Week 3- Interdependence

Interdependence main definition is the way in which two or more living things depend on each other to grow and remain healthy. There is three components to this topic that can impact the world we live in: environmental interdependence, social interdependence and economic interdependence.  Touching on environmental interdependence, it is becoming increasingly apparent that every species has a function to fulfil in the sustaining web of life. A food web is basically a process that many animals and humans go through to gain their food. For example, plants getting eaten by small water insects, that get eaten by small fish, who get eaten by larger fish who then gets eaten by us, humans. However, after our directed group study task it has become apparent that the ocean is increasingly becoming an area of pollution caused by humans. due to chemicals being leaked into the water and rubbish being dumped, we are causing harm not only to our wildlife but to ourselves. These dangerous chemicals not only kill the fish but can be spread through the  for web causing a mass amount of harm. As well as this, the ocean can be a place that suffers from interdependence due to over fishing and hunting. This not only impacts interdependence environmentally but also economically as fisherman are being forced to sell their boats due to the little amount of income they are getting, in some cases not even enough to feed their family for a week. This was part of our research for our directed group study task that can be shown here in an infographic:

https://padlet.com/louise_mckie/pybl2vzwsv0b

To be able to complete this infographic, we had to complete the reading within the Living Blue Planet report 2015. I had to pick out relevant and key information within the text which developed my reading skills, research skills and my critical literacy skills. I also had to analyse the graphics within the text and look at certain pictures to gain some understanding of the text.  Overall, I developed my ICT skills as I have never created an infographic before and it took some time to get use to the format.

In this first input of the interdependence topic, we visited two different local farms- an organic farm and a technology based farm. The biggest lesson that these farms taught me is that farmers rely heavily on the economic factors of interdependence to be able to make an income. The first farm I visited was a highly commercial farm that used technology as their main source of production for milk. The cows were also kept indoor and a fully automated feeding system was used to deliver the cows feeding. The second farm I visited was a smaller farm with more traditional ways of farming. The farmer explained that he converted to organic after times of financial strain. Due to money problems, it was predicted that countries such as China was in demand for more milk to be produced. However, unfortunately this was not the case and farmers were producing way too much milk to sell that it ended up going to waste. Many farms all over the UK were put out of business due to the price of milk being dropped to force people to buy it. Following on from the farm visits, we were asked to compare the two different farms and the methods they used to support their income. This input has allowed me to develop the skill of observation and comparison. To be able to justify why the farmers are using two very different techniques and why they are both working well. Overall, I feel that this part of the input was extremely interesting and i feel that this is something that children would love to do. By visiting the farm with the kids they could complete a follow up activity for first level learners by getting them to write a story based on the perspective of a cow living on one of the farms. They would have to explain their daily routine and their feelings about the farm. The E’s and O’s I would use for this lesson would be: