Why, you might ask? As graduates of SCN 400, Sustainability Science for Teachers, they view this as their calling, and a responsibility worth tackling head-on. As one former student put it, “I think one of the biggest barriers for infusing the curriculum with sustainability topics is simply ignorance. Until this class, I really never stopped to think on a regular basis what kind of impact world events (both local and foreign) had on me and what type of change I can make by simply sharing critical thinking skills, research skills, and establishing scientific facts as the basis for deep inquiry into the challenges of our time.”

This session provides an opportunity to discuss the practice, design, and process used to create meaningful and impactful digital stories. As a case study reference, we will highlight digital stories created for a new course called, Sustainability Science for Teachers. This talk aims to be process-driven with the goal of articulating specific steps that went into creating our digital stories. While the authors acknowledge that there are many ways to create and develop digital stories, we suggest that an iterative development process may offer a successful model worth reviewing, discussing, and replicating.

EOEP information is published in ASU’s Professional Learning Library.

These programs take a proactive approach to ensure that future teachers are prepared not only in traditional subjects like reading and math, but also in areas that will help them become more aware and engaged citizens locally and globally.

The Sustainability Science Education project has been awarded ASU’s 2015 President’s Award for Sustainability for the development and success of a new innovative course, SCN 400 Sustainability Science for Teachers. ASU’s Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development also recognized the team with the 2015 Vision Award for their research and content.

University Service-Learning won the Arizona Governor’s Volunteer Service Award, considered the highest honor given for volunteerism in the state of Arizona. It has also been awarded ASU’s 2015 President’s Medal for Social Embeddedness, which recognizes superior accomplishments in identifying a community need or issue and developing mutually-supportive partnerships between ASU and Arizona communities to advance successful solutions.

Filling a need for sustainability science education for future teachers

Why do future teachers need to learn about how iPhones are produced, or examine the life cycle of jeans? Because the future of the planet just might depend on it. Not on the jeans or the iPhones, but on people who understand the implications of the creation and consumption of these products, and who are able to troubleshoot the complex challenges that arise as a result.

Founded in 2011, the Sustainability Science Education Project’s mission focuses on the idea that attaining a sustainable future can be achieved one classroom at a time by informed and dedicated teachers. To carry out this mission, Lee Hartwell and his development and research team at ASU’s Biodesign Institute produced a unique course, Sustainability Science for Teachers (SCN 400), one of the first programs in the United States to clearly and systematically address sustainability topics, problems, solutions, and divergent thinking within a teacher preparation program.

“Preservice teacher education represents a promising means to achieving large-scale social transformation,” said Lee Hartwell, Distinguished Sustainability Scientist and 2001 Nobel laureate.

The new course utilizes a hybrid of online and face-to-face classroom instruction, digital storytelling, and hands-on assignments to help students not only learn the concepts but also actively take part in sustainability practices in their own lives. As a result, preservice teachers come away with the skills and knowledge necessary to teach kindergarten through 8th grade students about the challenges of improving human health and well-being while reducing human exploitation of natural resources.

“We’re very conscious of the fact that teachers have the power to educate the next generation of scientifically literate, globally minded citizens. In order for them to do that, however, the teachers themselves require a more in-depth study of sustainability issues,” said Leanna Archambault, associate professor in Teachers College. “When we analyzed student learning, we saw significant growth in the depth and breadth of awareness of the many issues involved.”

The goals of the course were to engage preservice teachers as citizens so they could experience first-hand how individual efforts can make an impact, and provide them with ideas and tools to employ these concepts in their future classrooms.

“When people hear the term ‘sustainability’ they tend to think of things like recycling and reducing carbon emissions. But there’s actually so much more to it than that. Complex problems such as population growth, poverty, access to clean water, nutritious food, and energy – these challenging issues demand creative, adaptive learners who can develop and implement novel solutions,” said Annie Warren, program director and ASU doctoral student in the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes.

Sustainability Science for Teachers (SCN 400), is a program requirement for all elementary teacher candidates at ASU, and is now wrapping up its fourth academic year.
(Source)

The Experiment

In the experiment, the students watched a number of videos – a common practice in many online courses. They compared traditional online quizzes, taken after the students had watched the entire video, with HapYak on-video (embedded) quizzes, in which the questions popped up periodically throughout the video.

Here’s their summary of the course and the test: “Sustainability Science for Teachers is a newly developed hybrid course at Arizona State University that was crafted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers, developers, designers, educators, and content experts. It incorporates the use of high level video content with engaging homework assignments to build students’ sustainability literacy capacity. The use of a video annotation software called HapYak was deployed in an alpha test during the 2013 summer.”

The Results

To view the results, please visit the original article.

Archambault, a Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College assistant professor specializing in K-12 online education, has long studied the role of technology in education – an area that is becoming increasingly important as many education institutions begin shifting content to non-traditional mediums such as the Internet. This area has become so important, in fact, that the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) has focused for the last three years on ways in which teachers and administrators are able to improve the quality and accessibility of online education.

Each year, iNACOL recognizes outstanding achievement in five different areas as part of its Online Innovator Awards, and in 2010, Archambault had the unique distinction of being part of a small team of researchers to be given the Important Research by an Individual, Team or Organization award. The team’s study “Examining the Use of Laboratory Activities in Teaching Science in an Online Environment” analyzed and evaluated the effectiveness of this strategy. Archambault and her peers who were also recognized for various achievements were hailed by the president and CEO of iNACOL, Susan Patrick, as helping pave the way for non-traditional educational methods.

The research conducted by Archambault and her team was the first of its kind to evaluate the specific practice of teaching online science classes with a laboratory component. Such research is the focus of Archambault’s studies, centered around online learning and improving student achievement through better practices. Her courses for teaching students at ASU emphasize these ideals, and Archambault incorporates her knowledge of technology and education to encourage educators to utilize these tools to promote student learning.

An interesting trend she has noticed in her own classroom is a contrast to the myth concerning technology use being related to generations in terms of a willingness to adopt online teaching methods.“I have seen this in my classes as a number of non-traditional students are interested in getting into the field of online teaching. I’ve also witnessed how young teachers, considered to be “digital natives, ” use technology in their personal lives, but are ill-equipped for the challenges of the 21st century classroom,” Archambault notes the disparity between being able to use technology for one’s own productivity versus implementing it “to leverage its affordances for teaching content to students.”

In addition to teaching a variety of courses at ASU, Archambault is also currently conducting research on field experience placements in virtual school environments and editing a book on mentoring teachers in K-12 online teaching positions. Archambault emphasizes that online learning is not for everyone, and while some students benefit from the “inherent flexibility” and ability to move through curriculum at one’s own desired pace, others struggle with its format. This opens the door for many misunderstandings, which have created some resistance to expanding online educational opportunities.

Story by Lauren Proper
Jenni Thomas, jenni.thomas@asu.edu
602-543-5951
Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Industry leaders and prominent authors and futurists will join ASU faculty and selected students for an intense exploration of emerging technology and the implications of those breakthroughs for people and environments.

“This is a time for humanists, artists and designers to leave their ivory tower and seek to integrate their knowledge in interdisciplinary teams that design the future,’’ said Thanassis Rikakis, a professor and director of the ASU School of Arts, Media and Engineering in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and one of the principal organizers of the event.

The three-day conference has attracted such internationally prominent changemakers and futurists as author Bruce Sterling (“Beyond the Beyond”), Sherry Turkle (“Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other”), Bruce Mau (“Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,” “Massive Change Network”), Neal Stephenson (“Snow Crash,” “The Diamond Age,” “Reamde”) and Stewart Brand (“The Whole Earth Discipline”).

“I’m amazed at the nerve we seem to have hit with ‘Emerge.’ We have people flying in from all over the world and the country – on their own nickel – just to be part of it,’’ said Joel Garreau, a key conference organizer and Lincoln Professor of Law, Culture and Values at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. “We have a Nobel Prize winner who’s happy to be a participant in a workshop – not even its leader. And there he’ll be right next to extraordinarily talented students, faculty, and people from the community,” Garreau said.

“Emerge” is built around eight areas where ASU research is breaking new ground from disease destroyers to human enhancement. These Futures@ASU presentations will lead into interdisciplinary workshops where one of the most exciting results of the conference is expected to happen.

“Emerge” is sponsored at ASU by the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, the Office of the President, the Prevail Project of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, the School of Sustainability, LightWorks, the Center for Nanotechnology and by Intel.

For more information, including times and locations, visit emerge.asu.edu.
Susan Felt, susan.felt@asu.edu
480-965-0478
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

A statement from the Mata Amritanandamayi Math said that around five lakh people were expected to attend the celebrations, titled ‘Amritavarsham 60’. Math’s board of trustees vice-chairman Amritaswarupananda Puri said on Saturday that the core part of the celebrations would span for three days, starting September 25. On September 25 and 26, an international summit, titled ‘Our Villages, Our World: What Can We Offer?’, will be held on Amritapuri campus of Amrita University.

The inaugural function will include addresses by A P J Kalam, eminent scientist M S Swaminathan and Nobel laureate Leland H Hartwell. Many other renowned scholars, senior government officials, business leaders, environmentalists, scientists and educationalists will be present. “The concept is to use the ideas generated by the summit and implement them in our 101 village adoption programme,” the swami said. “On September 26, Modi will unveil a number of new scientific inventions and prototypes by Amrita University that we are offering to society. These include a wireless ECG-monitoring system called ‘Amrita Spandanam’ and a personal safety alert system, that has more than 15 features, for women in distress,” he said.

The main project to be unveiled this year is a programme to adopt 101 villages across the country, with the intention of making them self-reliant role-model villages, the swami said, stating that this would be launched on September 27. On the evening of the same day, Oommen Chandy will inaugurate a set of new charitable ventures of Mata’s ashram.

Published September 22nd 2013 by The New Indian Express