ARIA
Next we spent some time working on our simulated island. It was a lot of fun!

CHRISTINE
We were given certain amounts of land to build our island.

MERIAH
There were poor, good and rich lands. We got to pick where the different kinds of land go.

ARIA
Everyone was enthusiastic and helpful, except Jeff who decided to be a loner...

MERIAH
Jeff made his own island.

JEFF
I didn't like the way certain decisions were being made, where lands would go and stuff.

ARIA
Together we built a realistic island, complete with geological features and water bodies.

CHRISTINE
We used our materials and decided who lives where and what grows where.

ARIA
We even got to build our own houses and plant our own gardens.

MERIAH
We got to pick what kinds of plants we wanted and how we were going to build our houses. We got to put as many mountains as we wanted and rivers where we wanted them and we got to name our land, mountains and rivers - it was so much fun!!!!!

CHRISTINE
To some point we made our island just how we want it to be. We really got into this making of the island. Of course Ken (Zeus) has some plans in for us...

ARIA
My favorite part of this exercise was the teamwork. It was great when everyone was working together and being creative - I loved it! I definitely look forward to continuing our work on the island tomorrow.

ZEUS SPEAKS

Commentary by Ken Eklund, moderator

In the "Footprint Island" game, you can't escape the ecological conse-quences of how you live - it all comes out of the imaginary island where you live. We began the game by building the island out of colored paper circles. Aria, Ivy, Christine, Jeff and Meriah are the players - I gave each of them 10 circles of land, 6 RICH (green), 2 GOOD (orange) and 2 POOR (gray).

The team did a lot more than just place their circles into an island shape - they added mountains, rivers, springs and other natural features. They were thinking ahead, and asked for a coal seam, an oil seep, and geothermal features on their island! Very imaginative.

An interesting thing happened early on, when Jeff got tired of the girls' "consensus-building" discussions and moved onto his own islet. And in the confusion he somehow swapped one of his RICH land circles for a GOOD and a POOR. I wonder what the outcome of that will be?

On the girls' island, there was much discussion over where each person should live. People wanted to live with a view of the lake, next to the stream, far away from everyone else, etc. There was never any question, however, that everyone should live by themselves in their own house...

Another interesting thing happened when we started to build houses. I told them they each had to cut all the forest on a RICH circle to get the wood for house building. And no one was willing to do it. They all came up with imaginative ways to cut less than a circle to build their homes. Ivy and Meriah used stone and driftwood, Jeff used mud... But Aria had the most impressive alternative, I thought. Right off the bat she asked, "Can't I have a smaller house?"