Tracking Current Environmental Trends

This lesson plan can be used for Environmental Science classes or during an Ecology and Conservation unit in Biology.

Lesson Goals:
Students will identify several current trends in environmental science
Students will participate in a rich discussion of these trends
Students will use Web 2.0 tools

Resources needed:
Computers or netbooks
Internet access

Lesson Plan:

1. Students will follow the Yahoo! Green news feed located at http://green.yahoo.com/rss/news or another environmental news feed for at least 3 days. They should be reading articles and looking for current environmental trends.

2. As students discover certain topics that appear in the news repeatedly they should record these trends on a class wiki, along with links to articles related to each trend. I suggest WikiSpaces.

3. After 3 days of information gathering, students should choose 3 trends that interest them most. They can either create a blog (suggestion, Blogger) or a podcast (suggestion, SchoolTube) discussing these three trends in detail. They should explain the trend, discuss current news events relating to this trend, and reflect on the trends.

4. Once all blogs/podcasts are posted, students should create links to their pages in the class Wiki. Then the students should read/view/listen to and comment on at least 3 of their classmates' projects. Students are also allowed to post comments in reply to other posted comments.