Sustaining Our Planet for Future Generations
Econnect
Summary
Increasingly, young people worldwide are participating in development in new skills around environmental conservation, are more active in ecological activities and even in progress to reduce the industrial level of pollution, yet there is no doubt that participation is very low and somehow adequate information is needed to enable all people equally to understand the problem of the planet's sustainability for future generations , this is how Econnect aims to objectively and sectorizedly inform everything relevant to environmental conservation, providing visual, informative and recreational support for the best development in both children, young people and the elderly.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Econnect is based on two virtual platforms. One is a platform for children and another is a website with data, news and activities where non-profit organizations encourage support for the environment, health and care. The objective of this project is to encourage the participation of the population either by supporting environmental health or avoiding being a health risk affecting the environment. The importance is that we currently live in an age where deforestation, environmental pollution, among other environmental problems are observed. Which exposes us to climate change and the loss of existing energy resources. It is vital to know that to reach different generations we must find an effective way in which people are interested in the subject, know the situation and the risks that we present, thus diminish the degree of ignorance with the subject.
With EconnectPlay we seek to raise awareness among the youngest, from ages where the development of their school training begins, where the teacher can incentivize in a more didactic way the classes related to the environment and the consequences that the misuse of resources can cause in the future.
For these children who are learning to read, they are shown a small story where it holds various illustrative videos to strengthen their understanding of the consequences of this problem. In addition, children aged 10 to 12 are taught a game of the lacquer in which there will be questions and several options where they can choose one of the multiple answers and thus advance to a goal. You can also play in team mode to exchange ideas and get better results. And thus incentivize other children to participate and be familiar with environmental issues.
With EconnectWeb we have the option to facilitate case training, people choose the country from which they belong, provide them with current information, activities that are recorded in each city organized by non-profit organizations, impact videos, etc. We hope to get small generations gradually involved in the subject, to know what is pollution, cause and effects, so that they create awareness and propose solutions in the future.
How We Developed This Project
Our inspiration and commitment came from environmental problems and the effect it can continue to have in the future if we don't raise awareness of the population. Most people know about the multiple and catastrophic consequences of the environmental problems that currently occur simultaneously, which have a major impact on the planet and therefore on all the beings that inhabit it, however, although over the years organizations have been created worldwide for the care and conservation of the environment; a certain level of knowledge still persists in some people, especially in future generations, so we decided to choose this challenge to easily but effectively communicate the problem that has been increasing over the years and also to report on the different solutions that each person can make from their means to mitigate environmental problems.
Unfortunately there is a broad picture of environmental concerns that affect the quality of life of all living beings, some more complex than others; so for the development of the project we focus on six mainly: climate change, environmental pollution, deforestation, energy, water scarcity and waste.
To address and communicate the different problems we use different software, for the development of the games we use Scratch which is a visual programming language that serves to create interactive stories, games and animations; In addition to facilitating the dissemination of final creations with others via web and Mobbyt, a tool that allows users to create games in a very simple way, is free to access and above all encourages learning while playing. For the website we first use Balsamiq cloud which is a web-based UI design tool for creating mockups, prototypes and to generate digital sketches of an idea or concept for an application or website, facilitates discussion and understanding before writing any code and you can work collaboratively and finally we use Wix which is a virtual tool to create web pages.
- Achievements using the Mobbyt tool.
For the awareness of many young people Mobbyt has multiple options to perform both educational challenge and play at the same time; for this project, a cartoon has been developed in which characters were chosen so that children can become familiar and that they tell them the different problems that happen in the environment such as deforestation, pollution, climate change and how they can be solved. We chose the following characters: parrot, cougar, a child (a), and a teacher.
The parrot and cougar will tell the child that it is passing in its habitat because of the different changes in the jungle, providing videos showing the felling of trees and their consequence.
They also explain to you about climate change and how children can help fight it. To view the comic you must access the following link https://mobbyt.com/videojuego/educativo/?Id=104650
If you are prompted for a game pin, please enter: 104650.
Part II
This game consists of answering questions about the environment, can play several teams and the one that hits the most times will reach the finish line. The link to access the game is as follows: https://mobbyt.com/videojuego/educativo/?Id=104643
If you are prompted for a game pin, please enter: 104643.
- Achievements using the Scratch tool.
We develop in this App three different ways of communicating the care and importance that our mother earth has for each of us, taking into account mainly the children who are the future and in this way can create various tools of protection and information, giving them the knowledge we can obtain great results.
1- Dialogue: At this point you can see two people an adult and a child. The adult has a conversation with the child giving a brief explanation about the land and the child as they inform him or her by asking questions of interest to him or her and gaining knowledge about how important environmental care is.
Link to access the dialog: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/432280014/editor
2- Message: This consists of a conversation of several friends, where they are in a park and see the huge amount of garbage that surrounds them, all together agree to clean that place to keep it clean. In the end they insist that we must become aware and take care of our planet so as not to pollute it anymore. Link to access the dialog: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/432341673/editor
3- Recycling game: This game consists of a beach that is full of organic and inorganic waste and the challenge is to place them in the right trash can, in this way we guide people (children and young people) on how important the 3 R (reduce, reuse and recycle) are for the well-being of the environment and how we can inform in a didactic and interactive way.
Link to interact with the game: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/432351203/editor
Problems: The main problems that presented were choosing the right learning platform for children, as we felt it was important to select the most appropriate ones to capture the ideas we wanted to communicate.
- Website sketch development
For the use of a particular diagram of what we intended to create, we used the Balsamiq cloud virtual platform, which allowed us to capture and put in order the ideas for the website.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The resources provided by NASA were used in the project as a source of information for our website, as they have countless very interesting articles and studies, and are constant in their publications so people will always have access to the last thing that is happening around the world.