Group items tagged

"1. The teacher is choosing the technology. It's not always possible, but when you can, let the students choose, and see what happens. Not all of them will be able to. Some need help; so let other students help them. 2. The teacher is choosing the function. This doesn't mean you can't choose the function, but if you students can't control the technology the use nor its function, this can be problematic: the learning is passive from the beginning. 3. The teacher is determining the process. To an extent you have to, but don't overdo it. 4. The technology is distracting. If the technology is more magical than the project, product, collaboration, process, or content itself, try to muffle the bells and whistles. Or use them to your advantage. 5. The technology isn't necessary. You wouldn't use a ruler to teach expository writing, nor would you use a Wendell Berry essay to teach about the Water Cycle. No need for a Khan Academy account and a fully-personalized and potentially self-directed proficiency chart of mathematical concepts just to show a 3 minute video on the number line. 6. The process is too complex. Keep it simple. Fewer moving parts = greater precision. And less to go wrong. 7. Students have access to too much. What materials, models, peer groups, or related content do students actually need? See #6. 8. The teacher is the judge, jury, and executioner. Get out of the way. You're (probably) less interesting than the content, experts, and communities (if you're doing it right). 9. They artificially limiting the scale. Technology connects everything to everything. Use this to the advantage of the students! 10. They're not limiting the scale. However, giving students the keys to the universe with no framework, plan, boundaries or even vague goals is equally problematic. 11. Students access is limited to too little. The opposite of too board a scale is too little-akin to taking students to the ocean to fish but squaring of

"A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth's climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century. On a 1987 voyage to the Antarctic, the paleoceanographer James Kennett and his crew dropped anchor in the Weddell Sea, drilled into the seabed, and extracted a vertical cylinder of sediment. In an inch-thick layer of plankton fossils and other detritus buried more than 500 feet deep, they found a disturbing clue about the planet's past that could spell disaster for the future. Lower in the sediment core, fossils abounded from 60 plankton species. But in that thin cross-section from about 56 million years ago, the number of species dropped to 17. And the planktons' oxygen and carbon isotope compositions had dramatically changed. Kennett and his student Lowell Stott deduced from the anomalous isotopes that carbon dioxide had flooded the air, causing the ocean to rapidly acidify and heat up, in a process similar to what we are seeing today."

"... The prediction is a pretty damn good one. The world is now about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was and carbon dioxide levels are at 415 ppm. The estimate was part of Exxon's "high case" scenario, which assumed fossil fuel use would quicken and that the world would be able to tap new reserves in the late 2000s from at the time unreachable shale gas. The memo also warned that the extra carbon dioxide would enhance the greenhouse effect and that an "increase in absorbed energy via this route would warm the earth's surface causing changes in climate affecting atmospheric and ocean temperatures, rainfall patterns, soil moisture, and over centuries potentially melting the polar ice caps." Honestly, it gave me chills re-reading the memo 37 years later. The company clearly described all the horrors we're facing now. The only thing its scientists got wrong was that what they called "potentially serious climate problems" wouldn't emerge until the late 21st century. So much for that. ..."

Mapa global interactivo que permite visualizar en tiempo real el viento, el clima, algunos contaminantes y otras condiciones de cualquier océano del mundo

"La acumulación de residuos plásticos que flota en el océano Pacífico entre California y Hawai tiene ya 1,6 millones de kilómetros cuadrados y pesa 80.000 toneladas métricas. Y sigue creciendo, según advierte un estudio científico internacional.Hasta ahora, se han detectado islas de plásticos en cinco áreas de los océanos de nuestro planeta, pero esta del Pacífico Norte es la más más grande.Según sus cálculos, esta isla flotante está formada por 1,8 billones de residuos, de los que el 99,9% son restos de plástico, incluidos trozos de redes de pesca, botellas, tapas, contenedores, juguetes e, incluso, un inodoro.Cada año, 2,41 millones de toneladas métricas de plástico se vierten al mar y, por el efecto de las olas, gran parte de este marterial se descompone en microplásticos, que son ingeridos por los peces y aves marinas."

"Olas de basura en las playas de Durban, Sudáfrica, después de las tormentas que han azotado la región provocando inundaciones. La basura ha sido vertida al océano por el río Umgeni. Un video subido a las redes sociales muestra botellas y basura flotando en el agua del río y en su desembocadura. "Ocurre cada vez que llueve mucho, es entonces cuando el problema plástico se hace especialmente evidente. La ciudad y muchas organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro trabajan duro para limpiar cada vez, a veces pasando semanas", dijo a la agencia Reuters Mike Frew, un residente local que grabó el video."

"La crisis ambiental que generan los microplásticos afectan a los océanos y a su bidoversidad. Aunque el hombre no es un ser acuático, también lo sufre directamente. Un reporte internacional concluyó que, por semana, los seres humanos ingieren cinco gramos de plástico. Sí, es correcto: sería como masticar y tragar un trozo del tamaño de una tarjeta de crédito cada siete días."