This design challenge moves your students from passive to active learners through a cross-curricular, hands-on team challenge in direct correlation to real-world issues of water conservation. By creating prototype desalination plants and companies, students in grades 6-8 will understand how substances are separated, the need for freshwater conservation, and ultimately how a desalination plant works.

Going Blue: A Teen Guide to Saving Our Oceans, Lakes, Rivers, & Wetlands provides a close look at our oceans and waterways and our role in protecting this water planet.

This lesson plan utilizes Google's My Maps and real data compiled by the World Resources Institute to examine eutrophicatic events around the United States and countries across the world.