The Green School is an amazing project, pioneering sustainability within education, Now, I am sure that some of you might be wondering is this just another ordinary school that aims at promoting ideas such as recycling and energy saving. If you think that’s the case, then, you are totally wrong. The Green School is a lot more than that; it is by far the “greenest” and innovative school I have ever seen!
The Green School sits in south-central, Bali, on 20 acres of gardens. Instead of the usual image of what a school should be with bricks and concrete walls, the school is built primarily from bamboo which is a natural and renewable resource. The Green School is being recognized as the number one model of sustainability in education in the world. The co-founder John Hardy made it very clear that the aim of the Green School is to promote valuable and useful skills to create a new generation of global, green leaders. Instead of having class in classrooms with walls and blackboard, students here at Green School gain their knowledge by connecting with the nature. Nature is where all the possibilities are and where you give and take.
Every aspect of the site and buildings are living examples of sustainability. Micro-hydro power, solar power and bio-diesel are used. Green School standard is to use 99% natural materials in their construction projects, to recycle as many materials as possible, and to manage waste responsibly.
The “greenness” of the school can be easily seen around campus. The school cow is used to replace the lawnmower on the playing field. Instead of writing on blackboards or whiteboards, they write on bamboo blackboards. Instead of use lights and air-conditioning, they use natural lights and natural breeze.
The world is not indestructible; one day energy and resources will all be used up. In the sense of learning how to live a sustainable future, the Green School sets a really good example to the world and has done a fantastic job. The idea of Green School is one of the first but certainly not the last, seeing the success I’m sure more yet to come. If each place in every country can have a school like this to instill the idea of sustainable living, our future generations can still have a chance to enjoy the life that we had. They can still have a chance to experience blue skies and cool breeze. Just remember, “Let the nature take the lead”, because nature is where all possibilities begin!
Click to see co-founder John Hardy’s interview and the Green School offical website.
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_hardy_my_green_school_dream.html
How can you effectively convince others to use this green school? What arguments do you think people will have against it? What similar project can be put in place for schools in temperate countries? What about arguments against the idea such as: kids might get snake bites; many countries in the east have bomb shelters under the schools; how will kids access computers and the internet; These are all questions that news reporters might ask and if not answered adequately, can cause negative feedback towards green schools. Look at Aron’s blog above yours, he deals with the effect of media on the public?
Hi Jessica,
nice choice of topic!
What you need is some kind of storyline, in order to have some structure that your readers can easily follow. Many journalists would have picked a school kid, for example, and would have told how a typical school day looks like. This helps readers to relate to the story. Another alternative would have been to pick the school founder and tell the story how he came up with his idea, what is special about it and how it came into being.
And please keep in mind that most readers won’t be very interested in your own, personal opinion (“It is great!”, “It is really green, believe me!”), especially if they don’t know you personally, but more in facts in itself or maybe in a comparison of your own schooling experience with that of the green school (“they have a cow on the campus! Back in school I always had the feeling that the students were isolated from nature, some even did not know that fish don’t look like fish sticks! But this won’t happen at the green school because…”)
Hi Jessica,
Adding to your feedback:
Choice of topic:
– Good. I think having exemplars of sustainability help everyone else focus their own goals on what is possible.
Use of resources:
– You need to really work on citing the resources you used. For instance, right at the start a link to the Green School‘s webpage (<-- just like that). As well, whenever you make a statement of fact (e.g. "The Green School is being recognized as the number one model of sustainability in education in the world" -- by whom?) be sure to cite your source by linking to it. - If the only two sources you used are the school's website and the ted talk, then I suggest you try to dig deeper for other, more credible sources. What else has been written about the school? Are their other schools like it you could compare it with? etc.. Style / Coherence: - Good. Your post reads very fluidly from start to finish. It almost reads like an advertisement for the school rather than report on your research about the school, which in my mind takes a way from the credibility of what you're writing. You're obviously excited about this project, but don't let that get in the way of doing more detailed research into it, and as Tim suggests, including more personal reflection where appropriate. Understandability / Clarity: - I think you've got a good start here, but you could definitely elaborate on what you've written. I'd like to know more about how the school is designed to be "green", what their goals are (e.g. what does "manage waste responsibly mean to them?), etc.. Insights / Originality: - Great. With a bit more detail this will make a wonderful post summarizing the Green School project. Good use of blogging features: - Good on the images. They all look like publicity shots though.. can you find images that show a map of the school, or other images or other resources that give us a better feel for how the school is designed and what happens there?