Exploring the city's transportation system.
Green Transportation Revolution
Contributed By: By Jenna-Lyn Zaino, Abigail Sewall, Susan Shiney and Emily Edwards, Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School
Revolutions have occurred throughout history, both in the form of revolutionary ideas and as conflicts. In this unit, students explore the concept of revolutions and what is meant by the term “green revolution.”
They do this through an exploratory educational methodology called a Learning Expedition, developed by Outward Bound. MELS is one of several Expeditionary schools in New York City. The foundational principle is that a city’s “rich human and physical resources provide unparalleled opportunity for learning and adventure. On NYC Outward Bound Schools’ Urban Expeditions, students travel NYC streets and neighborhoods to discover firsthand the forces that shape their city. They engage with people, food, places and activities that are very different from their own experience and weave community service and adventure activities into each trip. The expeditions can be aligned with school curriculum to provide an experiential approach to learning that complements content already being studied.” (Source: http://www.nycoutwardbound.org)
Throughout this interdisciplinary expedition, the focus is on the Green Transportation Revolution taking place in New York City and in other cities around the world. Students build on physical science concepts and skills to investigate how combustion engines, fuel cells and hybrid cars operate. Taking all they learned about these three different types of engines, students write a proposal to the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (substitute your city’s equivalent) proposing the engine type most suitable to help minimize the city’s expenses and pollution.
This expedition was developed for middle school. Concepts explored are easily transferable to high school.
(NOTE: Although this expedition focuses on New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, it is replicable in any city.)