plastic bottles get shipped to a company in Georgia (where they'll find new life as fabric, carpet, and fleece), while scrap steel gets sent to Pittsburgh, where it's used in the production of car parts. Check out this link for a comprehensive list of what gets sent where.

Of course, the highlight of the visit was the actual tour of the facility. The kids donned hardhats, safety vests, and goggles, then headed out to the floor to walk amongst the whirring conveyor belts and rumbling machinery.

Everyone marveled at each identifiable piece of recycling. "There goes a box of Cheerios!" "Those are the fruit snacks my brother eats!" "Somebody threw away the box to Hungry, Hungry Hippos!"

It's difficult to get a good sense of scale here, but the mound of recyclables in the background of this photo was probably taller than the Summers-Knoll building.

To the right of this stairwell was a massive pile of more crushed plastic cartons than you would have imagined could exist in the entire world. 

Watching the glass tumble and rattle...

Aristea spotted an environmentally-conscious fairy door at the MRF, complete with tiny recycling bins.

Karl's class, modeling both safety and style. 

Henry's go-to joke of the day was to point at random items spotted on the conveyor belts and exclaim, "Jason! I think that's the Dr. Pepper I was drinking last Thursday!" 

As Karl's class took their tour of the facility, we got to do some on-the-spot recycling at a paper-making station. 

If anyone happens to have a functional, but unwanted blender, we might be interested in taking it off of your hands. There was considerable interest in trying to make some paper of our own back at S-K.

It was another fun, educational field trip! The facility has monthly open houses. It's well worth a visit!

Extra special thanks to Superstar Parent Volunteer Jenny Hannibal, who saved the day we unexpectedly found ourselves with only one bus to transport two class loads of kids. THANK YOU, JENNY!

Jam-Packed January

We've fallen behind a bit with the blog, and it's in part because we've had an extremely busy January! I'll be writing a few catch-up posts over the next few days, and then we'll return to our usual schedule of posting at least once a week. We're also going to be turning some of the posting duties over to the class in the weeks ahead, with each student taking turns to recap our activities for each week.  

Global Citizenship

Our first weeks of 2013 have been packed with activity, much of which has been related to our Global Citizenship theme. This month, we've talked a lot about the unintended consequences that human activity have had on the natural world. We kicked off this conversation early in the month with an activity. 

Students were presented with the following objects: 

- tin can 
- aluminum can
- cotton rag
- wool sock
- styrofoam block
- plastic bottle
- glass bottle
- apple core
- leather boot
- paper bag

They were then asked what they had in common. As you might imagine, there were many clever and ridiculous answers, but the one we finally hit on was that these are all things that are likely to be thrown into the garbage at some point. 

We then split into small groups. Different materials decompose at different rates, and each group was asked to list the items in order from the quickest to decompose to the longest. We then compared our lists on the board: 

After each group gave their rationale for their list, I gave everyone the correct order and asked them to come up with their best guesses for how long it would take for each item to decompose. The answers were eye-opening: 

1. apple: 3-4 weeks
2. paper bag: 1 month
3. cotton rag: 5 months
4. wool sock: 1 year
5. leather boot: 40-50 years for the leather, 50-80 for the rubber sole
6. tin can: 80 years
7. aluminum can: 200 years
8. plastic bottle: 1 million years (?)
9. Styrofoam block: unknown
10. glass bottle: unknown

Some of this was surprising. For example, Styrofoam seems so fragile and brittle that one might think that it would "break down" quickly. This lead to a discussion on the difference between "biodegradation" and simply breaking something into smaller and smaller pieces. A hunk of Styrofoam may get broken down into smaller and smaller bits, but they are still tiny pieces of Styrofoam. The same is true of plastic.

Another observation that was made was that items that were the least processed by humans were the things that broke down the fastest. Apples, paper, cotton, wool, and leather will break down much more quickly than processed tin and aluminum.

This activity primed them for a conversation about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which we talked about a few days later. If you're unfamiliar with the Garbage Patch, take a look at this short video. It's only two minutes long, but it's pretty powerful. It will stick with you.

We also watched a slightly longer video (it's about seven minutes long) of a talk given by Capt. Charles Moore, who first visited the garbage patch and who has worked to publicize its existence.

These videos, along with some readings, have generated many subsequent conversations on a variety of topics. For example, learning about the nature of the garbage patch has introduced the concept of global ocean and atmospheric currents. Understanding how the patch came into existence means learning about these currents, and specifically gyres, which is a term they had previously been unfamiliar with. (There are actually five large garbage patches across the globe, created by five large gyres. The Pacific Garbage Patch is simply the one that has recieved the most media attention.) Each of these concepts introduces potential lines of inquiry for individual research and project work, which we will be developing over the course the school year.

Literature Circles

We've also introduced Literature Circles this month. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we join with Karl's class to work in small groups. Each group is reading a different novel. Karl has introduced the topic on his class blog here: http://sikkenga.blogspot.com/2013/01/literature-circles.html

Danny, Jonathan, Jianmarco, and Alexandra reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Saul, Lily, Kaeli, and Noah reading Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang

Melissa, Matthew, Cory, and Taylor reading Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Denali, Isobel Aristea, and Margaret reading Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell 

Evan, Henry, and Trent reading My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Karl has also posted some of the questions that the groups have come up with regarding their books. Read his post here.