Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Earth Day!


In honor of Earth Day, I thought it would be fun for everyone to find out what exactly their ecological footprint is. An Ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the earth's ecosystems. It compares what people take from the earth, and how quickly the Earth is able to replace what is taken. 
This website allows people to plug in their information to find out how large their ecological footprint is (trust me, you'll be surprised). This activity would be a great assignment for a teacher to give their students to take home and do with their families. This way, the whole family can see how much harm they are doing to the planet, and how to make appropriate changes. 
Here's the website, you all should really try it!

9 comments:

  1. I was curious about what my footprint would be, and am sad to say that I was very disappointed in myself!

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  2. Wow - this is really cool! And a great way to show students the repercussions of their daily actions (which are really hard to understand, especially as a child)! Sadly, it would take 3 earths for everyone in the world to live the way I do. I really need to cut down my usage of services.

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  3. I think this is a great resource especially on earht day. You never reaize how your daily actions take a real toll on the enviornment. I think that it is important to share this website with others to raise thw awareness that we are destroying our earth. As future teachers it is so important to understand this and pass the knowledge aong to our studnets.

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  4. It's really crazy to think about everybody's individual ecological footprints, and then think about it on a global scale. Again, I think this is an awesome tool to use to get kids eco-aware at a young age!

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  5. I think this is a really cool website. Its interactive and I think the children would enjoy it. If they saw what their their individual footprint is, they will better understand human's effect on the environment. By educating children about taking care of the environment and our individual actions that affect it, children will be more likely to become individuals who make change and live in congruence with the environment. If they are not educated about it, they will just live in the ways their parents did.

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  6. That was definitely a fun and interesting quiz to take. I think that students will enjoy doing this, and it will also create awareness for the environment. I think that this is a great resource in the classroom because it is interactive. Students can also see what can be done to lower their footprint, and change the effect that they have on the planet now. This definitely opened my eyes to my own footprint, and it is definitely something that I need to work on.

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  8. This is such a fun, simple way to show kids (and adults!) what factors affect the footprint they leave. I think kids would respond really well to this, and if you were to follow it up with a unit on what they can do to decrease their footprint, followed by taking the quiz again, it'd be fun for them to see how their actions have made a difference.

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  9. Wow! This site was incredible. Thanks so much for posting this. I think this would be wonderful for our students to know what they are doing to the earth. I am sad about how much of a negative impact i have on the earth due to my million hours driven a week for work. :( This lesson could also be used to help come up with ways to make less of an imprint.

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