20 Time is a concept that lets a student or employee use work time to research a topic that they are interested in. 20 Time lets students express themselves by learning more about a subject that they care about and creating a some sort of product relating to what they learned in the end; whether the end product be a new idea that could change the world or simply raise awareness of a problem, 20 Time teaches students how to be more independent in their learning. The essential question that we have asked is "what is the drought?". We hear about it on the news and we’re told to conserve water at home, but what does that really mean? From here more questions popped up: does turning off the tap while we brush our teeth really making a difference in the severe drought? Are we the ones to blame for the lack of water in California, or does the blame fall on the farmers in the valley that are using up gallons upon gallons of water daily? What are ways that we can reduce or even reverse the drought? Why aren’t we using solutions that people have come up with already? All these questions are why we have chosen to make our 20 Time about the drought because it is a topic that both of us are interested in. Our goals are to find out what people think of the drought, learn more about the drought so we can educate ourselves and others about the effects of the drought on our society and agriculture in California, and find and fix possible solutions to the drought. We will measure our progress through this blog by posting weekly about what we have done in relation to our project that week. Moving forward we plan to interview students about their opinions of the drought and then seek the truth about the drought from water conservation officials in California. We will record their responses and put in our experiences into a documentary that we plan to show during our presentation at the end of the semester. We also plan to look into the solutions that are currently being presented for the drought and try to figure out why we haven’t already implemented those solutions in California.
(Desalination: one possible solution to drought)