My
project is on the cost of gasolin
e around the
country. Since the
price of gas has been going up so much lately, there has been a lot of
talk about alternative energy. It seems that no one can agree
on
any one alternative so my literacy project will have
students
investigate wind power.
Wind power has been in the news a lot lately, so I think this is something in which the students will be interested. It is also a local concern as Maryland is trying to decide whether to put Windmills up in the Western mountains of Maryland or off the Eastern shore.
I chose to use two websites, one written by an environmental group, Living on Earth, that is against wind power and very biased against windmills. I also chose South West Power, which is a supplier of wind turbines and obviously for wind power. I chose these websites because of they both have an obvious bias and they have opposing views on the subject.
When I looked for links to South West Power's web site, I found quite a few links from websites as a place to purchase wind turbines. The question to ask students is does this mean it is reliable information on the pros and cons of wind power? I only found one other link to Living on Earth and it was from another environmental group. The question here is whether an environmental group is an authority on wind power.
Click here is a copy of the lesson plan I developed.
Click here for a copy of the rubric used to evaluate the websites.
Click here to hear my podcast on this project.
Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions, Lisa Chantiny