Sustainability and Technology

This is one of my biggest concerns, and finally I read about it on Edudemic.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this though.  While it does talk about rare earth elements and how important they are, I guess I was hoping for more about the how and the why to teach it.

Many tech teachers (well the ones that I know) all feel this is important, but with limited explicit tech teaching time, we may miss out on these opportunities to talk about recycling products that have things we desperately need if we are to continue this style of life.

 Some rights reserved by Dell's Official Flickr Page

While I think it is great that companies like Dell (above) and Apple (when you search for it) have recycling programs, I think we have to move beyond that for tech.  By making producers responsible for the goods they create, making the source responsible for recycling, upcycling, repurposing whatever we might be better off.

For those tinkerers and people who want to mess around with the device, they can pay a premium to own it, but other than that, I think our devices should be rented, returned, upgraded and then brought back into our hands, or our classrooms or whatever.

Here in Cambodia, we can't access these types of recycling programs, so we are just contributing to massive waste by living in a place with no access to these programs (I do go to Singapore often, and would bring my products there, but it seems like a hefty price to pay both with engine fuel and cash to recycle something small like an iPad).

Awhile ago I read in the Big Issue that many Australians have extra mobile phones just hanging around the house, so all of these rare earth elements can't be extracted. If producers were responsible, I'm sure it would cut down on this type of waste.

Not really sure where I'm headed with this, but how can we teach about sustainability while using technology, any ideas?

How do you know when you stop messing around?

Messing Around

In the Living with New Media report messing around involves experimenting and exploring and doing things just to learn more.  It is more of a tinkering culture, a figuring things out, something I feel is where I am almost stagnant at least in some aspects of tech.  I've been playing around with code, but I definitely haven't geeked out.  I've been working on the blog, but again, more tinkering and exploring.

 Some rights reserved by 1lenore

Tinkering and Connectivism

Tinkering fits nicely with a connectivist viewpoint.  Connectivism as George Siemens describes it is a fuzzy process which involves tinkering and no longer just happens at school or just from humans.  We can tinker with things, or converse with people and our knowledge grows. 

The ability to see connections between things, and create connections is a valuable skill according to Siemens. We need to help our students make those connections, and technology is one way we can connect people to sources of information. 

  

Tinkering with things allows us to experience, which we can then share with others to not only consume knowledge but to produce it.

 Some rights reserved by ell brown

Slow Down

For me, slowing down and seeing or making the connections is an important step in the process. Slow education involves making those connections and deepening our understanding, maybe even "geeking out". We are sharing our process together, so we need to take the time to develop our community, learn together, tinker together, wonder together.  Connectivism doesn't see our learning as dumping information, it is a process of looking for connections, meeting people, learning more, and directing ourselves. As Siemens said we need the opportunity to plug into knowledge when we don't have it, but sometimes I think it's important to slow down and see where the outlet actually is. 

I think we stop messing around when we start to dig deeper into things.  Slowing down, looking at systems and making connections is a great way for us to start making these connections.