Group items tagged

"The founders of the Education Arcade at MIT stated that there are many intrinsic motivations for learning associated with games. The threat of failure is lowered. Games allow players to try, make mistakes or fail, and then try again without losing face. Discovery and application of learned skills in new contexts encourages exploration and experimentation. A sense of engagement continues during gaming. Computer games allow players to be stakeholders in the events that occur on the screen. Increasingly, there are a number of games being developed that help people learn about the issues involved in sustainable developement. Besides which ... they are fun!"

"The Endeavour Centre is excited to begin the Canada's Greenest Home project, a residential build in Peterborough, Ontario that we are undertaking with the students in our five-month, Sustainable New Construction certificate program. Throughout the design and construction of Canada's Greenest Home, we will make every effort to publicly detail the entire process on this blog, so please follow along. We are sure to have a steep learning curve, and we want this learning to be a legacy of the project."

Waterlife is an interactive story about the water cycle in the Great Lakes. Waterlife is a twenty part story through which students can learn about the role of water in our lives. Through the story students learn about things like fishing, pollution, invasive species, wetlands, and the politics of water conservation. When students select a part of the Waterlife story they will be able to hear narration, see visuals, and read the text of the story. Some parts of the story also contain links to external resources that student can explore.

"The Yarra Energy Foundation and The City of Yarra invites everyone who lives, works, studies or volunteers in the City of Yarra to seize power through the Yarra Project Zero to achieve zero carbon living, learning and earning by 2020."

"Climate change isn't an issue for any one government or any one region. Carbon pollution has taken a devastating toll across the planet, from floods in Manila to droughts in Australia. To learn about the global reach of the environmental changes caused by human behavior, take a world tour with the six videos that premiered during Climate Reality Project's 24 Hours of Reality: The Cost of Carbon."

"Climate change isn't an issue for any one government or any one region. Carbon pollution has taken a devastating toll across the planet, from floods in Manila to droughts in Australia. To learn about the global reach of the environmental changes caused by human behavior, take a world tour with the six videos that premiered during Climate Reality Project's 24 Hours of Reality: The Cost of Carbon."

TeachWild is a nationwide marine debris project being run by leading scientists from the CSIRO and universities together with teachers, students and employees from Founding Partner Shell Australia. Information collected by citizen scientists will contribute to a comprehensive national picture of the marine debris issue across Australia. This website is equipped with some of the most up-to-date information and learning materials available on marine debris.

"Milo an 11 year old schoolboy from Vermont in the United States started a project to reduce the use and waste of disposable plastic straws. As well as encouraging children to say no to straws, through Milo's project, restaurants and food outlets are now asking their customers if they need a straw, rather than automatically putting one with each drink. 'Do you need a straw? "

We all know how much emphasis is being placed on green energy strategies these days. The folks over National Geographic recently teamed up with GE Power & Water and the Center for Science to release Plan It Green: The Big Switch, a new cloud based online gaming community where students come together to learn more about the importance of recycling and how eco-friendly habits that can help save our environment. 

The good news is that U.S. students will for the first time receive instruction on climate change following the adoption last Tuesday of new science education guidelines. The guidelines also take a firm stand that children must learn about evolution, the central organizing idea in the biological sciences for more than a century. (Even though some extreme right-wingers choose to deny that reality.)

Check out this PDF from the UK's Agency of Design, entitled Designing with Energy. It provides real learning tools and perspectives that I suspect students would find engaging. It asks, and addresses, questions about our energy lives that we don't even know to ask, like do you know how much energy went into making the chair you're sitting on? The authors of this publication look to improvements in design and manufacturing to reduce the amount of energy embedded in our stuff.

"The first online learning course on Climate Change for the Secondary Teachers is now available. This innovative training kit, entitled UNESCO Course for Secondary Teachers on Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development (CCESD) is designed to give teachers confidence, through a series of six-day programmes, to help young people understand the causes and consequences of climate change today."

"Food writer Hilary McNevin is half way through the Live Below The Line challenge, feeding herself and her two children for $30 over five days. It's been challenging and confronting, but most of all an eye-opening learning experience."

"Free teacher resources and engaging student toolbox brings sustainability to life through learning activities, video, images, stories and units of work across the entire Australian Curriculum."

"Post Carbon Pathways: Towards a Just and Resilient Post Carbon Future Learning from leading international post-carbon economy researchers and policy makers This report draws on in-depth interviews with leading international researchers, policy makers and activists on actions needed to drive the rapid implementation of large scale post carbon economy transition strategies."

Wind Energy: learn about it in less than four minutes.

"When I was little, my mom made everything fresh. We picked fruits in the summer, and she grew so many of her own vegetables. I knew, secondhand, that pasta sauce also came out of a jar, but I had no idea why you'd want to eat it. When I was about nine, I insisted that I wanted to eat Chef Boyardee Spaghetti-Os because my friends always got to eat them. I longed for this particular forbidden fruit, without really having any reason to want it besides the fact that other kids got to eat it. Eventually, my mother agreed, but I couldn't even manage to choke down the Spaghetti-Os I had longed for - I thought they were so gross! The handy infographic below takes a look at how important it is to educate kids about food choices and eating healthy. So many kids don't know that real food doesn't come out of a box. Keep reading to learn more."

"The interactive maps allow you to zoom in or out, to select a specific mode of transit to examine, and provides a color-coded key as well as roll-over notes that will give you an idea of the percentages of people using that method of travel. Play with the maps of these cities to learn about the transit habits of people in your area. Or, if you're planning on relocating, see if one of these cities accommodates walking and biking to work or if cars rule the roads. There are many ways these interactive maps offer information: we hope they give you some interesting insights!"

"Increasingly the things we throw away have value. In a consumerist world, with diminishing resources, rubbish is being recycled like never before. The recycling industry is now worth $US500 billion a year and it employs more people worldwide than any other industry except agriculture. Trash is no longer just an environmental problem, it's an economic opportunity. We learn how the stuff of our past is helping to fuel the demand of tomorrow."

"President Obama's Science and Technology Advisor, Dr. John Holdren, explains the polar vortex in 2 minutes-and why climate change makes extreme weather more likely going forward. Learn more at "

"Published on Jul 26, 2013 To learn more about plastic marine debris and how YOU can make a difference, please go to: http://www.healthebay.org/plastic"