An article discussing how technology can help in teaching and learning about sustainability

Liebling, Henry

West, Genna

English

Name not available

8 ESCalatenewsOver the last 30 years it seems thatall human knowledge has beensucked through a microchip.  Wecan now instantly accessinformation which would have beenalmost impossible to retrieve beforethe so-called digital age.But what are the pros and consof this digital revolution? Is progressnecessarily good, or beneficial forthe planet as a whole? Is more reallybetter, or should we be content withless and slow down? The technological landscapechanges very quickly, and mosttechnologies have a limited lifetime.Each time two technologies merge,such as camera and phone, theybecome more than the sum of theirparts and people find new ways ofusing them.  The same effect occurswhen two or more pieces ofsoftware converge or ‘mashup’: justlook at the current proliferation ofWeb 2.0 applications (webapplications that facilitate interactiveinformation sharing).  The image onthe next page shows the ever-evolving sphere of applications andtools that work with Twitter: just oneof the many social networking sites.With the number of Apple iphoneapplications now moving towards100,000, will we, or have wealready, ended up with just one littlehandheld box that does almosteverything? And looking back atvinyl LPs, walkmans and variousvideo technologies, which lastedonly for a decade or two, how longwill it be before today’s currenttechnologies are replaced?What does this mean foreducation for sustainability? To some extent, advances intechnology have contributed to thelack of sustainability that we facetoday.  But this should be amotivation to ensure that we makeuse of current technologies topromote a more sustainable andenvironmentally responsible future.We can utilise advances intechnology to educate aboutancient wisdoms, existingsustainable lifestyles and sharesolutions in order to envision asustainable future.Dennis Meadows (2004)believes that any successfulsystem is one that can changereadily with “information [as] thekey to transformation”.  Henry Liebling and Genna West discuss how advances in technology can enhanceour teaching and learning about sustainability. Our heads ina tag cloud?ESCalatenews 9New ways of communicatingand sharing informationWe believe that interactivity is key toeducation for sustainabledevelopment.  Here is how theESCalate ESD website is trying toencourage the move from delivery tointeractivity: Social bookmarkingThe website uses the socialbookmarking website Diigo2 as aninteractive way to bookmark keywebsites.  Diigo is open to everyoneand allows users not only tobookmark and tag webpages, butalso to highlight parts of thewebpage and attach virtual stickynotes.  These annotations can eitherbe kept private or shared within aDiigo group.  We also share andcomment on our bookmarks in theDiigo group ‘Sustainable Education’3.   TagsTags are one or two-worddescriptors that can be assigned toweb bookmarks to remember keywebsites.  They are similar to keywords, but with more freedom, astag-words can be chosen by theuser.  More than one tag can beused, which gives more flexibility thanfixed categories or folders.  Tag listsLists of tags can be used by anindividual, group or even acrossthe whole of a social bookmarkingsite to help to classify and allowsimple searching.  There are prosand cons for both controlled taglists using a predeterminedrestricted vocabulary, and freetagging which includes the tagseveryone wants to use,sometimes called folksonomy4.Restricted tags can limit what youwish to classify, and free tags canleave you with thousands of tagswith little overlap and muchconfusion.We can utilise advances in technologyto educate about ancient wisdoms,existing sustainable lifestyles andshare solutions in order to envision asustainable future.  Gazing into the Twitterverse1.  Developed by Jess3 and Brian Solis.1 Jess3 and Brian Solis (2009) Gazing into the Twitterverse [online] Available: www.briansolis.com/2009/05/gazing-into-twitterverse/ [19/01/2010]2 www.diigo.com3 http://groups.diigo.com/group/sustainable-education4 The spontaneous cooperation of a group of people to organise information into categories.10 ESCalatenewsHenry helped introduce AgriculturalScience into the Zambian SecondaryCurriculum in 1970, leading science andthe school farm at Mwinilunga secondaryschool.  Returning to Lancashire in 1973with a growing interest in self-help,community and sustainability, he alsotaught for 10 years in an urban primaryschool. Henry now works for ESCalateas an Academic Consultant in ESD.Genna recently graduated from theUniversity of Plymouth, with a first classdegree in Geography and Spanish.  Shebecame interested in sustainabledevelopment whilst at university, as thestudy of sustainable practices formed alarge part of her studies.  She is workingwith ESCalate as part of the GraduateBusiness Partnership.Henry LieblingESCalate AcademicConsultantGenna WestESCalate GraduateProject OfficerWe have opted to experiment for aperiod of time by gathering keywords from UK education andproducing our own suggested list.Diigo also has a tag editor so tagscan be modified at a later date. Tag rollsThe website uses tag rolls as a wayto display the 10 latest Diigobookmarks5 as part of the ESDwebsite.  This page automaticallyupdates as new bookmarks areadded. Tag cloudsTag clouds are visual presentationsof a set of tags, in whichcharacteristics of the text, such ascolour or size, are used to representkey features like the frequency of thetag. The tag cloud arranges tagsboth horizontally and vertically,rather than listing them, to showmore tags and minimize scrolling.The tags can be sorted eitheralphabetically or by frequency.The ESCalate ESD website hasimported a Diigo cloud tag6 (shownbelow) which links to key resourcesand interesting websites. BloggingThe website has an external link to ablog created in blogspot7, whichcontains occasional diary entriesabout Sustainability in Education8.Readers are free to link into the blogand to post any comments. SearchingIt seems strange to think of a timewhen we didn’t have powerful searchengines such as Google and theeffect this has had on how we lookfor answers, ideas, information,holidays, gifts etc.The introduction of a searchfacility into the ESCalate main site,and the ESD site, had a huge impact,showing an almost instant andgrowing use of the sites.  It changedthe pattern of pages visited and theroutes taken, by allowing more‘parallel’ rather than just ‘branching’access, and new pages rose up therankings faster. Google TranslateOne unexpected outcome for thewebsite has been the increasingnumbers of visitors from othercountries many using GoogleTranslate, showing that language isno longer a constraint. The ESD siteis now able to communicate andshare information with people acrossthe world regardless of their nativelanguage.We are also starting to look at RSSFeeds, Twitter, and other Web 2.0applications in order to find new anddynamic ways to educate othersabout sustainable development. Byincreasing the interactivity of the ESDsite, we have attempted  to moveaway from the traditional push ofinformation, instead encouragingpeople to form their own views andengage in debates aboutsustainability.5 http://esd.escalate.ac.uk/newlinks6 http://esd.escalate.ac.uk/favorites7 www.blogger.com8 http://sustainableeducation.blogspot.comReferenceMeadows, D. Meadows, D.H. andRanders, J. (2004) Limits to growth:the 30-year update, Chelsea GreenPublishing Company.

Our heads in a tag cloud

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Limits to growth: the 30-year update,

http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2133/1/Heads_tag_cloud.pdf

Our heads in a tag cloud

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