Wednesday 22 August

Today we began our Being Green project by talking with Mrs Smokorowski via Skype. We asked her to tell us a little about the students who are going to join us in our project. We had listened to a letter that the students from Andale Kansas had sent to us and in particular we wanted to know what milo was because it was mentioned that the farmers grow milo in Andale. We found out that is was a type of corn grown as cattle food. We thought that this was quite funny because milo in Australia is something very different. Our Milo is a very popular chocolate drink that is added to milk as a hot or cold chocolate drink. 

 Note from Andale - This is a photo we took a year ago for a different project of milo - also known as sorghum.  Yes, it's certainly a bit different from the yummy looking Milo in Australia.

 

Thursday 23 August:

Today the students at Wedderburn finished watching An Inconvenient Truth. I was watching the kids as they watch the movie and there were lots of ums and ahs and gasps at different times so I think that a lot of students were really thinking about the issues.

Tomorrow we are going to join up with PB wiki so that students can edit the pages. we are also going to do our environmental footprint and then add it to our personal page on the wiki. And finally we are going to use the Visual Ranking tool to begin to rank the issues as we see them.

 

 

 

 

Monday August 27 (Andale):

Today we started watching An Inconvenient Truth.  Several students wondered out loud if our earth is "that bad."  Others made the comment that they wondered where we would be in 50 years?  Tomorrow we will (hopefully) finish the video and continue our discussion.  We are hoping to post to the wiki soon regarding the students' feelings about this project.

 

Tuesday August 28 (Andale): We are just about finished with the film, and the students are really starting to have several "a-ha moments".  We'll finish up the last 10 minutes of the film, do our Visual Ranking, and post to the wiki tomorrow.  Look for added photos to the gallery tomorrow, as well.

 

Wednesday August 29 (Andale): We did finish the film today and did our Visual Ranking activities.  I'll be posting the results on the wiki pages today.  I have to say the students really did amaze me with their responses.  They are truly concerned in how they can change the world.  The Andale students were excited to see the ecological footprints of their peers.  We should have ours posted next week.

 

Friday August 31st (Wedderburn): As the students at Andale have already seen, we have finished our Environmental Footprints and most students have posted them on their individual pages. Our students also checked out the Visual Rankings and a lot of our students commented on the differences between their ranking of environmental issues and the rankings of the students at Andale. We are going to talk about this as a whole group on Monday. We are also going to start planning for the Photostory introduction activity.  It is great to see the pictures of students at Andale. What struck me as a fellow teacher was that the facilities you have look very similar to what we have here. I guess that shouldn't surprise me as schools in the US and Australia probably aren't that different :)- Mrs Baird.

 

Monday 3rd September ( Wedderburn)

Mrs McHugh and Ms Godden are taking the students through a discussion about looking at other people's points of view. They have looked at the comments that the students in their groups made, they also looked at the ranking of the other students in their group. What they are asked to do is to try and see the ideas from the perspective of the students in Andale. What is their perspective and what are possible reasons for those ideas. The students are then writing that into their reflection journal.

These were some of the comments that students gave \reasons for their perspectives

1. Andale students might live in a different climate to us- e.g we are living in a drought and we have to deal with very strict water restrictions and maybe the students a
2. Andale haven't had it affect them as much. Andale don't seem to be as worried about coral reefs- we worry more about them because most Australians live on the edge of the country and the health of the coral reefs will affect us. A new thing that we found out was that the degridation of Coral reefs can influence tidal patterns
3. We  also have the Great Barrier Reef which is a very popular tourist place
4. It seems that some groups took the issues as global issues and some looked at the issues from a personal point of view.

We finished by considering the question, Why did the image of the whole world change the perspective of the world? That image really did change our viewpoint because for the first time we actually saw that we belong to the one world (even though we knew that anyway).

I will ask Mrs McHugh for the Powerpoint that she used and we will load it to the wiki just in case you want to use it as well.

 

Wednesday September 12 (Andale)

Since Mrs. May is conducting district testing, Mrs. Smoke has stepped in and helped the students work on and  (some) finish their Photostory intros.  We have even emailed one of them "down under."  They are hoping to wrap these up sometime next week.  The Andale students also took their Footprint quiz and noticed that they are considerably more wasteful than their Australian counterparts.  Mr. Durham, our science teacher, took the quiz and received a score of 35!  In his defense, however, he does have a farming business on the side which uses a considerable amount of fuel. 

 

We have also added a table to each Group Wiki page with the average of their ecological footprints between the two communities.  No surprise, the Australians scored significantly better on the footprints over the Americans.  Hmmmm.  Adding a new discussion topic in class is definitely on the agenda.

 

 Thursday 20 Sept. (Wedderburn)

For the last couple of days our Wedderburn students have been grabbing every spare opportunity to complete their photostories. Yesterday we had a mini showcase in The Edge (the room we are doing most of this project in) and each group showed their photostory to the whole class. It's interesting that almost every group nominated water conservation because of the drought as the issue they would like to study. It's obviously hitting home. Many of our kids live on farms and for our farmers especially this long term drought is devastating.

We also viewed the latest two Photostories from Andale. It's really great to see the school and students and to hear their voices.

Today in IT Year 8's had to complete some work in Macromedia Flash and Josh managed to finish early. So he went on to Google Earth and found satellite images of Andale, Kansas and Wedderburn, Victoria. There is quite a contrast. Josh has posted the images on the PhotoGallery for you to see.

I am about to start uploading the completed photostories. We hope you enjoy them.

 

Wednesday October 10 (Andale)

Yesterday part of the group walked through the Project Links and discussed how they are interrelated  with gobal warming, how there is more than one perspective on the issue, and how anyone can help to improve the environment.  With the limited class time left,  the groups made their final decisions on what issue they would like to research.

 

We are discovering the students are starting to build an awareness of environmental issues which usually takes a backseat in most discussions both in and out of school.  We are noticing how students in Australia seem to have a heightened awareness of environmental concerns, as compared to the US.  Through this project, all of us here at Andale are becoming more conscious of how we personally impact the environment.

 

Thursday Oct 11th (Wedderburn)

Yesterday our students checked out all the Andale photostories and really enjoyed hearing about the interests and ideas of the students.

 

I think you are right in suggesting that our students might be a little more aware of environmental concerns and that is obviously due to the dire situation that our country is finding itself in at the moment. I have asked the Year 8's to help me write an explanation of why....

 

We have very severe water restrictions in  both the city and the country. For example we cannot water lawns or gardens at all (the only exception is if we have a rain water tank or if we use grey water (waste water from washing, showering etc). We cannot wash our cars with a hose, we are strongly encouraged to have 3 minute showers (although there is no way of monitoring that except within the household). If a household's water consumption is noticed to be excessive through the water meter measurements then we may be asked to explain why. In many houses we are not allowed to have bath because we will use too much water. On our farms our channels are not filled like they used to be. Even though farmers are entitiled to a certain amount of water and actually pay for 100% of the water they need, they may not be given it. Because of the water restrictions often the farmers will only get about 7% of their entitlement. The farmers pay for this water at about  $1000Au per mega litre. The costs of the water have risen over 50% in the last few years.

Farmers have had to change the things that they grow. This year many farmers have given up hoping for their crops to grow and have put the sheep on the crops to feed them. For the past 10 years this has been a common thing to happen.

The government are putting in pipelines to try to divert water to the cities. This is causing a lot of concern from the communities where the water is sourced as this water is needed for the farming communities. Just yesterday we heard that the pipeline is going to be extended to yet another provincial city. This will take even more water away from farming areas.

We have noticed that our fruits and vegetables costs are getting much more expensive. We think that this is because it is much more expensive to grow and produce them now.

Our house gardens have mostly died and many people don't have lawns any more. They put in stones and paving instead. Many gardens now only have drought resistent plants like grasses and native plants. Many of our sporting grounds aren't watered as much and they have become very hard to play on. In many of the football leagues, their seasons had to be delayed this year in the hope that we would get more rain. But we didn't. Common summer sports such as cricket, tennis and lawn bowls are struggling to maintain their fields and people have to cart water in trucks to keep them green.

The discussions on the radio and in newspapers is constantly about water issues.

Much of our wildlife are coming into and around houses to look for water. Kangaroos, lizards, insects and birds are looking for water and we often see them foraging for water and food.

Because the country is so dry we have already have had major bushfires this year. Normally at this time of the year we would be getting ready to protect ourselves from fires but we have noticed that the fires are occurring earlier. There have already been severe bushfires this year in and around Sydney. We have had to change the way we fight fires as well because we don't have the water to fight them. They are more fought with bulldozers which try to clear the burning foliage to contain the fires.

However we also recognise though that Australia is a very dry country. and we have had drought as long and as bad as this before.  Way back in the 1800's. So this is something that we just have to learn to live with and be proactive about.

This has been written by the Year 8's at Wedderburn College.

 

Thursday October 11 - (Andale)

First of all we want to thank the Year 8's for explaining their position on the Wonderings page yesterday.  We shared the post with the 1/2 of the students today, and many were shocked about the water conditions in Australia.  Some even had a sense of guilt when they considered how much water we waste every day.  It's not uncommon for us to take 15-20 minute showers, leave the water on when we brush our teeth, or run lawn sprinkler systems daily. Many of the students commented on the farming conditions, as several of them live of farms.  It was certainly an eye opener for us.  Thank you again for sharing.

 

In contrast, we actually pull our water from an underground aquifer (lake) that covers a great portion of the central United States and a reservoir just a few miles down the road.  We have had seasons where we were so dry we had restrictions on watering lawns and such, but nothing to the extremes you are facing now. The most common environmental condition we hear about is air pollution.  Most of the larger US cities have daily smog reports warning citizens how bad the air quality is any particular day.  When the smog is unbearably bad, one can actually see the brown haze in the air.  We are lucky in Andale to be far enough away from any large cities where this is a serious problem, but we do consider the quality of air important. 

 

We also discuss water pollution a great deal.  Some of our rivers are so unclean that we are told not to swim in them.  Andale High School next door (15-18 year olds) have been involved for four years now in a watershed project where they test the water conditions of a local stream as it feeds into Wichita (our closest city).  They test for cleanliness, the conditions for fish life and other organisms within the creek, and the Ph levels.  They take this data and share it with a local environmental group that studies the water systems in our area.

 

Sunday, October 28 - (Andale) - Well, while the Weddeburn students have been enjoying their camping trip, the Andale students have been busy researching their group's issue(s).  The students have populated the evidence bin in the Showing Evidence tool and they have color coded (all one color) what they have found. We thought by having them color code what they have found, then both sides would know who populated what and be able to tell when something new was added. Some of the students have started looking at their evidence and moving it to either support or oppose their claim, while the rest either haven't had class yet or are still gathering evidence.  The students have begun to discover things they can do to help the environment locally.  One of our high school teachers has taken it upon himself to start a paper recycling program for both our high school and elementary/middle schools.  HS students provided boxes for each teacher, the computer labs, and at each copy machine so paper can be recycled.  We are even having students bring in newspapers and paper from home to contribute.  Just last week, this same HS teacher was able to make a deal with the City of Andale to pay for half of the cost to have a cardboard recycling bin as well.  Now we can recycle our corregated cardboard boxes and other types of cardboard.  Both the cardboard and paper recycling bins are open for the public to use as well. 

I find it interesting that small towns around Wichita (the largest city we are close to) are finding ways to recycle, however, Wichita is still arguing as to who will be responsible for recycling and wanting the consumer to pay to have items recycled.  Let's hear it for the small towns!!!!!

 

Wedderburn students...Andale students are also interested in learning about this camping trip you went on.  Let us know the purpose, what you did, etc.

 

We are glad you are back and excited to share with you what we have found out about our issue(s).

 

Monday November 12 - (Andale)

Greetings from the Land of Oz, Kansas.  The Andale students have been working very hard in the Showing Evidence tool lately.  We began simply gathering any evidence that we could find and then have since gone back through to determine the reliability and how well it supports or opposes our claim.  This has been a slow process, but we are diligently working through it.  We have been leaving questions and notes using the comments features of Showing Evidence to provide updates to our Wedderburn partners and help with clarifying evidence. 

 

Many teams have been excited to see their Wedderburn partners contributing to the Showing  Evidence.  We welcome any contributions they still have to make.

 

Today, Mrs. May and I printed off the Showing Evidence reports for the students.  We had them use highlighters and pens to determine what evidence needed clarification, what evidence might they still need to find, and if any should be deleted.  This allowed us to make great strides forward since we could layout all the evidence in front of us at one time and make some decisions. 

 

We do have a telephone call into a local naturalist to see if we can take a field trip to visit with some environmentalists for more data.  Hopefully, we'll have that scheduled soon.

 

Lastly, we have been learning about diplomacy through the project.  As teams don't always see eye-to-eye in opinion and such, we are learning how to provide effective feedback and keep the communication on a positive note while limiting our personal opinions.  This has been a interesting addition to the project that we didn't forsee during the beginning stages, but has been a wonderful discussion topic and learning experience.  We continually are discovering more about each other and it's been exciting to communicate cross-culturally.