Step of Knowledge

Step of Knowledge
-(More ESD Activities, Facilitation Technique)-

This is an activity to re-check children knowledges after a presentation or a lecture. Many of us hate a formal test because it raise our tension, so why don't we make a fun one ?

Needs
A bunch of participants (children are acceptable ^_^)

What we will do are by make a start and finish point for everybody who wants to participate in this game. Two lines or rocks are acceptable.

Then you must make some questions (number of questions are depend on how far is the distance between start and finish point). You also may consider the step range for every children.

For example, this is my activity (you may change it according the situation happened in your class)
1. Make a question. If the answer is right/acceptable, the kids who answer can step forward (he/she can make a big step - it is also a sport game ^^)
2. If the answer is wrong, the kid has to squat and stay still
3. More questions. If the answer is right, from last position the kids have to jump forward and make a stand up position again (yeah, so it's more difficult for somebody who answer fault answer before cos he/she isn't in best position - but he/she still can make a jump and stand up again - and now his/her position is become normal again
4. You will see a race here. The winner will be the first one who reach finish line. Maybe as a gift, you can give permission to come home early; or as gift to other kids (as bonus, so the other kids can ask the winner to help them; you can arrange another rules for that)

Some modification:
- Use "face backward" rather than squat
- Use winner answer (ask the audience) as bonus point (e.q. for everybody who has cross half range, for everybody who answer correctly one special questions, for every correct 3 questions - you can modify it according the situation happened)
- Make a non linear circuit. You can use tree, turn point, etc so children will not get bored

Ok, that's it. You can also give special offer, such as give an apple for the first two kids who reach some range, or a consequence : to write poems for children who didn't reach the finish line...

Sketching the Leaves

Sketching the Leaves
-(Nature Experiment)-

This is an activity for children or even a gown up, to intoduce plant biodiversity. Leaves, the main object of this activity are being use to identified plant species.

It was better to do this "sketching the leaves" in a garden or forest. Why ? Because then you will feel, see and smell better. But if you can't do that, just bring photos, sample of leaves in your class.

Needs
Paper, pencil

First, you can choose how to draw the leaves. You can make a sketch by observe the leaves, or/and you can rub the leaves (with pencil and paper) so you can get leaves appearance.

After 30 to 60 minutes you can gather under the tree and discuss:
- how many species did they found today?
- Can they organize and manage the leaves into different character of leaves (looks, they learn classification now ^^ )
- Ask them : what is the use of the leaves for living creature (plant itself, bird, insects, human, lizard, worm, fish...)
- Stick with the third question because you always can make another question from it :
- What happened if the tree doesn't have many leaves?
- What do you know about oxygen produced by a tree?
- Is there any connection between forest, river and the sea?
- You go on with the question (and I can take a bath now ^_^)

Feed the Plant

Feed the Plant
-(Nature Experiment)-

Animal, human eat vegetables... but how the plant eat? Can we see the process?

Needs
Parsley, glass, water, food dye

Cut the parsley, put it into a glass of water. Use 3 glasses of water in this activity (one as control, two for the experiment). Use food dye to coloring the water. A tea spoonful of dye will be enough.

And let our experiement works. Wait until 1 day to see what happened to our plant. The color of the plant will change after some times.

Point to discuss:
- How the plant absorb water (also contain mineral in it) and then use it as material to produce energy, food and more.
- Explain how important is water in material transportation for the plant
- What happened if agriculture use to much pesticide?
- Food health for human, organic farming and how to keep balance between human activity and nature conservation

Picture taken from http://kathy-lilia.blogspot.com and www.ehow.com

Who Will Talk Then ?

Who Will Talk Then ?
-(Facilitation Technique)-

Do you often face a situation that there is no one wants to talk after a presentation ? Sometimes it also happened to me :) . Yeah, after we present something, movie presentation, lecture, tell a story, no one raise their hand because they are to shy to ask a question (this situation generally happened in new group meeting; or maybe because my presentation too boring ^^ ?).

Well I have a secret,and I want to share it with you... how to make a simple game that always work, to make people give their opinion / ask question to our presentation (teacher, you can use this technique to pick kids randomly - and to bring excitement while learning).

Basicly, I assumed the kids / participants are just to shy to ask or to answer the questions, or to give their opinion. So I use to pick a kid from groups with asking them :
- Who have the longest hair in the group?
- Who have the curliest hair in the group?
- Who have the biggest shoe size in the group?
- Who have the blackest skin in the group?
- Who have the longest home range from this place?
- Who have the most dogs in the group?

Anybody who say : that's me will present, answer or ask the question you tell before. Well, a kind of surprising question that everybody wait, so everybody will focus while have fun after know what happened to the first group...

Picture taken from http://www.northcliftonschool.com

Bentengan / Cingbenteng

Bentengan / Cingbenteng
-(Traditional Game)-

Bentengan or cingbenteng is a traditional game from Indonesia. I found some similarity and modification when I check "capture the flag" game, and some other game in Asia country. Bentengan means base, and cingbenteng (Sundanese words) means base game.

Rule
Participants are divided into two teams with equal number of team members. The object of the game is for one team to try & capture the base of the other by reaching the other's home base first & tagging a pre-decided item (e.g., a tree trunk, a rock, etc) symbolizing the opposite team - without getting tagged by the defending members of the opposite team.

The base will function as a power charger. Participants who tag their base earlier is lose from an opponent who tag their own base later (if they catch each other), and it works for all participants. To get more power, then he/she has to get back to their base to re-charge the power

POW
A member of an opposing team who go first can be chased & tagged by the member of other team who go after his/her. If the attacker gets tagged before he/she manages to get back to his/her home base, he/she becomes a prisoner (POW) of the opposite team. He/she can be rescued by his/her teammates if one of his/her teammates manage to get close to the base & tag the POW without getting tagged himself/herself by the guard or one of the defenders in the opposing team.

POW place is about 3-5 meters from the base. We can mark the POW place by placing stone, tree trunk, or else. If there are more than one prisoner, they do hand in hand from the POW point, to make the line longer, make some distances from the enemy base. In this line form, if one prisoner rescued, so the other will be free.

The game ends when a member of an opposing team manages to tag the symbol of the other team or when all the members of one team are captured by the other leaving their homebase free for the opposite team to attack and capture.

What you can discuss and relate it into issues:
- animal topics - hunting and preying. Relate the team work with animal (like wolf, hyena, wild dog) team work. Which one is more effective : individual or team hunting ? After discussion, start to tell them how important is to have kind of hunter / top predator in environment, to maintain nature balance...
- or maybe you got better ideas ? I think you also can relate it with social hierarchy in animal kingdom ^^ ... goodluck then !

Origin of Komodo Dragon Revealed

Origin of Komodo Dragon Revealed
Fossils in Australia Date from 300,000
to Roughly 4 million Years Ago
www.livescience.com
-(Shocking Nature News)-

Picture by Daniel Sprawson / ZSL

"This young Komodo dragon was born to a virgin mother at the London Zoo in 2005. Scientists now find that the world’s largest living lizard species, the Komodo dragon, most likely evolved in Australia and dispersed westward to its current home in Indonesia."

Scientists now find that the world’s largest living lizard species, the Komodo dragon, most likely evolved in Australia and dispersed westward to its current home in Indonesia.

In the past, researchers had suggested the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) developed from a smaller ancestor isolated on the Indonesian islands, evolving its large size as a response to lack of competition from other predators or as a specialist hunter of pygmy elephants known as Stegodon.

However, over the past three years, an international team of scientists unearthed numerous fossils from eastern Australia dated from 300,000 years ago to roughly 4 million years ago that they now know belong to the Komodo dragon.

"When we compared these fossils to the bones of present-day Komodo dragons, they were identical," said researcher Scott Hocknull, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Queensland Museum in Australia.

For the last 4 million years, Australia has been home to the world's largest lizards, including the 16-foot-long giant (5 meters) called Megalania, once the world's largest terrestrial lizard but which died out some 40,000 years ago.

"Now we can say Australia was also the birthplace of the three-meter (10 foot) Komodo dragon," Hocknull said.

The researchers said the ancestor of the Komodo dragon most likely evolved in Australia and spread westward, reaching the Indonesian island of Flores by 900,000 years ago. Comparisons between fossils and living Komodo dragons on Flores show that the lizard's body size has remained relatively stable since then.

Further support for this notion of dispersal from Australia comes from the island of Timor, located between Australia and Flores. Three fossil specimens from Timor represent a new, as yet unnamed species of giant monitor lizard, which was larger than the Komodo dragon, although smaller than Megalania. More specimens of this new giant lizard are needed before the species can be formally described.

"There are a lot of things we just simply don't know about this part of the world — Indonesia to Australia," Hocknull told LiveScience. "In recent years this region has thrown up remarkable discoveries — a new species of hominid, the 'Lost World' in New Guinea boasting dozens of new species having never met humans, and now an island chain of giant lizards, including the largest of them all, Megalania from Australia. However, they all went extinct, except the Komodo dragon. The big question now is why? The south-east Asian to Australian region is a hot-spot of new and exciting discoveries."

All these huge lizards were once common in Australasia for more than 3.8 million years, having evolved alongside large mammalian carnivores, such as Thylacoleo, the so-called 'marsupial lion.' The Komodo dragon is the last of these giants, but within the last 2,000 years, their populations have diminished severely, most likely due to humans, and they are now vulnerable to extinction, living now on just a few isolated islands in eastern Indonesia, between Java and Australia.

"Understanding the past history of a species is absolutely fundamental to determining its potential trajectory in the future, its responses to climate change, habitat change and extinction events," Hocknull said. "The Komodo dragon's fossil record shows that it is a resilient species — resilient to major climatic changes throughout its past, surviving extinction events which wiped out contemporary megafauna species."

One question that now pops up is why the Komodo dragon went extinct on Australia while surviving on a few isolated Indonesian isles. Hocknull noted that climate was an unlikely suspect, as "climate impacts species on islands just as much as a big continent like Australia. In Australia there is plenty of habitat which could be conducive to Komodo dragons. If you released them in Australia today they would probably do quite well."

Were humans involved? "We have no evidence for this because the youngest Komodo fossils in Australia are around 300,000 years old, well before humans arrived. So we don't know whether the Komodo dragons in Australia died out before humans arrived or after. So the jury will remain out on this question until a better fossil record is found."

Hocknull noted these islands of lizards are each, in a sense, individual experiments in evolution that shed light not only on the past of these lizards, but potentially also on the future of the world.

"It's a perfect place to see how life adapts and evolves in response to major environmental impacts, like sea level change, climatic changes, catastrophes — tsunamis and volcanic eruptions — plus each island has received modern humans at one time or another," he explained. "What were their impacts and how did species cope? This will be our Rosetta Stone when understanding how species will respond to future climate change."

The scientists will detail their findings on Sept. 30 in the journal PLoS ONE.
© 2009 LiveScience.com

World Cafe Discussion Technique

World Cafe Discussion Technique

-(More ESD Activities, Discussion, Enhancing Group Dynamics)-

World Cafe is a new technique for me to have a kind of discussion.We did this activity in ANGOC - ToT in Philippine 15-21 September 2009.

We also can use this technique to other workshop participants. A senior high school students or higher may do this technique, because this discussion need a lot of informations and knowledges from participants.

Needs
Manila paper, color spidol, 1 facilitator, 1 notulen

First, divide participants into groups consist 3-5 participants (beside facilitator and notulen). In my ToT, there are 20 participants, so they form 5 groups, sitting in each table.

Well, let aside the ToT material. I will only tell you the concepts of this activity is to make an open discussion between people. Everybody can move to other groups an make a conversation. So, yes, somebody can come to you, in the middle of discussion and there is a basic rule that everybody who come late must join the topic that already discussed (no interuption first please).

Don't forget that in each table, there are a facilitator and notulen that have anchor functions. It means that everybody can move to other table, but not this 2 person (well, if everybody move isn't that difficult to know previous discussion?)

Let say, we make a 2 session with 4 questions that is :
- What is the problem of environmental issues in your area ?
- Kind of strategy you implement in that condition
- What thing you are not reccomend (according to your experiences) - in implement this activity ?
- Next plan to do in the future - why ?

For every session you can give 30 to 60 minutes. The idea is not to tell everybody exactly what happened (naration) but to get people participation (fresh idea, question asked) unless they need to know your information. Just telling everybody your feeling and dominate the discussion is not what I mean (it sometimes happened if the facilitator forgot their function).

Everybody freely moving all around. In my country Indonesia this is what thet tell you as WARUNG KOPI (cofee shop) discussion. Sometimes it's hotter in the parliament itself ^_^
My questions in previous paragraph are freely to be modify... you are welcome to do that...

Giant Black Scorpion

Giant Black Scorpion

http://bizarrecreatures.blogspot.com/2008

-(Shocking Nature News)-

The currently known largest scorpion. Like it’s namesake, it can be found in India. It can reach to almost 1 ft in length and can weigh to as much as 57 grams.