Wachstumshormone

Apr

2

K-12 Activities: Monitoring Biological Diversity

Filed Under Activities, Biological Diversity, Outdoor education, Place-based Education, Schoolyard Classroom, Science, Sustainability | Leave a Comment

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by Roxine Hameister

Developing a biodiversity monitoring project at your school can help students develop many skills in an integrated manner. Here are some simple ideas that you can use to get your students started.

Children and teachers are being pulled in many directions. Children want to “learn by doing/’ but because of societal fears for children’s safety, they are very often not allowed to play outdoors and learn at will. Teachers are encouraged to meet the unique learning styles of all students but the classroom reality often means books and pictures rather than hands-on experiences. In addition, children are under considerable pressure to be thinking about their futures and what further, post secondary, education they might be considering.

Sometimes children just like science. Many are of the “naturalist intelligence” and enjoy learning how to classify their world. Activities that meet all these requirements are within schools’ meagre budgets and are indeed possible. These projects are equally possible for the teacher with little science or biology background knowledge. The science skills are readily picked up; being systematic about collecting and recording the data is the main skill needed. The curriculum integration that is possible from these projects range from field studies to computer skills, to art and literature; the entire curriculum is covered in these activities. Read more

Mar

15

Higher Education’s Role in Creating a Sustainable World

Filed Under Higher Education, Sustainability | Leave a Comment


by Carol Brodie

There are over 4,000 institutions of post-secondary and higher education in the United States, with over 14 million students.  In 1999, 2.3 million degrees were handed out. These technical schools, colleges, universities, and professional schools prepare the majority of the professionals who will work, teach, and live in our towns and cities.  The graduates of these institutions will affect future generations by their example and their teachings.  Their alma maters, therefore, play an important role in how society defines its priorities and goals, and accomplishes its objectives.

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Carol Brodie is a doctoral student at the University of the Pacific, exploring case studies of universities at varying levels of organizational environmental sustainability.

Dec

17

Grades K-2: Sustainability

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“The frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives” -  Indian Proverb

Science – How do Plants Help Soil?
Take two large baking pans (about 12 x 6 in.).  Place bare soil in one pan and line the other with grass sod.  Place the pans at a 20 – 25 degree slant in front of the class.  Have a hand-held hair dryer and a watering can or spray bottle ready.  First take the hair dryer and blow air from the hair dryer on the dry soil and then on the soil with grass.  Discuss the reasons for what is happening.  Using the same pans, pour/spray  water on the soil and grass.  Have students look for differences in the two pans.  Ask what would happen if it rained hard all day on the two pans.  again, discuss the reasons for what is happening.  Do other types of plants help soil? Is it important to have plants growing on soil.

Have the class walk around the school grounds looking for evidence of erosion and plant soil relationships.  What happens outside in areas where there is dirt with no plants growing on it?  Where does the dirt go when it is carried away by wind and water?  LIFE

Mathematics (& Science) – Sun Heat and Drink
You need several, clean, empty pop cans, 5-6 kitchen thermometers, some aluminum foil and a few different colored acrylic paints.  Paint the cans a variety of colors (black, white, red, green . . .).  Leave one unpainted and cover another with aluminum foil.  Fill the cans with equal amounts of cold water and set in full sun, either in a window, or in a sheltered place outside.  Take the temperature of water and record on a chart as a class, or individually.  Read more

Oct

22

Review: Ecological Literacy

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bioneers-cel-book2005Edited by Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow (2005; Sierra Club Books)

Review by Jaimie P. Cloud

This spectacular collection of essays by Fritjof Capra, Wendell Berry, Alice Waters, David Orr and Donella Meadows, to name just a few, is woven together with stories of the editors’ own journeys, over time, educating for sustainability. The book is organized into a system of four interdependent parts: Vision, Tradition/Place, Relationship, and Action. The reader can experience the book sequentially or can enter at any point and travel back and forth between the parts and between each essay and story. No matter where you enter, the book hangs together as a unified whole.
The editors have skillfully selected the authors and their essays to convey the essence of each of the four parts of book and have simultaneously used the essays to communicate the learning process in which they themselves have been engaged. Here’s just one of many examples:

“As we immersed ourselves in the life of communities and ecosystems, important strategies began to emerge. Through our collaboration with STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) we became aware of a nationwide phenomenon: family farms on the urban edge were going out of business for want of a market. We also knew that city kids around the San Francisco Bay were going to school hungry. On a map of regional problems, we highlight urban fringe farms at risk, malnutrition, solid waste generated by students throwing away their lunches, underachievement, and vandalism. See these all together on the map, we recognized them not as isolated problems, but parts of one overarching problem of disconnection: of rural communities from urban life, of food from people’s understanding of its origins, of health from the environment — and of problems from the patterns that perpetuate them.”

Both living systems and learning develop over time, and witnessing the congruence between the two is stunning. This book is classic and timeless.
Ecological Literacy is required reading for anyone who wants to understand what we mean when we say, “Education for Sustainability.” The core content and the habits of mind that characterize Education for Sustainability are seamlessly and elegantly communicated by many of our most revered champions in the way that only learner-centered experiential educators can do.

Jaimie P. Cloud (jaimie@sustainabilityed.org) is president of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education in New York City. This review originally appeared in The Communicator, the newsletter of the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE).

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