SciTech News Volume 71, No. 2 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 5 Chemistry Division 8 Engineering Division 9 Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 12 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Section of the Engineering Division 14 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 16 Advertisements IEEE

A Curriculum for Training Extension Professionals in Energy Conservation Education.

Energy conservation is a relatively new educational program for the Cooperative Extension Service (CES). The shortage of training programs available to CES in energy education makes it difficult to properly prepare agents for energy conservation work. The purpose of this study was to develop a curriculum for in-service training of agents engaged in energy education. The procedure for achieving this purpose was used to identify the following: (1) Fundamental concepts necessary for energy conservation education. (2) Agents\u27 knowledge level of these concepts. (3) Agents\u27 perceived need for these concepts. (4) Agents\u27 training requirements. Through a mail questionnaire selected agents from 20 states were asked to indicate their knowledge level of 24 concepts and the need for including the concept in a training curriculum. The training requirement or gap was calculated by subtracting the mean need rating from the mean knowledge rating for groups being compared. A comparsion was made of the different groups\u27 response in the disciplines of heating ventilating, air conditioning, and buildings; economics and management; home economics and comfort; agriculture and transportation; and thermal science. The relative importance of disciplines was determined by comparing their mean ratings. An analysis of variance using the F test as used to measure statistical significance. A comparison of knowledge, need, and gap was used to develop the curriculum based on agents\u27 evaluations of energy related disciplines. The study revealed that training requirements varied when agents were grouped by age, sex, educational background, geographic region, work assignment, tenure, and amount of worktime in energy. Extension employees working in the field of energy conservation education can receive the proper training to improve their job competence by acquiring knowledge on the concepts in the suggested curriculum. Users could best fulfill the learning experiences proposed in the teaching plan by recognizing and compensating for individual differences in training requirements, knowledge level, and need. The curriculum is general and flexible enough to allow adjustments of training to meet the expressed training requirement of the individual or group being considered

Teacher's guide book for primary and secondary school

There is an urgent need for collective action to mitigate the consequences of climate change and adapt to unavoidable changes. The complexity of climate change issues can pose educational challenges. Nonetheless, education has a key role to play in ensuring that younger generations have the required knowledge and skills to understand issues surrounding climate change, to avoid despair, to take action, and to be prepared to live in a changing world. The Office for Climate Education (OCE) was founded in 2018 to promote strong international cooperation between scientific organisations, educational institutions and NGOs. The overall aim of the OCE is to ensure that the younger generations of today and tomorrow are educated about climate change. Teachers have a key role to play in their climate education and it is essential that they receive sufficient support to enable them to implement effective lessons on climate change. The OCE has developed a range of educational resources and professional development modules to support them in teaching about climate change with active pedagogy

Institute of Northern Engineering 2006 Annual Report

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR -- OVERVIEW AND MISSION -- CENTER PROFILES -- ORGANIZATION & CENTER LEADERS -- ARCTIC ENERGY TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY -- ALASKA UNIVERSITY TRANSPORTATION CENTER -- MINERAL INDUSTRY RESEARCH LABORATORY -- PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY -- WATER & ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH CENTER -- INE GENERAL RESEARCH -- ACCOMPLISHMENTS 2006 -- GOALS 2007 -- RESOURCES, FUNDING, AND EXPENDITURE

Transition UGent: a bottom-up initiative towards a more sustainable university

The vibrant think-tank ‘Transition UGent’ engaged over 250 academics, students and people from the university management in suggesting objectives and actions for the Sustainability Policy of Ghent University (Belgium). Founded in 2012, this bottom-up initiative succeeded to place sustainability high on the policy agenda of our university. Through discussions within 9 working groups and using the transition management method, Transition UGent developed system analyses, sustainability visions and transition paths on 9 fields of Ghent University: mobility, energy, food, waste, nature and green, water, art, education and research. At the moment, many visions and ideas find their way into concrete actions and policies. In our presentation we focused on the broad participative process, on the most remarkable structural results (e.g. a formal and ambitious Sustainability Vision and a student-led Sustainability Office) and on recent actions and experiments (e.g. a sustainability assessment on food supply in student restaurants, artistic COP21 activities, ambitious mobility plans, food leftovers projects, an education network on sustainability controversies, a transdisciplinary platform on Sustainable Cities). We concluded with some recommendations and reflections on this transition approach, on the important role of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and student involvement, on lock-ins and bottlenecks, and on convincing skeptical leaders

The latent potential of YouTube - Will it become the 21st Century lecturer's film archive?

YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) is an online, public-access video-sharing site that allows users to post short streaming-video submissions for open viewing. Along with Google, MySpace, Facebook, etc. it is one of the great success stories of the Internet, and is widely used by many of today's undergraduate students. The higher education sector has recently realised the potential of YouTube for presenting teaching resources/material to students, and publicising research. This article considers another potential use for online video archiving websites such as YouTube and GoogleVideo in higher education - as an online video archive providing thousands of hours of video footage for use in lectures. In this article I will discuss why this might be useful, present some examples that demonstrate the potential for YouTube as a teaching resource, and highlight some of the copyright and legal issues that currently impact on the effective use of new online video websites, such as YouTube, for use as a teaching resource.Comment: To be published in October 2008 issue of CAL-laborate (http://science.uniserve.edu.au/pubs/callab/index.html