Using Criticism To Move Forward

May 28th, 2010, 12:46 pm

After conducting our midterm presentation to the professors and the students, we received much criticism and multiple pointers towards our process and ideas. As a group, we decided to move forward by meeting with Leah Behrens in order to discuss our actual project in order to get her thoughts and share our ideas.  After informing her of what we believe our educational handbook should entail and what it intends to accomplish, we have finally come up with our main objective that we will be proposing. Our objective includes creating a handbook that will have the children rethink their urban jungle in order to make use of that space in a more effective way. The handbook will include ways to show the kids how to take the ideas of Green Corridor that they have been introduced to during the fieldtrip, and bring them to their own school yard. It will be a guide to the kids by showing them ideas that we will introduce that they will be able to expand upon, as well as a guide to the teachers by introducing ways to adapt the green corridor concept into the curriculum( by creating lesson plans). Our ultimate goal is to empower the children to make a change in the environment by starting in their school.  Our team has started researching different ideas to include in the handbook that will be of great interest to the children as well as the teachers. Our team is very motivated to complete this handbook as soon as possible.

Play Date With The Environment

May 25th, 2010, 9:11 pm

With the rise of the twentieth century, societies across the globe have become more environmentally aware of the importance on sustaining a greener earth than any generation before. However, while this awareness is spreading throughout the adult world it has not really sparked an interest in society’s youth.

In attempt to promote a ‘Greener Earth’, on Wednesday May 19th, 2010, students from the University of Windsor’s Green Corridor project, along with the leadership of Leah Behrens, hosted a field trip for  LaSalle Public School’s grade seven class.  The class was able to tour the Green Corridor grounds and understand what having a greener earth truly means. They were given many activities to do, including collecting biotic and abiotic components, smelling the air around (for pollution),  and analyzing traffic (trucks, cars, etc.) and how it connects to noise pollution or air pollution. Afterwards they were able to choose either a biotic or abiotic sample to look at through an electron microscope to see it up to 200, 000 times magnified.

The students then took their magnified image and incorporated it into a clay-tile art project.  They were introduced to the idea of ‘environment’ and soon learned that an environment includes everything around them- living and non living- and not just dealing with recycling, as previously assumed.

Sustainability of the environment helps make the future a better place. Hopefully we can make this sort of field trip spread throughout the district, and with it promote more knowledge about sustaining a greener earth.

Some examples of clay tiles created from magnified images collected from GLIER

Inserting collected samples into the electron microscope at GLIER

A Brighter Child, A Greener Future

May 21st, 2010, 2:36 am

       

The educational Team

After a successful environmentally educational field trip for the LaSalle Public School, the educational team in alliance with Leah Behrens came up with an idea to carry on the Green Corridor legacy onto elementary schools. After a heavy discussion, we established our goal to promote and expand the green corridor projects and ideas in order to get the children more involved and excited about their environment. At first, our team will work in conjunction with LaSalle Public school towards starting their own mini projects that will help their school`s urban environment become a greener one. We will be researching and designing a manual that will help the children further expand and construct their own ideas. Our project aims to start off with getting an approval from the school to implement the children’s ideas, and later on hopefully we could get a curriculum approval so that this project is taken on by more schools.