Cool Views
Students learn the meaning of preservation and conservation and identify themselves and others as preservationists or conservationists in relation to specific environmental issues. They use Venn diagrams to clarify the similarities and differences in viewpoints. They see how an environmental point-of-view affects the approach to an engineering problem.
Conservationists help take care of the environmentCopyright U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) Soil Conservationist. Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/11711168633/
To design solutions for environmental projects or challenges, community teams are often comprised of environmental engineers, conservationists and preservationists. Their challenge is to listen to all viewpoints of an issue (problem, concern, etc.), weigh the pros and cons, consider trade-offs, investigate solutions (or determine no-action is the best scenario) and devise a strategy to implement a decision. Decisions to develop and use technologies must balance environmental and economic concerns. Because of their multidisciplinary knowledge, engineers often play key roles in community decisions that impact the environment.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Understand the definitions of preservation and conservation.
- Identify themselves and others as conservationists or preservationists.
- Compare and contrast different views of people.
- Use Venn diagrams to organize their thoughts on what is different and alike between issues, viewpoints or other things.