Questions


Week 2-3

Monday February 28 - Sunday March 13 2011
Each class formulates a question on their Learning Circle theme according to criteria for quality research sponsored question.

 

 

 

Wednesday March 15th... the questions are posted!

Dear Learning Circles participants,
thank you all for the very creative questions; wil have copied them to the individual research and answers pages.
In some case we have slightly adapted the questions, so the final summary per question (created in phase 5) leads to taking action in each school.
The actions and results will be presented and shared at the iEARN World conference and Youth Summit in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in July 2011.
Of course we hope that from every school at least one representative can join during the presentation at the Kaohsiung Scienece and Technology Museum.
Yet now, lets focus on your research and answers... let’s “Think-Act-Do”


EFS 1 - Redstone Public School

Question: 

Canada has one of the largest fresh water supplies in the world. 

  1. Does your country have an abundance of fresh water? 
    1. If not, what does your government do to ensure that there is enough fresh water to support your current population?                   

      

 


EFS 2 - Redstone Public School

 

Question:

  

  • How much natural land and forests do you still have left in your country and how much has been destroyed over the years?
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  • How many species in your country are endangered or at risk?
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  • Do you notice a connection between the two?
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  •   What has your government done in the past to protect endangered species and natural habitats?
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  • What measures are they currently taking to conserve habitats?
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  • How are they going to keep this problem from growing?
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  •  How many people in your school are aware of habitat destruction in your country or globally?  
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  • Why is it important for the human population to take habitat destruction seriously?
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  • In what ways could you help stop habitat destruction?  List some ideas that you or your school have tried.  
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  • What did these initiatives accomplish?
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  • Based on your answers our class will design recycled artwork that will spread the message of a "greener" school environment.
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    EFS 3 -Notre Dame De La paix des filles de la Charité

     

    Question:

     

    Three years ago we launched a “Green Initiative” in our school  called NDP GreenWave with a  small objective: decrease and manage our waste at school.

     

    During the last years our ambitions grew up and to involve different ecological activities such as volunteering services in the surrounding green area for cleaning the wood to resist fire, and inviting parents to help us to rehabilitate an old hiking track and open it to public to encourage eco-tourism … and of course our waste management program (see the previous eco-activities section for more details)

     

    And since we believe in sharing, we‘ve shared our experience in the municipality in front of many students from different schools and scouts … but we realized that we couldn’t reach the improvement we want in the way other students and citizens are dealing with this issue.

     

    Now the question:

     

    How can we move to our next step that consists motivating and envolving in an effective way more students, People, Families and of course the municipality of our town to adopt our waste management program? Your tips and creative ideas are very welcome!

     

     


    EFS 4 - HBS, Hajj Bahaa Eddine School

     

    Question:

     

     

     

    One of the ways to be an ecofriendly person is to save energy. Communities can protect their environment, save energy and at the same time consume it to increase people standards of living.

     

    The world resources are being depleted and some of these resources will remain to generate energy after a certain period of time. Starting from your schools, you can save the earth resources from depletion and save the environment.

     

     

      

  • How “ecofriendly” do you consider your school to be?
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  • Can you come up with solutions on class / school level to decrease depletion of earth resources?
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  • How can you save energy ain your school / homes and at the same time increase people standards of living?
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    EFS 5 - Sg.St.-Canisius

     

    Question:

     

    In what way can you make more efficient use of nature in your school, so that your school saves more energy?
    Think of the implementation of solar panels or the principal of reclaiming rain water to flush toilets.

      

  • We would like to hear your ideas about how we can save more energy at our school.
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    We want to make a model to show that saving enery is possible, for example the "rain water toilets".
    Finally, by means of this model we want to change the mentality of our staff and students concerning the importance of sparing energy.

     

    Thank you very much!


    EFS 7 - Elde College

     

    Question:
    At Elde College we don't do that much as students and teachers about creating a "green" school.
    We took small steps with a computer science project. Awareness is minimum, it all comes down to taking initiative.
    We thought up that our first step is to create awareness by everybody. Our question is maybe a bit different than all the other ones. We would like to create a global "green" flash mob.
    Our question is: Will you create a global "green" flash mob together with us to increase awareness for "green schools"?

     

    You should answer our question by sharing a video of your green awareness flash mob in your school.

     

    Details like e.g the song, steps you can decide yourself. As long as it concerns: "green".

     

     
    Here is an example of a flashmob:


    EFS 8 - Libanon Lyceum

     

    Question:
    Our school is currently working with a local Dutch energy supplier in order to find more useful ways to make our school more energy efficient.
    The energy supplier gave us an assignment to find effective and cost-efficient ways to create energy from our surroundings.
    One of the concepts to create energy is converting the energy generated by the students going up and down the stairs into electrical energy.
    Our school has four floors.

     

    Our question is: Is there a possibility to convert energy, released from kinetic energy, into electric energy?

     

    We will gather all your answers, combine solutions and and try to realize it in our school.

     

     

     

     


    EFS 9 - National Taichung Girls' Senior High School

     

    Question:

     

     

     

    In Taiwan, there are some climate problems and environmental protection problems that we have to face.

     

     

      

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    The weather here is quite hot and humid. We always have a long summer with air conditioners operating all day, which wastes lots of energy. In addition, due to the geographical position of Taiwan, typhoons and convective rains are frequent visitors, bringing abundant rainfall each year. To deal with this situation, some green buildings in Taiwan have specific devices for air circulation improvement and rain water collection.

     
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    Taiwan produces about 21 million tons of garbage per year, including 40% of recyclable trash (for example, 46 hundred million pieces of PET bottles). If we line all the garbage on the ground, that would be 36 thousand square kilometers wide and 1.7 meters tall, just enough to bury all the people here! We really should make the best use of recyclable trash to reduce the amount of garbage.

     
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    One of the pavilions in 2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition is a good example of green buildings in Taiwan. Pavilion of New Fashion (also named FE EcoARK) is sponsored and operated by the Far Eastern Group (a company in Taiwan).

     

     

     

     

    EcoARK is the world’s first house constructed entirely from garbage---plastic bricks made from 1.5 million recycled PET bottles. Though the building is light, it boasts an extremely solid and stable interior structure.

     

    Semi-transparent PET bricks make the structure strong.

     

     

     

    Use pond lilies and water plants to purify the water.

    The Water Curtain cleans the wall and reduces the heat.

    Made from recycled Tetra Pak, the benches are not only solid but eco-friendly.

    (856 pieces of Tetra Pak make a bench.)

     

    (If you want to learn more about the Flora Expo, please check here: http://www.2010taipeiexpo.tw/MP_4.html)

     

     

     

    Question:  What we want to know more about is---

      

  • Are there any special designs in your school that are "green" and eco-friendly?If so, please tell us about them.
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  • If not, please share some creative ideas that can help us to make our school greener too.
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    EFS 10 - Fenghsin Senior High School

     

    Question:

     

     

     

    EFS 10 - Fenghsin Senior High School

     

    Question:

     

    The forests on earth are decreasing continually. The more paper is consumed , the more trees are going to be felled. It will not only harm the animals living in the forests but also influence the earth’s climate .

     

    In Taiwan , we have a lot of flyers from many cram schools and we have "tons" of test sheets and textbooks. We have been trying to collect all of them and make the best use of  its blank side.  Meanwhile,  from students' viewpoint,  we have too many textbooks , but actually some of them are not fully used, and some are even new when thrown away .  Our team try to come up with a solution to reduce or reuse the paper or textbooks.

     

     

     

    Therefore, the major question we would like to ask :

      

  • How do you( adminstrator, class, and students, him/herself) reuse the used paper or textbooks in campus ?
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  • Sub-question 1: Please provide the information  to help us understand the amount of textbooks you use for one semester.
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  • Sub-question 2: Please share any activities /campaigns in your school to reduce the  amount of  paper? If not, please share some practical measures from other schools in your country.
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    (1) A photo with all the textbooks in stacks  per student every semester.

     

    Here we only collect the textbooks, and we also have quite a lot of test sheets and reference books from the teacher, or have more intensive readers.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    (2)  A photo with students holding textbooks in their hands, each subject for one student.

     

     

     

    In Taiwan, for Grade 11, students need to study 14 subjects at a time as follows:

     

    1. Chinese  2. English  3. Math   4 Physics  5 Chemistry  7 History  8 Geography

     

    9.  Civic Education   10.  Pysical Education  11.  Music   12  National Defense

     

    13. Life and Technolgy   14.

     

     

     

    (3)  Please tell us the data:  What is the total weight of all the textbooks?  

     

    Data from FHSH:   We put all the textbooks onto the scale, and the total weight is 10 kgs. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


    EFS 11 - Fwushan Junior High

     

    Question:

     

    There are more than 3000 people at our school. We use lots of water every day. We don’t defiantly know where the water went. But we try to get more and more information to understand how we reused the water. 

     

     

     

    Our Questions are

      

  • how you save your water or reuse the water at your school?
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  • Do you have any special sign(s) to remind people to use as less water as they can?
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  • What do the signs look like?
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    We have these stuffs in our country:

     

    *We call it " water-storage tank"

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    *There is a ecology pond behind this special kind of sink to save water for us to reuse.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    *We put this sign on things that we can reuse the water.

     

     

     

     

     


    EFS 12 - Jhengsin Junior High School

     

    Question:

     

     

      

  • What can you do to reduce, reuse and recycle food waste at home or at school? Please think of your creative ways. Describe what you do and how you do it with photos. 
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    In our garbage can, much of the waste can be reused and recycled. In my class, we use fruit waste to make eco-friendly cleaning liquid. It is a simple and useful way to protect the earth and the health. To DIY the cleaner, you need to prepare black sugar, fruit waste, water, and a plastic bottle.  All kinds of fruit peels can be used. Our school lunch includes fruit, so it is easy for us to collect fruit peels. Then follow the steps.

     

     

     

    First, put three cups of fruit waste in the bottle.

     

     

     

     

     

    Second, put one cup of black sugar.

     

     

     

     

    Finally, add ten cups of water.

     

     

     

     

    Mix all materials well and close the lid. Leave the bottle in a dry place for at least three months. In the first month, you need to open the lid to let the gas out. At last, you will get the brown cleaning liquid. At the school, we can use it to wash eating utensils instead of using chemical cleaners. This is the special way we recycle and reuse fruit waste. However, there must be more than one way. What can you do to reduce, reuse and recycle food waste at home or at school? Please think of your creative ways. Describe what you do and how you do it with photos.