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"It seems only fitting to explore the role of questions in education by asking questions about the process of doing so. I propose that we start with the customary way of framing this topic and then proceed to questions that are deeper and potentially more subversive of traditional schooling. 1. WHICH QUESTIONS? To begin, let's consider what we might ask our students. The least interesting questions are those with straightforward factual answers. That's why a number of writers have encouraged the use of questions described variously as "true" (Wolf, 1987), "essential" (Simon, 2002), "generative" (Perkins, 1992; Perrone, 1998), "guiding" (Traver, 1998), or "fertile" (Harpaz & Lefstein, 2000). What the best of these share is that they're open-ended. Sometimes, in fact, no definitive right answer can be found at all. And even when there is one - or at least when there is reason to prefer some responses to others - the answer isn't obvious and can't be summarized in a sentence. Why is it so hard to find a cure for cancer? Do numbers ever end? Why do people lie? Why did we invade Vietnam? Grappling with meaty questions like these (which were among those generated by a class in Plainview, NY) is a real project . . . literally. A question-based approach to teaching tends to shade into learning that is problem- (Delisle, 1997) and project-based (Kilpatrick, 1918; Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Wolk, 1998). Intellectual proficiency is strengthened as students figure out how to do justice to a rich question. As they investigate and come to understand important ideas more fully, new questions arise along with better ways of asking them, and the learning spirals upwards. Guiding students through this process is not a technique that can be stapled onto our existing pedagogy, nor is it something that teachers can be trained to master during an in-service day. What's required is a continual focus on creating a classroom that is about thinking rather

"No country in the world currently meets the basic needs of its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. Our research, recently published in Nature Sustainability (and summarised in The Conversation), is the first to quantify the national resource use associated with achieving a good life for over 150 countries. It shows that meeting the basic needs of all people on the planet would result in humanity transgressing multiple environmental limits, based on current relationships between resource use and human well-being. The chart below demonstrates the profound challenge nations currently face. National performance on seven environmental sustainability indicators is plotted against eleven minimum social thresholds for a good life (see About page for further details). Ideally, nations would be located in the top-left corner with no biophysical boundaries transgressed and all minimum social thresholds achieved."

"El estudio realizado por el Goddard Space Flight Center de la NASA anuncia el derrumbe de la sociedad moderna en un par de décadas por factores asociados a la población, clima, agua, agricultura y energía. 4.0 K compartidos 3791 193 11 Todo sobre NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) es la agencia espacial de los Estados Unidos. Tierra La Tierra es el planeta dónde habitamos. Es el tercer planeta en distancia desde el Sol en nuestro Sistema Solar. Es el mayor de los cuatros planetas terrestres de nuestro Sistema Solar, seguido de Venus, Marte y Mercurio. Tiene un único satélite natural conocido simplemente como Luna. Es actualmente el único planeta donde se conoce la existencia de vida y al tener el 71% de su superficie cubierta de agua, también el único con este equilibrio del vital elemento. Se calcula que tiene unos 4.500 millones de años de existencia y que la vida surgió unos 1.000 millones de años después. Los seres humanos son una de las especies dominantes de este planeta, con aproximadamente 7.000 millones de individuos organizados en unos 200 estados soberanos independientes. Jamás los egipcios y romanos hubiesen pensado en que sus fuertes imperios se acabarían, o los patriarcas imaginado que el notable poder del imperio turco-otomano, o el de la monarquía rusa llegarían a su fin. Pero como dice la canción "todo termina", lo triste es que, siguiendo las citas musicales "todo lo que termina, termina mal" (según Calamaro) y el Apocalípsis comienza a escapar de la literatura fantástica para hacerse realidad. La NASA afirma que "el desgaste de los recursos debido a la tensión puesta sobre la capacidad de carga ecológica" y "la estratificación económica de la sociedad en ricos y pobres", son las razones que han jugado "un papel central en el carácter o en el proceso del colapso en los últimos cinco mil años". El estudio "humanos y la naturaleza dinámica", más conocido como Handy,

Artículo en inglés... "Mobile devices as teaching tools are becoming a more and more common part of the American education experience in classrooms, from preschool through graduate school. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 58% of U.S. teachers own smartphones - 10 percentage points higher than the national average for adults. Those teachers are building that tech-savviness into their lesson plans, too, by embracing bring-your-own-device policies and leading the push for an iPad for every student. In 2013, an estimated 25% of U.S. schools had BYOD policies in place and it's reasonable to assume those numbers have risen in the past two years. ..."

"Since 1995, four years after India opened its doors to free markets, according to India's National Crime Records Bureau, NCRB, nearly 270,000 Indian cotton farmers have killed themselves. The 'Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India,' has placed the death toll for a cumulative 16-year at 256,913 deaths, the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides of this kind in human history. "

"Industrial Ecology: Some Directions for Research May 1997 - Pre Publication Draft Prepared by: Iddo K. Wernick and Jesse H. Ausubel Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University with the Vishnu Group for the Office of Energy and Environmental Systems, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory"

"To mark last month's World Teachers' Day (sponsored by UNESCO , the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), photographers from Reuters took pictures around the world of educators with their students in a telling exhibit of the very different circumstances under which children attend school. Here are 15 pictures taken by Reuters photographers, revealing the spectrum of "classrooms" - from those with literally no resources to those well-stocked and housed."

"Imagine you could use any kind of small head difference in a river or canal. The power those drops contain might surprise you. We created a technology that can make use of all these small waterfalls or rapids in a way that's safe for the environment. Gone are the days that communities had to choose between having power or fish to eat. Our robust and fish friendly vortex turbiness will generate energy 24/7 at an incredibly low cost of energy. That way you can have a project with high return on investment that improves the world just that little bit. Now, if you look at a river or canal, you'll notice that it's full of these small cascades, that's how nature builds rivers. We have created a distributed turbine system that can combines a large amount of turbines into one big virtual hydropower powerplant. These virtual hydropower plants can be as large as 10MW in power output. That's the power production of a small city! We can do this because our civil structures are designed to be easy to install, and the electronics and robust power take-offs are designed to keep working with minimal maintenance. The energy produced can be directly connected to your appliances or machinery, and at the same time connected to the national distribution grid, so you can inject the unused power to it, maximizing the revenue through a net billing connection."

"This game is a budget management simulator inspired by the low salaries and high living costs in Chile. At the time of developing this game, the minimum wage in Chile was $301,000 (approximately $400 USD) and according to the National Institute of Statistics of Chile (INE), more than a half of workers in Chile earn $400,000 or less."

¿Somos donde nacemos? ¿Hasta qué punto? ¿Por qué?

"El nacionalismo es una posición irracional, discriminatoria, insostenible y caprichosa. Todos los nacionalismos. Inevitablemente, al subrayar diferencias artificiales y separar esfuerzos en la lucha por una sociedad mejor, es indefectiblemente reaccionario y regresivo, sin importar cómo se disfrace."

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