Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Class Pile-Up: Lessons Learned I

This morning was incredible! The morning class simulated the BagFest bag pile-up activity. I'm so glad we did this--there were four practical lessons I learned from today's practice event:

1. Data Collectors will run syntax to calculate the current sum of bag donations every ½ hour. They will write that number down to give to the Bag Pitcher Team Leader. I will have a cheat-sheet for Data Collectors just in case they accidentally close the syntax file or spreadsheet file.

2. Bag pitchers need to have a calculator on them at all times to calculate the bag count every ½ hour. They also need markers to write the tally on the board. Materials will be supplied for BagFest.

3. We need shopping carts for Counters. (Brilliant suggestion, Tori!) The Counters will use the shopping carts as they are counting up the bags. The Bag Pitchers will take the carts and dump the bags into the pile. Bag Pitchers and Counters must be in sync with each other!

4. There will be four data collection stations, and one of those stations will be called the “Express Lane.” The Express Lane will be for folks who have brought 20 bags or fewer to the festival.

And to provide you with a preliminary statistic, my 11 students brought 979 bags to class today! Students: I'm going to compile these data with my afternoon class for our next SPSS session (check the course calendar for that date!).

In the meantime, I can't wait to hear your thoughts about the class pile-up! :0)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought today was pretty eye opening as far as seeing how many bags we accumulate. The pile was pretty big given it was from 11 people. Furthermore, I've only been saving my bags since class started and have made a conscious to reduce the bags even more so after class has started so I can imagine how many bags the average household goes through in a year.

Michelle said...

Quick update: I asked Steve Antonetti, Market Manager of Wal-Mart, if we could borrow 30 shopping carts. He said it wouldn't be a problem. Sweet!

:0) M

Amanda Ashley said...

I thought our mock bag pile up was a huge success. There was a mound of bags and about half the bags were stuffed in other bags. I find it hard to imagine what the pile would of looked like if they all were seperated. This just encouraged me to keep telling others about the plastic bag issue.