Earthy: Recycling for Education

Earthy is focused on solving the lack of environmental education in middle schools across the globe, through gamification.

The presented project consists of a multiplatform, 5-module app, developed through Visual Studio in a C++ programming base. It is an intersection of computer science, education, and ecology, which encompasses several recycling topics, such as its methodologies and importance, the locations of recycling centers in main cities worldwide, general ecological facts, and material classification, for their educational implementation in grades 6-8. Earthy combines an informational format with engaging mini-games such as snake, puzzles, recycling trivia, and a river maze, all adapted to ecology-related versions that connect the learned things in each module. This is all tied up by the main character: Earthy, an animated Earth that interacts with the user along with the levels.

Aside from the technological development, Earthy: Recycling for Education seeks to gain a presence in science middle school classrooms, and become a powerful tool for teachers to cover environmental education topics in a way that is engaging and different for the students, through a dynamic and active game learning environment.

Through this technological project, we are trying to contribute to lowering the lack of environmental education in middle schools. 

As reported by UNESCO's 2021 environmental study, Learn For Our Planet, only 19% of the primary and secondary education curricula of its 46 member states mention climate change or biodiversity in their programs, which shows that fostering a consciousness for climate change is currently an unaddressed problem in teaching.

On the scale of our community, belonging to the Mexican curriculum, ecology is not a core or elective subject until high school, and it can consequently lead to a lack of societal awareness or knowledge about how to take care of the environment, further perpetuating the cycle and contributing to the ongoing pollution, such as the one presented in the frequent bad air quality in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area, or the Chapala lake’s residue abundance, both relevant to where the project is stationed.

Our solution is specifically aimed at children ages 10 to 13 years old, in order to help them gain consciousness about our current environmental situation and implement actions such as recycling into their everyday lives. Nowadays, the future of the younger generations is compromised due to the potential lack of natural resources and excessive pollution in the next decades.

So, with this solution, children will be incentivized and will be given the opportunity to make a change in their daily actions, allowing them to contribute to a better world for us, all while paving the path for a more environmentally conscious society that will be able to sustain itself in the years to come.

We considered middle school because, by this age, students will start developing critical thinking skills, and can take action in their community or beyond, while still enjoying the game dynamics and understanding scientific concepts that require some level of complexity the younger children might not grasp.

In order to better understand middle school students’ needs, we are asking for the opinion of science and CS teachers at this level after making notable changes in the app, and we’re specifically working with the technology coordinator at our school (CEDI) in order to make modifications according to the topics that might need to be learned or reinforced. Apart, we have asked close family members and friends (generally eighth graders) to do test plays for some of the games, such as the Recycling Trivia, to check that the content complexity is adequate for the middle school level.

Aside from the consulting aspects, we have also signed up for the ISTE EdTech fair in New Orleans, which will help the product gain exposure and wider feedback from teachers internationally.

Our solution is currently at the prototype stage because our app is still in the development process, and we have not yet finished all of the modules the app consists of. Some of our programs for the minigames are working directly in the console and we are still converting them so that they can have a working graphic interface with SFML or similar libraries, and our animations are not completely done. Aside from our school and participating in contests, we have not yet contacted educational organizations to pitch them our idea, so the project is still in constant development.

Regarding what we have accomplished, our team has already completed half of the modulus (considering we are starting from a recycling standpoint), the main menu, most of the animations for the minigames, and the informational component that will be taught in the app.

Earthy: Recycling for Education can be described as a new project that relies on technology because, being a multiplatform app, we are relying on programming and software development to create our core product. Specifically, it is made up of a C++ programming base developed in Visual Studio, which combines traditional, algorithm-focused programming with graphic interface libraries such as SFML, along with hand-drawn animations made in Adobe Fresco, to create a unique solution.

This all contributes to the creation of 5 modules encompassing specific recycling topics (its methodologies and importance, recycling centers, ecological facts, and material classification), for their implementation in grades 6-8, considering gamification as a strategy in technological classrooms that could make use of devices such as iPads, laptops, or smartphones to enhance what's seen in class through the use of the project. Regarding the topic complementation, it can be either through the informational format of each module, or the app's ecological mini-games (snake, recycling trivia, a river maze, or memory puzzles), which could be used to make the classes more active and dynamic.

Given that we have not launched our project commercially yet, we are not currently serving a specific number of people; however, we plan to help approximately 500 students next year, considering that our project gets sold to two or three schools, including our current institution (CEDI) and other previous schools of our team members. This number is considering average classes of seventh and eighth graders, who be the ones directly impacted by the application.

By next year, when the app is completely developed, we would want to create an impact in the lives of middle school kids around several Mexican schools (two or three at the very minimum). By using the app, fostering an environmental consciousness becomes a priority for both the teachers and the students, and this can inspire communities to design more environmental school models, or implement recycling into their core programs, thus, leaving a lasting impact for the generations to come.

Our project might not be wide enough so that it mitigates the lack of environmental education across the whole globe; however, taking action is essential, and the app's implementation might help set a precedent of a working project for more ideas to be developed and for more attention to be paid on the lacking environmental education presented.

To measure our progress regarding the development of the project, we are constantly checking in with our high school's technology coordinator, who asks us about updates; but, as we have not yet launched our project, our team is not currently measuring the impact. In the future, we plan to run surveys on Google Forms with the students and teachers who made use of the app in the classrooms every six months, to see if environmental projects were started at the schools and if the students' climate change awareness has risen in any potential way.

Some of the specific indicators we plan to use are the ones corresponding to the UN Sustainable Development Goal of quality education, such as its target indicator 4.7, which states that by 2030, learners must acquire the needed skills to promote sustainable development, being what the project is mainly focused on.

Out of all the barriers that can be presented, our team is the most worrisome about market barriers, such as the lack of openness from schools we are not associated with towards our game because as high school students, our enterprise may not be taken seriously and we may be faced with constant rejection for the app's implementation, what may lower our overall impact. Aside from that, another barrier is that the game might not attract the students’ attention as much as we expected. Furthermore, future investors could refuse us because they do not see our game as viable or they do not visualize its expansion.

Our team is well-positioned to deliver this solution because we have already implemented gamification strategies for students to learn in the past. Out of our team of five, two of us have already participated in Infomatrix, an international software development contest, and project fairs such as Jalisco's Maker Faire, where we presented the project of "Safety's Digital Adventures", through which we planned to teach digital citizenship to PK-5 students, and received a generally positive response, what makes us capable of delivering a similar product with a different topic. Apart, we are all studying a technological high school, and have basic C++ programming skills that can help us better develop the videogame.

As high school students, it is easy for us to empathize and put ourselves in the position of middle school students, better understanding the solutions they might need. It is important to mention that we are also avid recyclers, what shows that climate change is a passion for the team and provides enough motivation to want to develop the project.

We do not currently have sponsors or partner organizations, but we are working along with our school, CEDI. Given that this is a project coordinated by the high school technology department, the institution allows us access to contests, pays the necessary software licenses, and is useful for us to contact teachers when we are having programming problems.