This interactive web tool will allow students to answer questions about their personal choices and living conditions, see the many ways their choices affect their ecological and carbon footprints, and adjust their answers to gain insight into the changes they could make to reduce their individual footprints.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This resource provides insight into the many activities and choices we make each day that require energy, space, and resources.
Students will see that they can make a difference every day.
Additional Prerequisites
It would be beneficial for students to have a basic understanding of what an eco-footprint or carbon footprint is and know how to read a bar graph or pie chart.
Students will see their results in a pie chart, bar graph, in the number of Earths, and in their personal "overshoot" day.
Differentiation
This is a quick online "quiz" that can be accessed without signing up, and it can be retaken over and over to see the impacts of different choices.
The resource is suitable to analyze individual carbon footprints. The calculator is user-friendly and contains relevant climate indicators and controls. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Economics
D2.Eco.1.6-8 Explain how economic decisions affect the well-being of individuals, businesses, and society.
D2.Eco.1.3-5 Compare the benefits and costs of individual choices.
