Responsibility

Game-example: Once upon a tile

Once Upon a Tile is a prototype for a mobile game about peace and sustainable development where players manage an evolving world by matching resource tiles and generating new results and products.

The game educates about the relationship between resources, production, growth, knowledge, and communities. Players learn about the matching logic and its immediate effect of generating products, about the effects of such products on the simulated community, about the community’s dynamics in different contexts. Players will discover connections to real-world situations, the emergence of diversity, and the range of possibilities. Via gameplay repetition, players develop familiarity with the diverse situations and the effects of their choices.

Ask each student to think about their own social or peer group and identify one positive situation (e.g. where the group worked together effectively or supported the wider institution such as the school) and one negative situation (e.g. when there was conflict, bullying or exclusion of individuals). Ask them to write a reflective account in which they consider their own role in each situation and consider whether they could have done anything differently to achieve a more positive outcome.

Learners in groups are asked to enter in the Environmental Justice Atlas and look for socio-environmental conflicts around biodiversity. They are asked to choose one, and gather the information and arguments of each side of the conflict (i.e. company extracting natural resource, government, local community and activist, foreign NGOs, etc.). Each member of the group takes the role of an actor and analyses the arguments of this actor, building a SWOT analysis grid. The groups present their analysis to the class.

Learners are then asked to produce a compromise solution from the perspective of their actor in the roleplay. These solutions are discussed among the members of the group to make them stronger: what negative impacts are reduced? What potential benefits? How to hold accountability?

Finally, the whole group of learners assesses the solutions presented in terms of their credibility and plausibility. For this assessment, the barometer activity will be applied, in which learners distribute physically in the space according to their degree of agreement.

Personal diary method

  1. Individually, ideally over a few days, each student describes his or her own relationship to marine life and which of their actions might have an impact on life below water and what he or she would like to change in his or her practice (professional or private, individually and/or collectively)
  2. In pairs, each person presents some elements of the reflection to their partner
  3. As a whole class, students present key reflections of their partner.
  4. Discuss things that were presented and share thoughts and discuss implications

Individual reflection: ask learners to individually reflect on the elements of their lifestyle which contribute most to climate change

Group activity/discussion. Discuss the challenge of finite resources. Direct the discussion towards our use of finite resources. You might ask: What kind of resources are we using in our everyday life? Could we keep going with the way we currently live forever? What are the limitations? What could we do about it?

Ask the students to discuss in pairs or groups first. Then collect some responses on the white/black board. 

Then ask the students: How can we best come up with ideas and responses to the challenge that soon we will run out of non-renewable resources?

Energy inspectors: The energy consumption at the school is too high and students undertake an energy consumption campaign for reduction of energy in the school and community. They suggest and adopt specific measures for energy reduction and examine how their life style has been energy dependent and impacted negatively on the environment.

Ask students to:

Discuss:

Individually, select a few items that you have either consumed, used, bought or had bought for you over the last week. For each item, consider its environmental and social impact and compare this impact with that of a substitute product.

Students divide into groups. Each group imagines a family in a different socio-economic class and role-plays typical behaviour. Groups share and discuss and reflect on the causes and implications of different behaviours identified. As a final activity, the teacher invites learners to situate themselves in a situation of energy poverty and collectively reflect on their feelings and emotions. Learners then relate their own daily behaviour with one of the performances. Then, le