Unit 1: How Does Industry Alter the Global Environment?  Understanding the Problem   
             Instructor's Guide to Activities
 
Goal
The activities in Unit 1 (1) heighten the student's sense of place and sense of connection to both local and global industrial activity, (2) emphasize how industrial activity brings about local and global environmental and social change, and (3) encourage students to interpret the changes that technological advancement has produced throughout the world.
 
Learning Outcomes
After completing the activities associated with this unit, students should: Choice of Activities
It is neither necessary nor feasible in most cases to complete all activities in each unit.  Select those that are most appropriate for your classroom setting and that cover a range of activity types, skills, genres of reading materials, writing assignments, and other activity outcomes.  This unit contains the following activities:
 

Activity 1.1:  They Don't All Have Smokestacks --  In-class discussion 
Activity 1.2:  Shirts, Shoes, and Watches  --  Mapping exercise 
Activity 1.3:  Between Utopia and Dystopia  --  Film review and interpretation
 

Suggested Readings
The following readings accompany the activities for this unit.  Choose those readings most appropriate for the activities you select and those most adequate for the skill level of your students.

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Activity 1.1:  They Don't All Have Smokestacks
 

Goals
This activity facilitates discussion on the linkages among technology, industry, and global change. Students consider industry in a broad sense in a brainstorming session, identify the important local industries in the community, and discuss how the local industry might have links to global change.
 
Skills

Material Requirements
Flip chart, notepad, or overhead projector to record information for use in a later activity (optional)
 
Time Requirements
25 minutes
 
Tasks
This is a starter activity intended to get students thinking about how industry in general is connected to global change and, more specifically, how the businesses in your town or community are linked to global change.  Begin the activity by asking students the following questions:

1. What sorts of resources and what sorts of wastes are associated with the following industries?
 
tourism  agriculture  military/defense
film/entertainment  construction (e.g., homes)  fast food chains
 

2. Can you name some industries with strong global impacts that have the following characteristics:

After you have considered these questions briefly, ask the class to select a local industry, preferably one that is important to the community and/or to the families of the students in the classroom. Important industries may the largest regional employer, a growth industry, a highly visible industry because of a recent event, or an industry with a good reputation. Ask students to brainstorm for a few minutes about the potential impacts that the local industry has on the environment.  Encourage them also to think about the industry's activities in a global context. Does the local industry affect the global environment?  Where do the various resources used in the industry come from? Where do the wastes go?

Note:  You may want to record the information from the brainstorming session on an overhead transparency, a chalkboard, or flip chart for use in Activity 2.2.
 

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Activity 1.2:  Shirts, Shoes, and Watches
 

Goals
Students examine local-to-global relationships by locating on a map where various items they own have been produced.  This map can be further developed by adding the social and environmental conditions associated with industries in various places (see Activity 2.5).
 
Skills

Material Requirements Time Requirements
20-25 minutes
 
Tasks
Place a world map at the front of the classroom.  (Use the map in Supporting Material 1.2 to create an overhead transparency or enlarge it to create a poster-sized map.)  Ask students to examine the label on the shirt of the student sitting next to them as well as the label on their own shoes and watches to determine where the items were made. Ask each student (in a large class, select a few students) to use a color marker or thumbtack to indicate the origin of each item, on the map. Use a different color for each product (i.e., red for watches, blue for shoes, green for shirts).  Since many countries will be marked more than once with the same color, the class should be able to see a distribution of the origin of each item. Discuss the patterns visible on the map and ask students to consider the relationship between their present location and the place where the items were produced.  Use the following questions to guide the brief discussion:

1. What major regions of the world are not represented?
2. Why are watches made in the Philippines or shoes in southeast Asia?
3. What are the environmental, economic, and/or social consequences of global markets?
4. Are you accountable for the environmental impacts resulting from the production of items in other countries?
 

Alternative version
Instead of focusing on shirts, shoes, and watches, ask students to determine where the food they eat in one day comes from.  Students will need to keep track of everything they eat during one day and investigate where the products originate.  Remind students that many packaged foods list only the site of distribution on their labels -- not where the products were actually made. You can ask students to prepare their own maps to bring to class (provide Supporting Material 1.2 as a hand-out) or use 15 minutes or more in class to map the locations as suggested above.
 

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Activity 1.3:  Between Utopia and Dystopia 
 
Goals
Students evaluate and respond to a film that graphically portrays the environmental and social impacts of the modern, global, industrial culture.
 
Skills

Material Requirements Time Requirements
2 class periods (100 minutes); 87 minutes for the film and additional time (10-15 minutes) for discussion
 
Tasks
A thought-provoking conclusion to this unit is to watch the popular underground film, Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio. Depicting a view of modern American society from the perspective of Native American ideals, the film explores the largesse and imbalances of technologically driven lifestyles to reveal the chaos and disorder that come from the mechanical world view.  Viewers will find the film to be intense with penetrating minimalist music by Philip Glass; only one word is uttered throughout the entire film -- a chanting of the film’s title “koyaanisqatsi.”

Beginning and ending with a slow motion observation of a rocket launch, Koyaanisqatsi takes viewers on a ride across the sacred landscape of the Hopi people in the American Southwest.  The starkness and serenity of an untouched land is then shattered with image after image of industrial and urban settings.  People are reduced to the scale of ants, their buildings to piles of rubble.  Flows of people, cars, and products quicken and quicken with the tempo of the music reaching a crescendo when, like the line by Marx, “all that is solid melts into air.”   From utopia to dystopia, the film provides a prophetic image a possible future.

At the film’s conclusion, we are presented with five definitions of the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi, including:

The message of Koyaanisqatsi is clear: if we continue to let technology overwhelm human-environment interactions, global change will occur in a manner that is detrimental to all living things. The sacredness of the land will be destroyed; settlements will outsize human scale; and our lives will take place at a dizzying pace.  It is clearly a crazy life that calls for another way of living.  Take at least two class periods (50 minutes each) to show the film to the class.  Instruct students to pay particular attention to film’s main themes and to contemplate how other groups of people unlike themselves might respond to the film’s message.

After the film is over, use the remaining time to ask the class the following questions:

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