Education for Sustainable Development: K-12 Resources

Víctor Bedoy-Velazquez, Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico
Hermila Brito-Palacios, University of Guadalajara, Mexico
Alejandro Valenzuela, University of Guadalajara, Mexico
Donald Wayne Carr, University of Guadalajara, Mexico
Ana-Isabel Ramirez-Quintana Carr, University of Guadalajara, Mexico
http:// www.educacionambiental.cucba.udg.mx/juega

Demonstration: Demonstrations - Session 2

The decade of education for sustainable development will start in January 2005 supported as a resolution of UNESCO in October 2003 with the Earth Charter as an important ethical framework http://www.earthcharter.org). This project poses new challenges for educators asking "How can I teach about sustainability?" Teaching the values targeted in the Earth Charter is the principal goal of this web site. Teachers are the ones who create the materials for teaching sustainable development. The academic Group "Environmental Education and Sustainable Development" in Mexico, based at the University of Guadalajara has come up with this web-based project as an answer to old needs the team has encountered. Since 1990, a group of professionals in agronomy, biology, communication, and education, have worked as a team to develop educational programs. Out of these programs we single out two:

1. the Masters Program in Environmental Education at the Distance since 1998, and;
2. the Continued Education Program on Environmental Education.

This Continued Education Program has been available during the last three years where K-12 teachers get training on environmental education. Two thousand teachers have participated in this program so far. In these workshops there has been produced a series of materials for education on sustainable development that have not been capitalized due to the lack of a program to gather, distribute, test, and use the materials produced in these training sessions.

In June 2004, during the Latin American Consultation Tool Kit (for the web), meeting held in Monterrey, N.L. Mexico, we decided to contribute with our educational resources to this global endeavor of the Earth Charter for the next ten years. For our web-site, we focus on addressing the needs that professionals in basic ducation may have. Currently we are developing this web site in Spanish: http://www.educacionambiental/cucba.udg.mx/juega. The aim is to present it in MW05.

The web site is envisioned as a tool to help educators (teachers, parents, extension agents) to teach about the sustainable development at the k-12 level. Currently there are not many web sites that have this vision of serving this educational purpose and in Spanish. There are many challenges we face that we can foresee. Just to mention some:

1. web access is not available in many Mexican schools;
2. teachers need support and training to find the materials on the web and use them in the classroom, or parents at home;
3. the work load is "already too much."