Environmental Change

As is discussed in detail on the preceding page, we will incorporate the above skills in the following ways:

​

Problem Solving- Students will be tasked with solving a complex problem: how to educate a mistrustful segment of the public regarding environmental issues. This will involve in-depth research involving the causes of mistrust, and possible ways to avoid the pitfalls and mislabeling which seems to poison attempts to educate this segment of the population.

 

Collaboration: They will collaborate at every stage for the project. On the research of issues, the selection of issues, the decision on product design, the math, art, and written products themselves, and the compilation of the products on the website. 

 

Communication: They will practice communication both in their collaboration and in their communication of their findings to their target audiences. Notably, the art of persuasion will be refined through their attempt to convince an portion of the public who do not want to be convinced. Additionally, the act of communicating scientific results through math, art, and the written word will expand their communicative skills immensely. 

 

Critical Thinking: It will take critical thinking to solve the issues presented by the challenge of changing worldviews on climate change and environmental degradation. Students will need to understand the counter-arguments which plague former attempts to educate the public regarding these issues, as well as their sources, and then devise ways they believe will be effective at circumventing these counter-arguments.

 

Creativity & Information, Tech, and Media skills: This will come into play as they design artistic representations of different aspects of the topic, such as designing visual representations of mathematical data, designing the website, and creating an artistic representation meant to persuade the target audience, and also writing texts which convey the messages required, combining these with technology and media skills to create the website which will showcase their collective findings.

 

The interconnections of all of these subject areas, mediums, and skills will make the project interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary.