Here are some more links

http://www.myrecycledbags.com/
Check these shoes out. These are best for in the sand.
http://shoeblogs.com/wordpress/2006/06/17/garbage-for-the-feets/
This is great for those sunny days.
http://familycrafts.about.com/library/photalb/blphotopic281.htm
click on Paula's name at the top and check out all that she does.
This is the site when I read all she does with the bags, stuffing, and tying wreaths
She made me want to do the same. Check out her Wreathes.
http://frugalliving.about.com/cs/craftshobbies/a/blpcrochet.htm
And here is the coiled Basket weaving link again. Hope this helps. Let me know.
http://www.nativetech.org/basketry/coilindex.html

A Generator That Turns Trash Into Electricity?

On February 1, just a few weeks ago, Purdue University News published a very interesting article about their invention of a generator that turns trash into electricity. This generator is called the "tactical biorefinery." A group of scientists have created it to efficiently convert food, paper, and plastic into electricity.

This machine was designed for the U.S. military and it would allow soldiers to convert waste into power. The best part of all is that the “tactical biorefinery” will have civilian applications in the future.
If you are interested in this news story, check: http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/070201LadischBio.html

Stats and Kids!

On Sat. afternoon last week, I took my 7 year old daughter to the library to volunteer for the River Bend Math Center. We had such a great time, and learned alot in the meantime! There were 3 activities that we participated in, one included a beach ball globe, another with letters, and the 3rd using M&M's these items don't sound much like what would be used to teach statistics but nonetheless, they provided great interactive opportunities for the kids's to learn from. One of the most impressive things to me, was that we had some participants that weren't kids but instead had some learning disability so that these activities were fun and a great way to learn something new even for adult/young adults. I met several nice kids and older people too, one adult woman really impressed me. She was very intelligent but struggled a bit socially or developmenatally, and she was just amazing during the beach ball experiment.
The idea was to learn with repeated sampling that we could get accurate and consistent results. The participant was told that the earth was made up of 75% water, then they were asked to hold up their pointer finger and I tossed the ball to them, wherever their pointer finger landed they said either, "land or water". Someone else recorded the results and after about 10 tosses, we looked at the results to determine if their fingers landed more often on land or water, The results showed that most times for obvious reasons they landed on water, and then the participants gave their ideas about why that happened. Well, the woman I mentioned would also comment on the land that her pointed to, and taught us a bit of geography!
My daughter was writing down fractions, and talking about proportions while using M&M's! Another young man had fun interviewing people about the spelling of their name, then using paper cut out letters he spelled each name and determined the mean, median, and mode for the number of letters his sample of names had! These were kids' doing statistics! It was so much fun, and a great way to fun while learning.

An Incentive

I just finished e-mailing my uncle the owner of Tiki Tan Tanning Salons to see if he would be interested in helping give some sort of "tanning package" towards the top bag donators. Keep your fingers crossed that I delivered the message effectively concerning what we are trying to do. I'll keep you all updated as to what he says :)

Remember

Don't forget to make and bring a ball of plastic "yarn" with and bring some whole bags and scissors too. See you tommorow

A few thoughts on garbage!

The State of Garbage (2006) article that we read for class was disturbing to me. I wondered if anyone else felt embarrassed when they read, "The estimated MSW per capita generation rates varied from South Dakota's low of .07 to Indiana's 2.1 tons/person/year." This fact also made me realize how important our project is. Even though our efforts of saving plastic bags from the landfill might just not bring us down to the desirable .07, we are still bringing awareness! It is obvious that Indiana would not be able to drop their generation rates in one large movement, it is going to take small movements, like ours, to get anywhere! I know that this project will get people thinking in many ways and enlighten other aspects of Indiana's recycling and waste.

Just a thought...

A while ago in class we had been talking about various sorts of prizes and/or giveaways that we could hand out to people at the bagfest '07 . Well when returning some movies to blockbuster last night, a thought hit me.... Why don't we see if we could pass out some free movie rental passes? It would be good publicity for any movie rental store, and not cost them much money. Plus, who wouldn't want to come out to IUSB, get rid of their plastic bags, and pick up a free movie rental pass for it??? Just another thought as I'm writing this, free bowling passes would be great too! Especially if we could somehow manage to get some family bowling passes. Even if the passes were only for free games of bowling, and the consumer still had to pay for their bowling shoe rental, I'm sure that many families would being willing to "fork over their stash" of plastic bags for them. I'm not sure if there is any campus policies on which movie rental and bowling companies that can or cannot be advertised on campus, but maybe we could check it out?

Bag Force

In collaboration with Amanda Serenevy, President of Riverbend Math Community Center, we created Bag Force, a student-lead task force that promotes authentic civic action on the conservation of plastic bags. Fourth through twelfth graders are invited to join. Students who participate in Bag Force will conduct the following activities:

Before the festival, Bag Force members are encouraged to develop their background knowledge about this issue. One good source may be found online at http://techalive.mtu.edu/meec/module14/title.htm.

At the festival, Bag Force members will engage in three central activities: First, they will brainstorm questions to ask the panel of experts who will be speaking at the festival. Second, Bag Force members will attend the panel discussion and present their questions to the experts. Third, after the panel discussion, Bag Force members will work together to develop a community action plan. The Bag Force Action Plan will detail the issue discovered from the panel discussion and from the background reading; it will also include suggestions for community improvements. This plan will be submitted to the Voice of the People in the South Bend Tribune.

If you know of some students who may be interested in joining Bag Force, please have them contact me by March 23rd.

Ever since I have been reading Garbage Land, I not only think differently about throwing things away, I actually "think" about what I am throwing away. My ten-year-old son asked me the other day,"Mommy, what will we do when all the trash takes over the world?" Realizing that as a consumer, I am part of this problem, I guiltily thought to myself, I don't know. Well, I explained that there are many different things society is trying to do to handle all the trash we produce. I told him that when he gets older, maybe he can work toward a solution to our trash problem. For now, I know that he is following my example; and I want to be a conscientious consumer and trash producer.

I was listening to PBS's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer that aired on February 19, 2007. The show was titled Electronic Waste Adds to Pollution in India. Below is a link to the site if anyone is interested. It amazed me that "53 percent of children under 12 in India's cities are lead-poisoned, meaning permanent brain damage that claims up to 20 percent of a child's I.Q" When I read this, I thought about my son. Much of this electronic waste that is poisoning these children is coming from developed countries like the U.S.! Really makes you think.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june07/ewaste_02-19.html

stats at the library

I had my second experience volunteering at the library. Today we introduced the kids to statistics. I was in charge of the activity using a beach ball globe. The kids tossed it to each other to see if their finger would land on water or land when they caught it. We used the results to find the percentages. The kids also used different colored M&M’s to find proportion, decimal, and percentages. Cards with letters on them were used spell names then find the mean, medium and mode using the letters of the name. It was a great experience helping the kids of different ages and different learning levels. Some of them were slower and some of them were real bright. I also got to meet a few other volunteers and parents.