Online resources for Educating for Sustainability

Education for Sustainability is becoming strongly integrated into teaching and learning at Otago Polytechnic. Many staff members are discovering the links between their subject area and sustainable practice and successfully integrating this into their operations and teaching. The Sustainable Practice at Otago Polytechnic blog has started to document some of these advances.

There are a couple of other websites created within the Polytechnic to help those who are looking for resources, wanting to up skill their own understanding of Education for Sustainability (EfS) and looking for examples on how to apply some of the concepts.

Education for Sustainability wikieducator course is an elective within the Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Learning and Teaching run out of EDC. It can be done as a standalone course, is free to all staff members and is a priority for professional development training. It is an online course with some face to face sessions when their are a significant number of participants. It can be done over any length of time. At a minimum of approximately 8 weeks part time. Participants are encouraged to register with the facilitator and formally enrol when they near completion.

Another wikieducator site Sustainable practice 1 is an online resource rather than course. It documents a vague progression through generic education for sustainability ideas and resources. It also has a full description of an 8 week face to face course facilitated using the sites material on the discussion page. Staff are encouraged to utilise whatever bits of the site are appropriate to their teaching and contact the course facilitator for more information and copies of the power points etc for manipulation. The resource list at the end of the wikieducator site is a valuable, constantly added to list of just some of the resources that can be found on the Internet to assist EfS.

Photo's:
Big Cedar Tree, (tiny girl) Olympic National Park. Image by: http://flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2626561293/">woodleywonderworks
From the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio www.menzelphoto.com.