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Collecting
S.O.C.K.S.
Project URL: www.teachersnetwork.org/teachnetusa/rshaw/sochomepage.html
How
it works:
Looking for ways to help protect the local watershed, the members
of the Millennium Middle School Computer Club came up with S.O.C.K.S.
(Student Oriented Conservation project for K-12 Students). The name
came from the fact that the students were collecting 100% cotton socks
to be used in plantings along the lakes and rivers of the watershed.
From this tiny seed, an entire project was born. The objective of the
S.O.C.K.S. project was to develop an awareness of water as a finite
resource. The students have created interest in the areas of water
conservation, water management, and water quality control by creating web pages,
videos, and flyers and staging a countywide contest for K-12 students.
The students are working with the St. John's River Water Management
District to create web pages in conjunction with their official sites.
The students wish to highlight the sock collection and ways for other
schools and individuals to become involved with water management. To
do this, the students wrote, directed, and videotaped a collection of short skits designed to create awareness of their
project. They also edited the video themselves and plan to send it out with other materials to all the schools in the county to
kick off the project they created.
Standards addressed:
Students learn that humans are a part of an ecosystem
and that their activities may deliberately or inadvertently alter the
equilibrium in ecosystems. Computers speed up and extend people's
ability to collect, sort, and analyze data. Students also become aware
of how
conditions that exist in one system influence existing conditions in other systems, and understand that science, technology, and society are
interwoven and interdependent.
Materials
used:
Computers with Internet access are needed, along with (depending on your
involvement) a TV (to watch tapes of news stories about local water
conditions/restrictions), digital cameras (to take pictures of your own
lake or pond), scanners (to save documents and pictures in digital
form),
computer software such as MSOffice and Adobe Photoshop, newspapers (to
read relevant stories), camcorders (to tape their skits for
their video), and digital editing equipment.
The students:
Collecting S.O.C.K.S.
was specifically created to be easily adaptable for
any age group from K-12.
Overall value:
This program takes the
students out of the classroom 'box' and into the heart of their community. It
enables students to reach into the future
and make a change for the better in their own communities.
Tips:
Get in touch with local watershed action volunteers or the local
watershed management district. This site also provides a teacher
resource/lesson page for extensions.
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About the teacher:
Rosemary Shaw teaches web design/computer technology at Millennium
Middle School, a fine arts magnet school in Sanford, FL. She is a
contributing author to the Teachers
Network book "How to Use the Internet in Your Classroom."
Her students recently won the International Space Week web design
contest and had an honorable mention in the Global Cyberfair. She won
a Disney Teacherrific award for "Backstage at Millennium," a
website that links elementary students to students in the middle
grades at Millennium. Rosemary's lesson plans have also been featured
on NASA's new robotics site: http://robotics.nasa.gov
E-mail:
Rosemary_Shaw@scps.k12.fl.us
Subject
Areas:
Science
Technology
Grade
Levels:
K-12
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