Increasing
Environmental Awareness of Water, Waste, and Land Issues in Appalachian Ohio
(WWL Ohio)
through a High School Student Contest of Computer-Simulated Environmental
Models
A project funded by the Ohio Environmental Education Fund of
OhioEPA
Co-PI with Dr. C. Liu of Computer and Electrical Engineering
Dept.
Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
Project objectives
The
goal of this project is to increase awareness of current environmental
challenges and issues in Appalachian Ohio among high students, their parents,
and the public at large in Meigs County and Athens County. Innovative adoption of a cutting edge educational tool
named Alice will be used to achieve this goal. (Alice is an educational 3-D Authoring and Modeling System recently developed
by Carnegie Mellon University.) Specifically, sample computer-simulated environmental
models will be developed at Ohio University and will be used in various high school classes in Meigs County and Athens County to help teach topics related to environmental issues. In
addition, eight student teams from Meigs High School and Athens High School will each develop a computer-simulated model of a local environmental
issue such as septic tanks and the Sunday Creek Watershed problems,
and will compete in the WWL Ohio Contest that will involve the general public.
Winning teams will then build exhibits based of their computer simulations,
which will be displayed in Athens County Library and the Kennedy Museum of Art
in Athens, Ohio.
The
overall project objectives are to:
- (Obj1) involve about 500 high school students in two
high schools and improve their awareness of environmental challenges in
Appalachian Ohio to 60%;
- (Obj2) involve about 32 students in the WWL Ohio
Contest and improve their environmental awareness to 100%;
- (Obj3) involve parents of the 32 student contestants
and improve their awareness of local environmental issues to 70%;
- (Obj4) involve an estimated total of 400 library and
museum patrons and improve their awareness of local environment issues to
50% through a one-day contest and two one-week exhibits in Athens County
Library and the Kennedy Museum.