This video showcases a bicycle recycling project called Maya Pedal, which is based in Guatemala.
Students will see how Maya Pedal uses old bicycle parts to create fuel-free mechanical devices for simplifying tasks, such as threshing grain, fetching water, or powering a blender.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This innovative recycling project makes use of discarded bicycle parts while providing people with a fuel-free machine that increases productivity.
The video description provides more information about Maya Pedal.
Additional Prerequisites
The video is in Spanish with English subtitles.
Ads may play before the video.
The link to Worldwide Cycling Atlas in the video description does not work.
Differentiation
Students could watch this video in a Spanish language class to practice vocabulary related to nature and climate change and to practice receptive listening skills.
Students could plan a recycling project to take commonly discarded objects and use them to make something useful for the community.
This 3-minute video gives a quick introduction to Maya Pedal, an NGO based in Guatemala that manufactures human-powered bicycle-derived machines (called Bicimáquinas) for various home and community uses such as pumping or blending. This is an inspirational resource and is recommended for teaching.
Standards
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.6.6-8 Draw on multiple disciplinary lenses to analyze how a specific problem can manifest itself at local, regional, and global levels over time, identifying its characteristics and causes, and the challenges and opportunities faced by those trying to address the problem.
D4.7.6-8 Assess their individual and collective capacities to take action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
ETS1: Engineering Design
3-5-ETS1-1 Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
HS-ETS1-3 Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.
World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (ACTFL)
Connections: Connect with other disciplines and acquire information and diverse perspectives in order to use the language to function in academic and career-related situations.
3.1 Making Connections: Learners build, reinforce, and expand their knowledge of other disciplines while using the language to develop critical thinking and to solve problems creatively.
3.2 Acquiring Information and Diverse Perspectives: Learners access and evaluate information and diverse perspectives that are available through the language and its cultures.
Cultures: Interact with cultural competence and understanding.
2.1 Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives: Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the cultures studied.
2.2 Relating Cultural Products to Perspectives: Learners use the language to investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship between the products and perspectives of the cultures studied.
