A World without Oil

Today while I was catching up on my blog roll, I stumbled onto this website "World without Oil".

In May 2007, over 1,800 people combined imagination with insight to create World Without Oil (WWO), a realistic simulation of the first 32 weeks of a global oil shortage chronicled in 1,500 personal blog posts, videos, images and voicemails. World Without Oil was an alternate reality game – when submitting their stories, its players pretended the oil crisis was really happening.

Even though the game is now over, you can still access the lesson plans they created so you can run your own world without oil unit. I thought that this would be a great idea to incorporate into my "If I could change the world" project. So I have now created a group within change the world and I am inviting you to join it!

It's week one: Oil reserves have just run out in the Middle East and refineries are shutting down worldwide. From this day forward the only oil available is what is left in storage. Here in New Zealand petrol prices jump straight to $3.50 a litre...

Think...
What would happen in the first week?
How much oil does the world actually use in a day?
What is it used for?
How would this affect your life?

Join us a changetheworld.ning.com/group/worldwithoutoil and contribute your ideas...

Handipoints is very handy!

I found out about this particular website thanks to Suzie Vesper, from the Petone Foreshore Cluster. She is great at finding these little gems!

Handipoints is an online task and goal chart system for kids. You can create custom charts with tasks that your child does each week. These could be household chores, homework or even exercise! Your child then ticks off the items they have done each day and you as a parent get to grade them (if you wish). Set up some goals/rewards for your child to aim for and it tracks their progress for you.

I signed up Lily (7)and Gabe (4), our two kids to see what their reaction would be. They both have spot charts on the fridge at the moment, and we wanted to see if this be more engaging for them. After sitting down with each of them and choosing some tasks (making the bed, getting dressed, brushing teeth etc) they got to choose some things they wanted to have as a reward. Lily chose a few things, for example, some baking time (50 points), and her big goal is a barbiegirl mp3 player (500 points). Gabe chose a new batman toy and a new train.

In addition to powerful parenting tools for Task and Goal management, Handipoints features HandiLand, a fun virtual world where kids adopt their own cartoon cat and use their points to buy clothes and gear for their cat. Lily loves these sorts of things so this was just fantastic she thought. I was surprised to see that Gabe was really into it as well, each day he asks to see how 'his cat' is doing...

I really liked the way you could set up custom tasks, goals and rewards for kids, and that rewards did not have to be 'things', they could be quality time activities and such.

This could even be used in the classroom as a behavior managment tool...

Anyway, Lily earned enough points the other day to cash in one of her low level rewards but she chose to keep saving to get to the 'big prize'... will keep you posted...