The purpose of this lesson is to get students researching, using technology to document their research while also encouraging them to consider our impact on the environment.
Discuss with your students the effects of pollution using various information sources.
Create a discussion with the class on the problems with pollution in their own community.
Topics may include rural pollution due to livestock, human waste, trash littering, bush fires, water contamination etc. Other topics may include town pollution due to factory waste, smoke stacks, oil spills, used tires, human waste, air pollution and water contamination.
Inform the students that it is their job to take the XO home (if you’re comfortable with this, alternatively you could group research this on the Internet in class) and find instances of pollution around their community.
Instruct your students to take pictures of these problems with the Record activity when found and create a Write document explaining its causes, effects and possible solutions.
The students can then present these projects to their classmates and talk about which are the most serious and what can be done to make it better.
For more information about the One Laptop per Child program in Rwanda, see the OLPC wiki.