FOMENTING A SEA CHANGE IN EMPOWERED
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION TO MAKE DISCOVERY OF CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTIONS FUN AND EASY
Solutionaries,
an ambitious climate change education project for young people of all ages by
Carolyn M. Scott of Cool Planet Labs,
released this week its Book One - The Storybox Adventure, a real world quest to
restore the planet, now available for Android on Google
Play.
Solutionaries was conceived as a series
of interactive storybook apps - the mission of the project being to engage a
wide audience in exploring, sharing and mapping climate change solutions. The
series is being developed by a small team of award winning creatives and
environmental educators.
Designed for elementary and middle
school children and their families, this first-of-its-kind interactive
experience takes players on a quest to discover seven Solutionaries (climate
change heroes) who have implemented strategies to solve climate change -
collectively their real world solutions could save our planet. They were chosen
from a list of over 100 individuals nominated by leading environmentalists and
their identities will remain a mystery until the players who participate in the
interactive adventure discover them.
Follow Lily, a ten-year-old girl in who
is on a quest to save the Dartmoor Warbler and its one egg. At the Warbler’s
request Lily goes on a mission to find seven climate heroes who have solutions
that could collectively solve climate change. Clues to the identities of the
heroes are hidden in this beautifully illustrated eBook.
Participants find clues to the
identities of the seven Solutionaries hidden throughout the eBook that was written
by award-winning playwright Kristin Carlson, with creative direction and
illustrations by Carolyn Scott.
The collaborative game play employs the
SOLE (Self-Organized Learning Environment) method pioneered by Dr. Sugata
Mitra, 2013 TED Prize winner, who uses Big Questions to have children explore,
share and open their minds to a world of wonder. The project has adopted Dr.
Mitra's child-led approach for children to collaborate and share solutions that
could transform our world.
Celebrated artists from around the world have created “treasures” as part of the game play. Each treasure is dedicated to one of the seven Solutionaries. The artists include Margaret Atwood, Lily Yeh, Fran Forman, Mia Tavonatti, Giulio Menossi, Marie Gibbons and Ron Seivertson.
Celebrated artists from around the world have created “treasures” as part of the game play. Each treasure is dedicated to one of the seven Solutionaries. The artists include Margaret Atwood, Lily Yeh, Fran Forman, Mia Tavonatti, Giulio Menossi, Marie Gibbons and Ron Seivertson.
The Solutionaries project is part of a
larger vision: to build an interactive climate change platform on the web that
will allow young people and their communities to crowd source, share and map
climate solutions.
The Case For Action
According to CPL (Cool Planet Labs),
climate change is the greatest environmental challenge we face. Organizations that are taking actionable
steps to address climate change challenges work within a highly fragmented and
often resource-poor environment: they compete for supporter dollars and actions
in a very inefficient manner. Social
networking solutions and social gaming can be used to massively effect climate
change action, but no single solution integrates either into a single climate
change action framework. The public is bombarded with online headlines about
climate change and yet there is no source of aggregated climate data and
solutions that is readily available online. Current strategies for sharing
information often result in overwhelm, passivity and denial. A single effective, easy to use and fun
online network that allows these organizations and their supporters to
participate in massive scale online collaboration is the only way to stem the
tide of this crisis and reduce the cost of doing so at the same time.
The Solution
Cool Planet Labs is designing a climate change solution library, an engaging cross platform, web-based environment for the exchange of information on climate change solutions that can be implemented by individuals and small community groups, and a space where the community can post, access, explore, and share information on implementation.
The multi-media Library provides an
interactive Google Earth-like interface that offers a rich user experience as
well as wikis for tools and solutions, forums, connections to topic experts,
and a mini social game series for an enhanced user experience and engagement.
The online environment is expected to
engage the collective intelligence of the crowd in sourcing, exploring, and
evaluating new climate change solutions, thus empowering the individual to
conduct his/her own education, find his/her own inspiration and share his/her
own environment and adventure.
The long term vision is to foment a sea
change in empowered environmental action to make discovery of climate change
solutions fun and easy.
Visit Solutionaries to learn more or download here
About Carolyn M. Scott and Cool Planet
Labs
Carolyn M. Scott, Executive Director at
Cool Planet Labs, is an environmental educator and award-winning filmmaker, who
is passionate about mobilizing people, especially young people, to support and
implement effective, action-oriented, community-based solutions to global
challenges.
Cool
Planet Labs is a “think and do” tank of environmental education creative
leaders in the Internet, dedicated to mobilizing millions of people around
climate change solutions.
They are devoted to the application of
massive scale online collaboration to address climate change, including the
discovery of new climate change solutions and the distribution and
dissemination of existing ones. They are committed to foment a sea change
through environmental action and their approach includes cutting-edge social
networking solutions and proven means of building online communities.
Their social networking platform
includes online simulation environments tailored to address the issues of
climate change, and provides a powerful platform for social change.