Water

We're going to develop some resources about the topic of water.  In the meantime here's a link to the Australian Water Education site which has a great search engine allowing you to search for Water teaching resources by concept, activity type etc.

Just a short one.  We'll be searching through these to find the best ones and show you ways to use them with your classes. 

Beaches & bags

Just watch this fantastic video about the life of a plastic bag.  I know it doesn't sound good but it really is one of the best short films I've seen.

It would be a fanastic resource to use to explore issues of sustainability and waste in many areas.  I think it provides a great way in to English, very obviously media studies as the filming, imagery and story are very striking. It could also fit into religious education or philosophy as well as Society and Environment.



Here's the synopsis:

This short film by American director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo) traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it. Along the way, it encounters strange creatures, experiences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved maker, and tries to grasp its purpose in the world.

In the end, the wayward plastic bag wafts its way to the ocean, into the tides, and out into the Pacific Ocean trash vortex — a promised nirvana where it will settle among its own kind and gradually let the memories of its maker slip away.

This video could be combined with a clean up.  I've just found out about the organisation Tangaroa Blue at www.oceancare.org.au.  They are focussed on cleaning up coasts, getting rid of all the plastic waste that endangers wildlife and generally makes the coast look rubbish.  They help organise clean ups across australia.  Students can take part, record what they collect and send their data Tangaroa to be included in their research projects.  Tongara Blue have also produced some teaching resoruces to go with this for schools in WA.  Contact them for the CD.  Its called Ocean Full of Plastic: marine debris education resource for WA schools.  There's a beach clean up for the SW organised for the 8th & 9th October if you want to get involved.

I've also found a podcast from Costing the Earth about this too.  Dr. Alice Roberts investigates the discovery of the World's largest plastic waste patch in the South Atlantic and asks what we can do to solve the problem of aqatic plastic.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v1qtn

Lots of links to other great resources about this issue on this page too. 

Hulbert Street Sustainability Fiesta

We are off to the Hulbert Street Sustainability Fiesta in Fremantle this weekend. We've got a stand, I've been making posters, Shae's been making up cute packets of HotRock coriander seeds to give away and we're hoping to meet loads of great people who want to help us make sustainability real in Schools and just generally to be inspired by whats going on.

Looks like the whole Hotrock team might get to be there all together too!!! 1st ime in our History. We've got our Tshirts, just got to go there.

The sun should be shining, think it will be an inspiring weekend. See you there..... Lucy

Want to win $50?

Feedback Competition

We want to make your life easier and provide you with great resources that save you time, that you enjoy teaching, that engage your classes and get your pupils thinking and acting for sustainability. We hope we are doing this but need your feedback so that we can improve what we offer and reach more teachers. We know that this takes time and effort on your part so we’ve come up with a plan to reward your generosity.

Win a $50 voucher from ecostore www.todae.com

How to enter.

1. Download and teach one of the lessons from our website.
2. Answer our feedback questions – online or email.
3. Put your name and email address on it to be entered into our monthly draw.

How to improve your chances of winning.

1. Teach more than one lesson and fill out a form for each.

2. Enter every month, we will draw on the last day of the month.

We welcome all feedback; positive, negative, new ideas or adaptations. We want to improve what we are doing and produce lessons that you really want to teach and that are easy and practical for you to access and implement.

Save time and answer online.

Or email hotrock@thehotrock.org.au and answer the following questions

• Which module and or lessons did you use?

• Which year and type of class did you use it with?
• Please write any comments about; how you used it, adapted it, any problems you had with it, what you & students enjoyed (or not) etc.
• Was it easy to find the lessons, topics etc that you wanted? Any suggestions to improve the usability of our website?
• Are there any other topics, types of resources, services that you think we can provide to help you educate for sustainability?
• Thanks for your help. If you’d like to be entered into a monthly draw to win a $50 voucher to shop at www.todae.com please give you name and email address here:

Name: Email:

We're giving you a head start for the 1st draw which will take place on 31st October.

That's 6 weeks to get teaching and feeding back to us (well 2 weeks hols but you could do the feedback then).