The stories of our stuff

Today we read from "Confessions of an Eco-Sinner," by Fred Pearce. In this book he goes to the source of some of his food, clothing, materials and the energy that he uses most days. We read about cotton production in Australia, the US and Uzbekistan, the three largest producers in the world. In particular we learned about how much water is used to make a tee shirt (33 bathtubs worth!) and the pesticides used to grow cotton (one quarter of all pesticides used on crops in the US). We also read about the plight of the banana and how it is facing eventual extinction from disease unless we find a new source of genetic diversity to build up its resistance to these threats. This lead to more stories about the limited varieties of the foods that we eat and the need to preserve genetic diversity in order to have healthy food supplies. The readings sparked some good discussions about genetically modified foods, the use of animals in research and synthetic versus natural materials for clothing. We will continue to research our stories of the stuff we use (It Costs What?) and these poster projects will be due on Wednesday, December 14th.

Friday we watched most of a documentary called, "T-Shirt Travels" about the used clothing market in Africa. It followed the story of a young man in Zambia who buys a bale of used clothing from the US and sells it in his hometown in order to make a living. It turns out that the number one export from the US to Africa is used clothing and this has had a big impact on the economies of African nations. It follows up on the story of our t-shirts and what happens to them after we drop them off at used clothing places like the Salvation Army or Goodwill. Here is a link to a summary on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tshirttravels/film.html

Here is a link to where you can click on each stage of the travels of a t-shirt as it makes its way from US charity bin to African marketplace:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tshirttravels/track.html

"It Costs What?" Projects

We have been working on our "It Costs What?" projects today and on Tuesday. Yesterday the 4th years went on a field trip to the NC Museum of Life and Science to see the RACE Exhibit. Check out their website about the exhibit at NCMLS.org. The exhibit looks at race from cultural and scientific viewpoints.
The "It Costs What?" project is looking at an everyday object like a tee shirt and tracing its path from natural resources to finished product that we buy in a store. Along the way different resources are used and pollution is created, these are the hidden costs of the product. Students are working individually and in pairs to research their products and then will create a poster of their findings. Here is the project outline and rubric.  Last Monday we did a values line up called "Where do you stand?" in which I read a statement and then we lined up according to how strongly we agreed or disagreed with the statement. This sparked some good discussions. Here are the questions, we had time for 4-5 of them. We finished that day listening to a radio program from the show "Marketplace" from American Public Media about a "Well traveled Breakfast." The author traces the sources of the foods that his family eats on a typical morning. You can listen to the story and read about it here: Marketplace, A Well Traveled Breakfast.

It Costs What?

Today we went over the reading, "It Costs What?" and outlined the different parts of the world involved in the making of the shirt and the resources used and pollution created. We filled out this chart to help us map everything: "It Cost What-Chart". We talked about the reasons that a shirt is still so cheap after traveling so far. This leads into a short project that looks at resources and pollution. Tomorrow is our last class before the Thanksgiving break.

Bird Project Presentations Wrapped Up

Thursday and Friday we finished presenting our Bird Study Projects. Most of them went really well. Some of them were frustrated by the weather and by squirrels. Everyone was able to come up with something that they could work with. A few projects are still working on some challenges with formatting their wiki pages.
We started reading a short story about a t-shirt and its origins as raw materials. "It Costs What?" The rest of the reading is for homework, due on Monday, November 21st.

Peer Review

Monday and Tuesday we are doing peer reviews of each other's work. We are using the forms in the Investigator's Journal on pages 20 and 21 to guide us in giving constructive feedback to our rough drafts. Each person will give feedback to at least 2 people in their study group. And they will get feedback from the other folks in their study group. This gets everyone to look critically at other projects and to get ideas for how to improve their own project. We will spend these two days polishing our wikipages and preparing for our presentations on Thursday, November 17th.

Coming towards the end

We are getting close to finishing our bird investigations. Everyone is wrapping up their research, compiling data, making charts and graphs and formating their wikipages. By the beginning of next week everyone should have their reports just about finished. The rough drafts are due that Monday, November 14. They will then give feedback to their study/research teams and make the final improvements. Presentations will start on Thursday, November 17th. Tuesday we looked at four different types of graphs, from the Resource Page handouts, pp. 16-21. We looked at Pie charts, Bar graphs, Line graphs and Scatter plots and when to use each type.

Data Collection Week

This week we have a limited number of classes due to the block week schedule and the 4th year trip to see the documentary film on Thursday. So we only meet 3 times this week. Everyone should be set up to collect their data this week and come in on Monday, November 7th with all of their data collected so that they can start analyzing it and making graphs and charts to show their results.