Education for Sustainability | Computing for Sustainability

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Desire unmatched by skills equals disempowerment for computing students

July 20, 2010

At the CITRENZ conference last week Dobrila and Mike Lopez presented an interesting paper on sustainability worldviews of incoming students at Manukau Institute of Technology (pdf). Their paper aimed to replicate our study of Otago Polytechnic students (summarised in post “Can’t rely on geeks” here, from original paper). This replication aimed to cement the generalisability […]

A world without sustainability?

May 31, 2010

“It’s pretty, but is it art?” asks the Devil in Rudyard Kipling’s The Conundrum of the Workshops. The Dunedin foreshore has recently had the addition of a set of giant carved molar teeth, funded by a public art grant from the Council. Much of the Dunedin public is up in arms – “they’re hideous” claim […]

Lessons towards a showcase building

February 23, 2010

We’re starting to retrofit one of our buildings as a showcase of sustainability. I’m thinking about Schendler’s advice to find your biggest lever and pull on it. As an educational institution we need to do more than just have a sustainable building. For us, our biggest lever is to use that building to create a […]

EfS: separate or integrated? – some readings

December 17, 2009

Wals and Jickling (2002) argued that there is no universal remedy for the reconstruction of education for sustainability. Some institutions, they said, will choose to add on to existing programmes, others will opt for a more revolutionary approach. The European ‘Bologna process’ aims to make academic degree standards and quality assurance standards more comparable and […]

Congratulations everyone involved in the Sustainable Habitat Challenge

November 23, 2009

I had the honour of being the warm-up act at the Sustainable Habitat Challenge Awards dinner on Friday (see ODT list of winners). It was a fantastic night, and not just because of the wine, music and train ride. The projects described were fabulous. Although I appreciated the “alternative” buildings, the ones I enjoyed […]