iEARN-USA - The International Education and Resource Network - iEARN - Success Stories

Rowena is the director of the Abess Center for Environmental Studies, Miami Country Day School, Miami, Florida.

School and Community

The Abess Center for Environmental Studies is an enrichment/resource program at Miami Country Day School. Using a project-based curriculum, students actively participate in authentic learning experiences (not mimicked, contrived lessons) as scientists, researchers, journalists, nutritionists, authors, illustrators, poets, gardeners, teachers, scriptwriters, broadcasters, cooks and young, socially conscious entrepreneurs. This inquiry-based method provides fascination for most children.

How can a shoebox or tire be transformed into one of these solar magic boxes that heats up to 121?C (250?F) simply using the sun? The children do not just want a quick answer. They have a passion to understand the process. "Why, how come, what if, letís try it again, now letís try this, do you think this will work?" These phrases indicate meaningful, high-level thinking and reasoning. Students are constantly communicating as they build on experimental evidence, analyze, predict, interpret results, and develop questions.

So, how old are these scientists, scriptwriters, journalists, business executives, and botanists? Ages four to twelve. Granted, the four-year-old will most likely hand you his super melted crayon biscuit he made in his "sun trap," but with this spiraling, project-based curriculum, that same child will be designing his own unique solar cooker by the age of eight.

Project and Curriculum Standards

The purpose of Solar Solutions is to promote solar cooking in developing countries through curriculum design, teacher resources, web casts, videoconferencing, fundraising, and model solar cooking programs and manufacturing opportunities.

The students actively invite other student participants from around the world and encourage collaborative research on cooker design, materials, and recipes. The most rewarding part of the project has been the outreach to developing countries. The students have formed a non-profit corporation and raised funds to provide solar cookers and solar cooker training in several countries and refugee camps. These programs are continuing to grow saving the lives of hundreds of families, providing jobs and income for women, and making a positive impact on their local environment. You can find the explanations on how standards were incorporated here.

Scenarios

Visit the Abess Center for Environmental Studies at Miami Country Day School during the spring and you may well find any of the following scenarios:

The outside entrance may be littered with a strange assortment of foil-lined shoe boxes, pizza boxes, tires and sawed off garbage cans. Closer examination will reveal lunches being cooked in these magic containers: nachos with cheese, chicken teriyaki, fish, soups, ribs, or pizza. "Solarbrations" take place several days a week at the end of this unit of study.

Step inside the classroom and you could be treated to any of the following scenes: A panel of children meeting with two solar cooker manufacturers; discussion of insulation materials and construction tips on double heat-trap doors; or rehearsals for video conferences, web casts, and archived mini presentations on the "how-toís" of solar cooking. A child from Turkey is preparing a webcast for friends back home, while another child waits his turn to perform a webcast in his native language, Russian, for a school in Moscow.

Other children are rewriting the lyrics to a song they have written about solar cooking while students at a nearby picnic table are tasting food from a solar cooking recipe. Two children run out to check the oven thermometers to be sure all ovens are cooking at a safe temperature; several ovens are repositioned to catch those rays. Classroom walls are covered with child-made solar cooking posters, not made by Miami Country Day students but sent to them from their solar cooking partners in Australia, Japan, India, South Africa or Kuwait. A group in the corner is revising the presentation they will deliver at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. They stop to ask the teacher whether she has heard if their proposal to the United Nations International Childrenís Conference was accepted. (If they are accepted they will be presenting a solar cooking workshop to children from 115 countries. A dream come true!) The advertising group has just finished a storyboard for a commercial they want to videotape and post on the website. The "star" of the commercial is coached to slow down and pause between each line for effect.

The next class is busy catching up on the "business." Students are raising funds to pay for solar cookers that will be sent to Afghan refugee camps. (These solar cookers can cook 500 loaves of bread an hour and 1200 meals twice a day) Earlier in the year, students planted thirty-five edible gardens and also maintain hundreds of plants in an enormous educational shade house. Students coordinate plant sales, make herbal vinegars, solar infused oils, salsa (probably the worldís best!), and other products they develop along the way. They have helped support solar cooker projects in Haiti for the last eight years and have recently expanded their support to assist the refugee camps in Afghanistan. Their new partnership with Rotary International insures matching funds for all the money they raise. So far, the students have raised nearly $2000. Their goal is to double that.

Outcomes and Results

Children learn about solar cooking through inquiry science. They build their own cookers using recycled materials and test various materials for reflection, insulation, and heat trap effectiveness.
Children use Instructional Technology to collaborate with other schools around the world. Through emails, videoconferencing and website resources, they learn to communicate purposefully and effectively.
Children develop leadership skills as they present solar cooking workshops for local schools and interested groups.
Children build authentic international friendships as they collaborate with other children from over 100 countries at annual international conferences.
Children acquire business management skills as they develop fund raisers from their student-run organic gardens.
Children develop altruistic values as they lend their support to Haitian, Afghanistan, and African solar cooking efforts.
Students presented solar cooking workshops for local public schools, media, and Rotary clubs. (2001-2004 school years).
Students presented solar cooking workshops at the American Museum of Natural History for the 9th consecutive year (April, 2004).
Students were the ONLY children presenting workshops at the UNEP International Childrenís Conference in Victoria, Canada (May, 2002).
One student was named to the UNEP Junior Advisory Board (consists of 13 children ages 10-12 from around the world).
The solar cooking project was highlighted in several international publications: Green Teacher, Fall 2001 edition, Horizons (Yale online publication) Winter 2002 edition, Connect Magazine (March, 2002 edition). Intelís website, 2004, The ìMy Heroî feature, 2004
Our solar solutions project won the ìExcellence in Classroom Teaching Awardî from Curriculum Associates. This award is given to three projects in the United States and Canada.
The project won the national ìExcellence In Environmental Educationî award from Sea World. (2003)
The students met with the Haitian representatives running the program weíve helped sponsor for the last 5 years. They reviewed the progress and pledged more support and collaboration for 87 Haitian schools, a solar cooker storefront facility in Port-au-Prince, and matched funding for the ongoing solar cooking initiatives based there.
The students met with Sun Ovens president, Paul Munson, and pledged support for funding the shipment of Villager Ovens to Afghanistan refugee camps.
Students raised over $4000 from their gardens to help send five Villager Ovens to the Afghan refugees (each oven cooks up to 2000 meals per day).
The solar cooking project was presented in Japan (July 2003) at the iEARN conference. It is an established iEARN project, and the exposure at the conference reached teachers from 92 countries.
The solar solutions project was presented at the Slovakian iEARN conference in Kosice, July 2004.
The students are beginning an international effort to set up a model solar cooker educational program, manufacturing program in Dakar, Senegal, summer 2005.

Student Participation

The internet/website has made the information available 24/7
The iEARN project template makes participation immediately available to over 100 countries.
The workshops led by children demonstrate the simplicity of the project implementation
Periodic video conferences are scheduled
Personal emails provide immediate responses to participants who have questions or concerns about their cookers.

Personal emails also provide a student-to-student bonding during collaborations

Challenges and Solutions

It was/is difficult to explain the impact solar cooking can have in developing countries. The concept is so simple, yet so foreign to most people. They dismiss it as a gimmick or a passing fad.

Our most effective way of solving this problem has been to give live demonstrations. On the local scene, participants are surprised to see a 2nd grade student convert an old tire into a solar cooker while explaining reflection, insulation, absorption, and heat traps. Internationally it is more difficult. We work with established solar cooker projects through Sun Ovens, Rotary International and Solar Cookers International. This collaboration introduces our children to trustworthy programs, appropriate support systems, and honorable objectives. We have presented workshops at two UNEP conferences and at iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) conferences in Beijing, China, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Cape Town, South Africa, and Moscow, Russia, Japan and Slovakia. This opportunity to network with teachers opens the projects to a wider audience. The website and email correspondence serves as an effective support system.

Our wish list includes:

Website development with more lesson plans and documentation of our current activities.
Media support to publicize the benefits of solar cooking
Corporate sponsors to fund solar cooking projects in developing countries.

Membership in iEARN has taken them beyond their classroom walls and has brought them into the homes and classrooms of children from around the world. Through this fabulous telecommunications network, students have the unique opportunity to study "with" children from other countries, not "about" them.

Respect builds through friendship, and their online friendships are cultivating cross-cultural bonds that could last well into the future. IEARNís network gives them immediate worldwide interaction with children in nearly one hundred countries. Ideas are exchanged through emails and websites, but videoconferencing opportunities have also enhanced the program.

Using the videoconferencing studio at Barry University, Miami Country Day School students have collaborated by giving live solar cooking presentations with children from Australia, Jordan, India and Japan (all at the same time!), as well as frequent internet meetings with their solar cooking partners in Australia.

Unique Characteristics

The science of solar cooking provides authentic, hands-on discoveries for students of all ages
The ìproject basedî approach to solar cooking provides an in-depth understanding of physics, environmental studies, economics, agriculture, engineering, computer science, ethics, geography, public relations, medicine, finance, sociology, journalism and Earth science.
The educational components of solar cooking provide viable, lifesaving alternatives to the communities our programs are reaching. Successful implementation of these programs addresses the cooking needs of two billion households that depend on wood and charcoal to prepare food.
Successful solar cooking programs address the developing nationsí staggering inequities in matters of health, environmental quality, economics and personal and political freedoms.
Providing solar cookers for Afghanistan refugee camps gave our students a proactive response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
The fundraisers generated from the studentsí gardens provide learning experiences in sustainable agriculture and genuine experience in tax- exempt corporate strategies.
This program provides the opportunity for children to learn about serious environmental/humanitarian problems through a ìsolution-basedî approach.
The ìchildren teaching childrenî approach provides a venue for developing genuine leadership skills. This is evidenced through their archived web casts, workshops, videoconferences, and informative emails.
The collaborative effort extended by the children of all participating countries is a model for children learning ìwithî each other, not ìaboutî each other.
The solar cooker project has given our environmental studies program authenticity, purpose, depth, and focus.
Provided a venue for collaboration between children and excellent adult role models. (Rotary members, Sun Ovens executives, United Nations officials, American Museum of Natural History staff, professional journalists, and Haitian project coordinators.
The resources we develop for teachers and students are beneficial to all who participate.

Assessment

Student results are measured through portfolios, original cooker designs, and presentations.
Project results are measured through local and international participation.
Unsolicited favorable media coverage is an indicator of an improved level of solar cooker awareness.

Throughout the mini units and lessons in the solar cooking project it is important to evaluate the learning that is taking place. Are the children setting up independent variables for fair tests? Have they been given ample opportunities to make meaningful connections, discover, explore and extend? Do their ovens show evidence of understanding? Have the children been allowed to demonstrate what they have learned in a creative way?
Our assessments are designed to improve understanding, not audit performance. We follow many of the ideas of Grant Wiggins, who writes, "Only by ensuring that the assessment system models genuine performance will student achievement and teaching be improved over time." (Wiggins is president of Relearning by Design, http;//www.relearning.org).
The assessment is genuine, user-friendly, and the goal is to aid teaching and understanding. We ask questions such as, "Draw me a diagram, explain why you think this cooker is not working, why are our pans black, thin metal, could we cook in glass containers?" All of these are quick assessments that demonstrate learning and the quality of the response generally shows evidence of higher level thinking. Other assessments used are portfolios, presentations, web casts, PowerPoint presentations, and the effectiveness of the childís cooker.

Support of iEARNís Vision

The program provides the obvious excellent educational benefits to participating Miami Country Day School students:

The project is NOT a simulation, but authentic problem solving with real world applications.
Solar Solutions provides training, materials, and actual jobs in solar cooker manufacturing and bakery micro businesses. It has created jobs, training, and income for women in Haiti, Afghanistan, and women with AIDS in South Africa.
More importantly, the following needs for two billion households could be met in developing countries:

Health. Besides meeting 80% of participants cooking needs, solar cooking can be used to pasteurize water, reducing the incidence of diarrheal illnesses. Solar cooking is smokeless, therefore reducing respiratory and eye ailments. Medical instruments can also be disinfected in cookers.

Environment. Solar cooking reduces dependence on fuel wood and charcoal. Reduced rates of deforestation will yield reduced rates of soil erosion.

Economics. The expense of fuel wood, charcoal or kerosene can be eliminated through solar cooking.

Freedom. Women will be liberated from the time consuming daily task of accumulation and transporting fuel wood and dung. Saved time and funds can be used for education, better family care, and food production.