Reflection on the week of sustainability
Well we are now at the end of the week of living according to a theme of sustainability. The students seemed to have got into the project more as the week went on. It is unclear how much people actually put themselves out there to live according to the theme.
Video diary entries weren't great. They still don't seem to really connect the actions with benefits to society, environment and economy. Some were focused on supplying facts as to what 'we are doing wrong' rather than talk about their experiences and how they understand the benefits to the society, environment and economy from their actions and others just talked about what they did with little connection to the issues of sustainability. An example is saving power - 'It's important to save power, to save power.' Missing the societial, environmenal and economic impacts that generating power has and how saving it will lessen these impacts.
I think next time I would put more emphasis on 'researching' the topics and do some of this with them at first so they see what it is that is important to know - what to actually do to be sustainable and why we need to do it - basically!
Final diary entries and reflection is still to come and this might be the most telling time as to what the students have learnt from the project. Filming in order to produce a short film was great incentive to get out there and show themselves in action. We are currently experiencing a problem downloading the footage and this could make or break the 'film production' part of the assignment. However, as students are assessed on their diary entries this won't fail everyone! This will be a good test to see if those responsible for this part of the project really put some effort in to work through the problem and make it happen. It will be disappointing for all if this doesn't happen.
Keep you posted... :)
