LOLA
Looking for Likely Alternatives
TIPS & NOTES A didactic process to approach sustainability by investigating lifestyles. 1
introduction to LOLA ... Hello and congratulations! You have just decided to use
LOLA a pedagogical tool for teachers and students which assists them in the process of identifying, evaluating and documenting cases of social innovation towards sustainable lifestyles. If you want to know how The LOLA Project started... The LOLA process is a follow-up of the EMUDE research project. EMUDE (Emerging User Demand in sustainable solutions) is a action involving 8 design schools for researching, documenting and discussing local initiatives of social innovation. The very positive feedback from the participating schools in terms of cases collected but also as an involving and efficient process to raise student awareness on the themes of sustainability was presented and discussed in the second CCN conference in Bratislava. It resulted in the creation of the LOLA pilot project. Now the LOLA project is complete, and this is the result! If you want to now about how to implement the LOLA project... In the next pages, you will find Tips & Notes on How to use the LOLA’s Teaching Pack. It will help you on how to prepare the learning process, how to use the Reporter Book and Step-By-Step Cards. We hope you will have everything you need to create the learning experience as easy and fun as possible!!! A document in progress... This document is a draft version of the final tip & notes... We will improve it along the different experiences, LOLA workshop, implementation feedback, etc... Therefore don’t be surprised to find open questions, empty parts... On the opposite, if you have something to add, complete, suggest... please do not hesitate to send us your comments at lola@solutioning-design.net
IN PROGRESS... LAST UPDATE April 2008. send contributions to lola@solutioning-design.ne 2
how to use LOLA teaching pack... Phiew!! Let’s get to the didactic work... The LOLA project goes beyond the common pedagogical use of case studies and project work which tend to be limited to the immediate classroom context. The process brings the students into direct face-to-face contact with groups of people who question their current lifestyles and attempt to find constructive solutions. The project aims to be used in secondary schools, by children between 10 to 14 years old. The Teaching Pack is based on a set of Step-by-step Cards to help teachers in organizing the activity; a Students Reporter Books which assists the collection of cases by the students and this Tips & Notes booklet to suggest you how to implement and carry the entire process. We have divided the LOLA process into 5 steps: Teachers and pupils organize the didactic process together Pupils construct their own Reporter Book Pupils search for promising initiatives nearby Then they carry out interviews of the social innovators Finally pupils discuss their investigation results Each class decides its own combination of steps by which they can investigate their own neighbourhood, interview people trying more sustainable ways of living and acquire new perspectives on their own living patterns... To help you jump into the subject, in the next pages you will find a simulation of a case collection step by step (following the cards process) so you can imagine what is the work that the pupils may to perform. Ah! Don’t forget if you still have any doubts you can visit our FAQ either here or online... (in progress...)
IN PROGRESS... LAST UPDATE April 2008. send contributions to lola@solutioning-design.ne 3
how to use LOLA teaching pack... Let’s start at the beginning. If you browse around the Step-By-Step Cards... you will find the first one that looks like the one below. Here, you will find as short explanation of the LOLA process to be carried. Let’s take a closer Look...
This refers to the orange cards, meant for you to prepare the didactic process for each step
This refers to the white cards, meant for you and your students to decide how the process should go on within each step
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how to use LOLA teaching pack... Preparation card This is a preparation card. There are 5 of them. It will show you teacher the steps to achieve to move forward to each session of the step. Title of the Step... The drawings are here to support the texts and stimulate ideas...
Each text and image refers to an activity to be made in each step.
These are duties that you have a choice into adapting them for your class.. But you must not skip them! 5
how to use LOLA teaching pack... Session card This is a session card. There are 20 of them. It will show to your students the idea on what to do in each session of the Step. Title of the session... The icons here show whether it is field activities for small groups or a group activity in the class and whether it is a matter of hours or of some days.
Use the drawings to stimulate the students imagination. It’s a starting point to the discussion asking them “what do you see?”
Each drawing refers indirectly to the text below. Take advantage of it! Look at your life, how you eat, move, live...
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how to use LOLA teaching pack... Blank session card This is a Blank card. If you and your class come up with a new way of doing the session... Please do but... don’t forget to feedback your experience to the CCN/LOLA core group!!!
Make a drawing of your idea... it doesn’t have to be perfect, just make it understandable!!!
Put here a small description of your Brand new and personal session. Remember to take a picture and send it to us... 7
how to use LOLA teaching pack... Reporter Book This is a The Reporter Book, also known as the students guide of activities. Here, they will ďŹ nd the Objectives, Criteria and exercises to follow.
Encourage the kids to make the Reporter Book on their own, to cut a cardboard support and attached the pages with a cloth pin... (to be illustrated 8
This is the cover of the reporter book. Don’t forget to ask them to put their names!!
how to use LOLA teaching pack... Reporter Book... We can say that the Reporter Book is sort of «your guiding star». It’s the ready to use format of exercises of he LOLA process. There, you will find the key questions for each exercise and the workspace to do them. The Reporter Book will help your class explore different kinds of work. From the field of discussion and learning to interview to expressing their ideas in images, sketches and drawings. To help you to understand the case collection better, we have put in here one example for you to look at, all along the LOLA process, explained either by the pages of the reporter book itself, or the filled-in version presented here.
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Step 0
Lola supporting curriculums
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Step 0. LOLA supporting curriculums...
To get LOLA to really work, we need you to talk to your school administration about including LOLA in some of your courses. There are many good reasons to convince your school, headmaster, colleges... to start a LOLA process: Students take an active role about their learning process... They learn about sustainability issues. They develop communication skills Making field work, encouraging to broaden their world. it’s a cross-subject project Its learning by doing It’s made to adapt to each classes needs. It’s ICT platform based, a collaborative project between schools through the net. It encourages being critical about society and their own practices. .... And many many others you can come up with. So what are you waiting for to show Lola in your next meeting!
TO FILL IN: Make suggestions OF ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE.
IN PROGRESS... LAST UPDATE April 2008. send contributions to lola@solutioning-design.ne
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Step 0. LOLA in curriculums... Preparation card
There is a procedure to be found here. According to the notes taken from sophia:
TO BE MADE Think about your students and the time you have. What are you capable of doing?
Encourage the students to discuss if they agree or not to the process.
IN PROGRESS... LAST UPDATE April 2008. send contributions to lola@solutioning-design.ne 12
Step 1
Prepare the didactic process & identify sustainable lifestyles 13
Step 1. Prepare the didactic process... This Step is about preparing, so let’s prepare...If you have never hear about sustainable lifesyles, this is the right moment to start. Try to find information on books online and here in the Tips & Notesabout the subject so you can be prepared to answer your students questions and have a clear idea of what are you aiming at. If you don’t know were to start, don’t worry, further down you will find our tips. Then print and read all the Step By Step Cards and the Reporter Book. You can now decide according to your class capabilities and choose the different sessions that will take place in each of the five steps. Remember, this is a customizable tool! Build up the the cards in the order you have chosen putting the preparation card first and the sessions you have chosen in columns. This is the original setting, including all the cards.
With this you can explain the process to the students. This will be your work program that you can leave for exhibition in the back of the room. (this should be shown through illustrations...)
What does sustainability mean?
> To fill in as a reference not as a truth. Find a good link... Which are good sources (books or online) about good practice?
> www.youthxchange.com &others... Where can I find already existing cases? > To fill in as a reference: sustainable-everyday.net/cases
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Step 1. Prepare the didactic process... Preparation card
> To ďŹ nd more educational tips to put according to the subject.
Think about your students and the time you have. What are you capable of doing
Encourage the students to discuss if they agree or not to the process
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Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles... This are all group activities that will take less than a class hour. In this Step, explain what a sustainable lifestyle is, referring to it as “better was of doing for the people and planet”. Ask them about their daily life activities and how could they change them, or maybe start with an example like where do you buy your food or how do you move in the city; then build up the discussion...
Introduction - Why look for Alternatives? We all know that we need to be a bit “greener” and nowadays it almost seems as if it was a trend. But what does this really mean? And specially, why should we change our habits to more environmentally friendly ones? We live in a consumption and production society, in which industries produce and we buy or consume. Countries measure wellbeing and development by production levels and economic growth, kind of implying that if we produce, sell and buy more we will be better. But in this production and consumption habits we have generated quite a bit of problems and misbalance. We produce in the western world far more than what we can consume. In many countries there is famine while in others an amazing amount of food is wasted! To produce, industries need different kinds of resources. When we consume, we leave a trail in the planet, which is called an ecological footprint. … all of our actions have an impact on the environment because we use natural resources, use energy, and generate pollution and waste. The ecological 16
footprint is a way to report all our impacts on environment as a surface of land we need to generate what we consume (i.e. to generate raw material, energy, dispose waste...). If we scale down we can see this impact at a personal level according to our lifestyles, and measure the size of our ecological footprint. It varies with different individual and local lifestyles, which use up more or less land. For example a person in Africa has a far less small footprint than someone in Europe. Try and measure your ecological footprint, there are a lot of sizes (what do you mean by ‘size’? maybe put a note with some link where you can assess your ecological footprint?) available on the net. The basic issue is Earth’s ecological carrying capacity. How many people can live on the available habitable land? How much raw material can be extracted from a piece of land, and how much can we extract from a finite system? We only have one earth, and we cannot infinitely consume. If everyone lived as in America, Europe and other developed countries we would need 4 earths to maintain the amount of resources for them to be able to
Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles... regenerate before they run out!! See, we need to make our lifestyles and production ways more efficient, but not just to get a better price for the product but to make our materials less toxic, to reduce the energy needed to produce and to think about the entire lifecycle of the product and to reduce the trail that we generate. This leads us to the so-caled Factor 4. Factor 4 is the goal of being twice as productive with half the resources (materials and energy), leading to a factor 4 improvement in efficiency. Alternatively, practices which are just as productive with 1/4 of the resources or 4 times as effective with the same resources also count. Another way of phrasing the Factor 4 efficiency gain is that it reduces energy and materials usage by 75%1. But this is the cipher that optimistic give, because other experts argue for a Factor 10 or even a Factor 20. Without entering that debate between specialist, what we can say is that either 4, 10 or 20, the level of reduction of our impact to reach (respectively 75%, 90% and 95%) is far above what is achievable following the simple improvement of technological efficiency. Then how could we accomplish this? One way is pushing towards cleaner and better production, and the other way is to lower our personal consumption. But if we need to consume less and more efficiently, not only we have to choose better what we buy -and buy less- but also change our consumption way of life. This does not mean that we should go back
to the Stone Age, no! This means that we have to look for new and more sustainable ways of solving our problems that include our technical capacity achieved, only more efficiently (I don’t understand this sentence: ... problems that is not only relying on the more efficient technical capacity.). This is where LOLA kick’s in: If we look closer and more carefully at our society, beyond the mainstream way of consuming more and generating more waste, we canalso see groups of people that invent or adopt new and more sustainable ways of living... we have to identify and scout these lifestyles that produce less impact and improve well being because they are creating solutions for daily life that reduce our environmental footprint in one way or another. Once we can discover them, talk about them and maybe apply them in our own lives we may shift slowly our society without loosing quality of life. So let’s get started!! Find more information online in: International Insitute for Sustainable Development http://www.iisd.org/ Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org key words efficiency, sustainability, factor 4, ecological footprint The dictionary on Sustainable management http://www.sustainabilitydictionary.com/ The wuppertal institute http://www.wupperinst.org/globalisation/ The footprint network http://www.footprintnetwork.org
Wuppertal institute. The LAST concept was introduced in the book, Factor 4, written by L. Hunter IN PROGRESS... UPDATE April 2008. send1998 contributions to lola@solutioning-design.ne Lovins and Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and Ernst von Weizsäcker, founder of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment & Energy 17 1
Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles... Session card
1.1 start with problems. Many problems are available through different sources that can help your students realize that there is a lot of excess and over consumtion in our lifestyles, and that not all of our practices are good for people and planet.
These problems should adress the way we are producing, using and consuming products. The objective is to understand that there is a lot of over consumption all arund us, and we do not realize this. Find more problems on Anex 1.1
Some other sources to search for problems: - Planete Attitude, WWF - Nicholas Hublot, pour un pacte ĂŠcologique - List in progress...
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Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles...
An example: Cards were use to ilustarte problems. The title was printed on one side and the answer was printed on the other. The students were encouraged to think guess the answers.
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Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles... Session card
1.2 Look at existing initiatives There are a lot of them, believe us. We have a catalogue of over 160 in the SEP web platform! Showing the new lifestyles and discussing what they do, how, and the bennefits can be fruitful to understand different lifestyles from our own. In the Following pages, you will find a series of Sustainable lifestyles innitiatives. Take a look!
These kind of innitiatives are the ones that you and your students will investigate further in the process. The objective is to understand what kind of initiatives we are looking for: Find more initiatives and intitiatives that are good but are not what LOLA is looking for in Anex 1.2
To find more information and a full list of caces please visit: - Sustainable Everyday Project website at www.sustainable-everyday.net/cases - Book Creative communities, People inventing sustainable ways of living; Edited by Anna Meroni -Youthxchange website at www.youthxchange.com
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Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles...
Walking Bus, Milano, Italy
Solution The walking bus encourages children to walk to and from school in the safety of a group under supervision of one or more adults. Safe routes are created and become a fun part of children’s daily routine. They meet their friends, talk and play, and share experiences outside the school. Gradually this builds up the children’s autonomy and personalities. It is also good exercise, and frees up time for the parents, who would otherwise have to take the children to school. What’s more, it improves children’s road safety awareness, improves pedestrian safety, and creates friendlier neighbourhoods as people get out and interact with one another. Finally, it reduces traffic pollution and accidents involving child pedestrians.
The benefits
Society Walking to school means that people don’t use their cars; this reduces traffic, accidents and pollution, and eases congestion on public transport. On a social level, the system recreates the sense of neighbourhood that existed a long time ago but has been lost in big cities. Developing this system could see schools as promoters of new ways of living, involving the whole community and increasing its responsibility towards children. Environment This system reduces traffic jams, air and noise pollution near schools and makes the streets more pleasant to live in. It also reduces fuel consumption, thus improving the environment. Economy This solution both gives parents time to do other activities, and saves money on fuel. 21
Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles... Session card
1.3 Start with the criteria For understanding how do sustainable lifestyles take place, we must understand of what are the principal parameters that a case needs to have to qualify as such. These 4 criteria combine in a balance such that creates a LOLA case. Some of them actually have one criterion as a goal, yet as a byproduct you get other benefits enlisted here. Look out for this, because we need the presence of all these elements, but not necessarily in an even way.
The criteria are the ones that you and your students will investigate further in the process. The objective is to understand why we will be choosing some initiatives over others: Find more about criteria in Anex 1.3
To find more information about criterias for sustainable lifestyles: - To be filled...
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Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles...
criteria 1
criteria 2
criteria 3
criteria 4
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Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles... Session card
1.4 Start with good practices Good Practices are basically principles that can be followed in order to make our lifestyles more sustainable. Take a look at them bellow to discuss with your students, ellaborate and ďŹ nd examples, etc.
Good practices are ways of conducting our lifestyle more sustainably. The objective is to undestand wich are the ways that we can reduce our impact and also what are the practices that an innitiative must do. Find all our good practice guidelines in Anex 1.4
For More information about these principle and sustainable lifestyles: - Book: SUSTAINABLE EVERYDAY, Scenarios of urban life. 2003, F.Jegou, E. Manzini.
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Sessions 1: Identify sustainable lifestyles... Formulation of each principle: WHAT SHOULD WE DO? WHAT WOULD THIS IMPROVE? BRING PEOPLE AND THINGS TOGETHER REDUCE THE DEMAND FOR TRANSPORT
USE WHAT ALREADY EXISTS REDUCE THE NEED FOR NEW THINGS
SHARE TOOLS & EQUIPMENT REDUCE THE DEMAND FOR PRODUCTS.
GIVE SPACE TO NATURE IN THE CITY IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF URBAN LIFE
EAT ACCORDINGLY TO NATURE REDUCE THE IMPACT OF OUR NOURISHMENT
ORGANIZE OURSELVES IN A NEIGHOURGHOOD SCALE ADAPT TO THE EACH LOCAL SITUATION
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