Progress!

October 26th, 2012, 9:06 pm

This week we worked hard on preparing for our midterm presentation.  Many of our classmates weren’t sure where we were headed with our invasive species concept at first, but we hope that with this presentation we cleared up any confusion, and answered all your questions!

Absence along the riverfront. There is a lack of informative signs, tourists, and species.

In preparation for our presentation we decided to head down to the river and keep in mind the term “absence”.   Through this we were better able to notice the need for informative signs along the river, where we were only able to spot one sign!  This actually gave us an optimistic outlook on how our invasive species panels could contribute to the riverfront. The downtown area, specifically by the river, is kept very groomed and unnatural, which removes the possibility of running into these invasive species.

Our initial idea has lead us to an understanding of where we want this project to go and now we can move forward with creating our latest idea of using these species to help inform the community, in particular children, about the invasive species in the area, through fun and innovative games and activities. Although we wanted to achieve all our goals and expectations, there is a lot to it.  What we did learn from our presentation was that we need to narrow down our ideas since they may be unreasonable for the time frame which we have.  We love the idea of having interactive games for children, both transportable and even possibly situated at Science City.  We also believe that making the prototypes of the invasive species instructive games are also very achievable.  With keeping up with our resources and developing our prototypes, we have our hands full!

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Collaboration

October 19th, 2012, 4:23 pm

This week was quite eventful for our group. After previously deciding on an invasive species tour, we took to the streets visiting areas where we suspected our chosen invaders would be living. This quickly grew complicated as we realized a downtown area tends to be heavily manicured, making it not only difficult to find an invasive species, but even more difficult to have a visual representation of the destruction these species have caused, as much of it has been removed. Because of this difficulty, we have approached Science City, a local learning space about collaborating on the project with us.

 

 

The main purpose of our visit was a two-fold of; finding out what information the center already had about local invasive species, and to examine the way children were encouraged to discover through play. The visit proved to be beneficial to both parties as the owner, Tony Sabo, explained there was a multitude of space available to work with, some of which had already been tailored to invasive species, but a few key pieces of work missing from the exhibition. We are currently working to make Science City our central location, where parties could meet, take the tour and then return for further interaction and information.

 

The image above shows one of the incomplete invasive species for their exhibition. It reads, “There are 185 known non-indigenous species in the Great Lakes. It is expected that we will discover a new species every 7 months.”

 In the coming weeks we will be investigating the idea of absence, and how it relates to the process of removing invasive species. Additionally, we will be working to create a unique emotion in each of our invaded locations.

 

 

 

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