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Teachers should increase students’ interest in en-vironmental protection and conservation by showing them values of maintaining high biodiversity. Since we constantly encounter a conflict between urbanisation and saving natural sites within city borders, it is crucial to raise children and youths with respect to the sustain-able development and nature. Thus, here we propose a long-lasting school project for 3rd and 4th level of Polish
education which begins with the first year of education. The summary of the concept of the project is shown in Fig. 1.
Time of realisation: 3 years.
Beginning in September/October*; one month period of observations, repeated every year.
* it is recommended to start at the beginning of school year because it is the end of summer when many plants and animals are still active (however some birds already left Poland). Collecting data in further months will be very useful, however late spring obser-vations in third classes will be difficult due to the final exams.
Long-lasting environmental
project for classes
Sebastian Pilichowski, Agnieszka Tokarska-Osyczka
mgr Sebastian Pilichowski: Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Zielona Góra, Poland;
Żywa Edukacja – Sebastian Pilichowski, an educator
I. Project description
The project starts at the beginning of the first class. A student, pair or small group is given a part of a town or estate of city by the teacher. Such part or estate should be described by a student/students in a manner of the forms and activities of environmental protection and conserva-tion. This means that for example parks, forests, meadows, water ponds, number and types of colour coded recycling bins, nest boxes will be listed by a student. We will call them „protection-forms” in the text below.
There is a couple of aims of the project:
• Comparison of the listed protection-forms be-tween years. 3rd and 4th levels last at least three years
which enables creating a database for such period.
• Comparison between city parts and estates.
• After years, the collected database may be used in comparisons between periods. The educational va-lue of such work is unmeasurable.
• Students are asked to:
• cooperate,
• contact with biological aspects of the city ex-pressed as e.g. plant and animal species inhabit-ing the city,
• discuss the efficiency and diversity of protec-tion-forms,
• propose new solutions,
• use some Internet tools in a different way,
• analyse data, find good and bad sides, analyse the dynamic of changes in time,
• make conclusions.
mgr inż. Agnieszka Tokarska-Osyczka: Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Zielona Góra, Poland; Zielony Adres, a landscape architect
Fig. 1. Graphical summary of the project
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The project involves students to work as amatour conservationists and reporters. The work of the latter is expressed in:
• seeking information in media, especially Internet and local press and radio stations, about pro- and anti-environmental activities,
• documenting the biodiversity (blooming mea-dows, insects, birds, lichens and mosses on trees and rocks, etc.) with a camera or smart device (e.g. smartphone, tablet),
• gathered information can be provided to public in a form of a photo- or video blog on the school website or one of the popular social media (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Wordpress etc.). This may help spread:
• the local need for conservation and environ-mental protection,
• information about good practices in conserva-tion and environmental protecconserva-tion,
• good image of the school as a secondary result.
II. Project conducting
1) The teacher divides the village, town or city into parts of the same area.
2) The teacher gives one part to a student or students (depending on the number of students in class, size of the city, etc.).
3) The teacher propose a form of collecting data. 4) The teacher sets up a blog or profile of the project
on social media platform (eventually asks a school IT specialist for help),
5) After a month of collecting data students upload to the website their analyses as news.
6) The teacher plans a summarizing meeting. It is teacher’s task to present whole data and stimulate students to discussion about differences between
sites. The outcome of the discussion should be pre-sented as a conclusion on the website.
7) After three years students analyse differences in the perspective of time in respect to their city parts.
8) The teacher summarizes three years of observa-tions.
9) The teacher grants students with positive grades.
III. Difficulties during the project
We are well aware that many teachers would say that such project is ridiculous from the point of time perspective. In our current educational system we have a great trouble to organise single outdoor lesson due to lack of time. However, it can be seen that there are teachers who somehow find the time to perform lessons in a great manner and organise lessons in field, botani-cal and zoologibotani-cal gardens etc. Of course, they often sacrifice their own free time to do it. However, being a teacher or an educator means so. Such a project engage students to individual work and it is highly required to reward them for it. They should have reason and goal. Good grades may be a reason and studying local aspects of environmental protection and conservation may be a goal.
Encouraging students to such a work is very difficult as they find many entertaining activities, including the Internet. That is why the teacher can use that aspect and encourage them to use Internet as a source of useful in-formation, providing extra education to them.
How to establish areas of city parts? For example use Google Earth, Google Maps or Geoportal. To estimate the area of parts you can use a free software – ImageJ (W. Rasband, RSB). You can establish the scale there, draw a polygon in the picture and measure the area. Same goes for the area of parks, water ponds, meadows
etc. You can also use tools built in Geoportal, with them you can easily measure the area or length on e.g. ortho-photomap.
IV. Exemplary organisation of the notes during
the first year
1) Description of the city part.
• Location (coordinates, cardinal directions can be used).
• Types of the residential development (tower blocks, town houses, detached houses, terraced houses etc.).
• List of urban green spaces and their area.
• List of water ponds and courses.
• List and locations of plant shops with open areas (which can be visited by insects and other small animals) and apiaries.
• List of open area institutions like botanical and zoological gardens, private gardens, etc.
• Forests, meadows, etc. 2) Individual objects.
• List of old trees, tree avenues (their lengths), natural monuments.
• Green balconies, tree pots in the streets, etc.
• List of bird nestboxes and batboxes on trees and buildings (recommended to point them on map).
• List of insect houses and their location.
• List and locations of bird feeders, facilities which can provide water for birds and insects.
• Open ventilation holes in buildings allowing nesting of birds.
• Number of recycling bins. 3) Bad practices:
• Lack of various recycling bins.
• Modern termoisolation of building (closed or no ventilation holes).
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• Garbage in streets, constantly uncleared bins.
• Sewage dumped into water ponds and courses.
• Cutting down trees which do not threaten he-alth and life of people.
• Burning waste in boilers of central heating and by gardeners.
• Meadows set on fire by humans.
• Using faulty insect traps and insecticides harm-ful to bees.
4) Good practices – in contrast to point 3 and e.g. us-ing renewable energy, especially solar energy, leav-ing rottleav-ing wood in parks to ensure development of various organisms.
5) Documentation – list of photographs and videos with dates and authorship information. For ex-ample documented birds, squirrels, invertebrates, blooming or fruiting plants, lichens on trees (im-portant as bioindicators of air quality), exhibitions and events associated with conservation and envi-ronmental protection.
V. Documentation during the second and third
year
Observations should be made on base of the first year documentation. They should highlight new solu-tions, development and decline of existing protection forms. If somewhere recycling bins are removed, it should be mentioned. Same goes for devastated nest-boxes, batnest-boxes, green urban areas, etc.
VI. Exemplary tasks associated with the project
1) Draw a food web and ecological network existing in your city part.
2) Write scientific names of the trees occurring in your city part. Which of them are: a) native, b) foreign, c) invasive?
3) Find information in the literature and the Inter-net why introducing of the invasive species shou-ld be avoided.
4) Name the bird species present in your city part. What makes their existence possible there? 5) Produce a graph (in MS Excel, OpenOffice Calc
etc.) showing:
• Percentage of native tree species to foreign tree species growing in your city part,
• Percentage of native and foreign trees growing in your city part (number of individual trees) [Fig. 2.]
6) Describe basic morphology of lichens found on different tree species and rocks.
7) What conditions can be created in your city area to increase biodiversity of animals, for example insects or birds?
Fig. 2. Comparison of numbers of tree species and individual trees representing those species in respect to their origin (example)
8) Choose one protection form of your city part and describe it showing its all advantages as if you were to persuade other people that it is very important from conservation and environmental protection point of view. Add a photograph of the chosen area.
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9) If there are water courses, ponds, etc. in your city part, collect abundant photo material of the or-ganisms living there. Prepare a multimedia pre-sentation which will be uploaded to the project website. Show that water is essential for different forms of life, even in the urban zone.
10) Organise a school event where you and your clas-smates will present results of your work.
11) Choose and classify five plant and five animal species within hierarchical groups. Present their phylogenetic relationships (4th level; expanded
va-riant).
VII. Useful literature (in Polish)
Eisenreich W, Handel A, Zimmer UE (2000). Przewodnik do roz-poznawania roślin i zwierząt na wycieczce. MULTICO Oficyna Wydawnicza, Warszawa.
Johnson O (2009). Przewodnik Collinsa. Drzewa. Wyd. Multico Ofi-cyna Wydawnicza, Warszawa.
Linford J (2009). Drzewa. Kieszonkowy przewodnik. Wyd. Parragon, UK.
McGavin GC (2005). Kieszonkowy atlas owadów i pajęczaków. Dor-ling Kindersley, Warszawa.
Pirc H (2006). Drzewa od A do Z. Wyd. KDC, Warszawa.
Pulin AS (2013). Biologiczne podstawy ochrony przyrody. Wydawni-ctwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa.
Reichholf J (1999). Żyją wśród nas. Leksykon przyrodniczy. Bertels-mann Publishing, Warszawa.
Reichholf-Riehm H (1997). Owady. Leksykon przyrodniczy. Bertels-mann Publishing, Warszawa.
Rutkowski L (2007). Klucz do oznaczania roślin naczyniowych Pol-ski niżowej. Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa. Sauer F (1996). Ptaki lądowe. Leksykon przyrodniczy. Geocenter
In-ternational, Warszawa.
Sauer F (1996). Ptaki wodne. Leksykon przyrodniczy. Geocenter In-ternational, Warszawa.
Seneta W, Dolatowski J (2015). Dendrologia. Wyd. czwarte. PWN, Warszawa.
Solomon EP, Berg LR, Martin DW (2013). Biologia. MULTICO. Vermeulen N (2006). Encyklopedia drzew i krzewów. Wyd. Dom
Wydawniczy Bellona, Warszawa.
VIII. Figures and exemplary documentary
photographs
Fig. 3. A natural monument in the city: baldcypress (Taxodium distichum) [Zielona Góra, Poland]. (S. Pilichowski)
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Fig. 5. Linden avenue in Łagów Lubuski, Poland. (A. Tokarska-Osyczka)
Fig. 6. An example of how a tree should not be nurtured. (A. Tokarska-Osyczka)
Fig. 7. Nestboxes help birds breed. (S. Pilichowski)
Fig. 8. The diversity of lichens highly depends on the air quality... (S. Pilichowski)
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Fig. 11. Sticky traps are often ineffectual against chosen pests. Instead they kill many harmless and useful insects. (S. Pilichowski)
Fig. 10. Watercourses in cities increase biodiversity (S. Pilichowski)
Appendix I. Exemplary documentation
Tab. 1. The exemplary method how to inventory individual trees.
No. Polish name[tree species] Special value[e.g. age, size, natural monument] Location
1. Alder - Reja Street
2. Oak size/age N 50°2’27”E 21°59’56”
Tab. 2. The exemplary method how to inventory tree avenues.
No. Dominant type of tree Course
[from where to where]
Length
[m]
1. Maple Poznańska Street – Reja Street 1250
Appendix II. Useful tools and software
• Google Earth, download – http://www.google.pl/intl/pl/earth/download/ge/agree.html [8.02.2016]
• Geoportal – http://www.geoportal.gov.pl/