Monday, April 29, 2013

Mound Laser 'Rain Garden'

“To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. My conclusion is instead a prediction, based on what I have seen happening in the past. Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices.”

-Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

This is a quote from one of my favorite books, and one which inspired my desire to be a part of this integrated unit. I like this quote because this, to me, is a great explanation of why history is more than just learning about the past or reading old books. History crosses all content areas and involves making judgment calls about our future based on the lessons of the past.

Today was a busy day! Students got to go over to Mound Laser and help mulch and put some plants in the ground for a 'rain garden' that they've incorporated into their landscaping. After getting over there we met Jeff Siebenthaler, owner of Siebenthaler's nursery and garden. He talked to the kids about how the architecture and types of plants they included in the rain garden helps to reduce the natural erosion of the runoff water and helps limit the amount of fertilizer and salt runoff from the nearby field and roads into the pond, making the ecosystem more self-sustaining. It was really neat to see biology and engineering come together and help out with a professional finished product! You can listen to his discussion with the students here. Jeff explained to the students that the project is really a bioswale, not a rain garden, an example of which can be seen below. After listening to what they've done, I think Mound Laser is a great example of a business doing something that makes sense economically and is good for the the local ecosystem, so it was great for the students to see a company doing both.
Photo credit: Natural Resources Conservation Service of Iowa
Students also learned that they would be doing their own project on our nature trail now that we have begun our integrated unit and were asked to think about how they might grade the final product of Mound Laser's rain garden if they were using the rubric we developed in history class while studying globalization.

Tomorrow the students will grade the 'final product' of Mound Laser's bioswale to see how the guiding principles and rubric they have developed for their own projects line up with what businesses in our immediate vicinity are doing to help reduce the negative externalities caused by globalization. We will also get started on working towards our own projects tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the kids come up with! Check out the pictures from what they did today below!



Students picking up compost for the plants.


Everyone out front! I think Abby is being planted soon...


We got a little dirty...


Everyone hard at work putting plants in the ground.


And more plants...


The second shift!


We got the second side done in record time and still had time for Wendy's afterwards!


Mound Laser workers will have a great view!




Almost done...


David forgot a shovel...

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Trip to Reynoldsburg

9:28- Sitting on the bus as we pass through Columbus on the way to Reynoldsburg, really excited to be starting this trip! Thinking about what the students will do this year in the projects I'm overseeing is really exciting. We have ideas for a documentary about the trail, a website that all our visitors can check out, and even a way to put QR codes on the trail so we can Integrate fitness into the trail. I'm hoping that students see the connection between globalization ad a global issue that can be solved by the things we do locally. That's the idea behind the rubrics we created during our Socratic seminars, so I hope they begin making those connections!



10:10- Sitting here at the Reynoldsburg eSTEM school Summit Rd Ecolab learning about how they put together their wetlands project using EPA grants from the Clean Water Act. They have done some amazing work that brought together people at the federal, state and local levels. As I hear the different partners they worked with I'm thinking of all the people we could involve; the city of Kettering, Wright State, Research Park and local businesses, the Dayton engineering club, the potential list of partners is endless! Hope the students are thinking about ideas they could incorporate and I'm ready to go learn some sampling methods!





12:29- Heading home after an exciting trip! Students learned about stream sampling methods and actually got to practice some of these methods and get dirty! Students looked for macroinverts like worms and snails (although I am only going off of what they told me here). Now that they know what to look for and how to collect the data hopefully we can map out what's in our own stream! Really fun trip overall and I'm excited to see what the DRSS Nature Trail could be!




Below are some pictures from the trip, including some cool QR code links explaining what lives around the trail, the wetlands, a shrew, the kids, and David and Zach doing some science! Thanks Mark and Jenny from MAD Scientists for the great learning experience, we learned a lot for our own project!