GreenHeart+Education

module review 3

Ben Morse Module Review 3: []

The organization that made this module(s) is called GreenHeart Education
 * What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating?**

The mission statement of the organization is “Greening the heart of education… one teacher at a time.” The mission of this organization is to revolutionize how students are taught, centering education on sustainability and environmentalism while keeping in sight of socioeconomic issues that affect how people interact with our environment. This site is constructed as a teacher resource and not really for direct use of students. “Greening the curriculum means ensuring that students are capable of taking on the 21st century challenges of global warming and climate change (the most serious threat ever to face humanity), social inequities, unsustainable lifestyles, and the urgent need to switch to a renewable energy-based economy.” “Greening the curriculum means being open to Nature as Teacher, the outdoors as classroom, and sustaining life for all future generations as the most important learning objective in our curriculum.”
 * What is the mission of the organization?**

The educational mission of GreenHearted Education is offer a context shift on how education is taught to focus on environmental and sustainable practices such as global warming, but to still cover mandated material in a traditional public education system. They fully recognize the perils of the situation global warming brings and the inevitability if no action is taken without sugarcoating the reality of our situation. It values itself as being very adaptable to any education system can adopt its principles and learning values without being an add-on to current educational material.
 * What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization?**

The general learning outcomes that span pre-school to high school graduate range from global warming and renewable energy to compassion, respect and the ethics of sustainability. In advancing age groups they progress from connecting with nature, to ecological principles, to environmental solution, and sustainable development.
 * What does the curriculum module aim to teach? What are the learning outcomes?**

I believe that this program is excellently designed to promote its educational goals as it extends beyond didactic learning as it is more of a holistic approach involving other important aspects such as emotional learning, connecting deeply with the subject matter on a personal level, life style changes, and family involvement. In addition the factual material it does cover is accurate and well ordered. Unfortunately, the bullets in the learning modules are often dead ends which are therefore just good ideas for what teachers could do if they come up with an idea for how to do them.
 * Do you think the curriculum is appropriately designed to produce the intended learning outcomes?**

Most certainly, they are very well rounded and take in consideration the more difficult and intricate problems that a sustainable and green lifestyle switch includes. In particular the learning modules cover complex understanding of scientific disciplines, understanding the potential for change and alternate ways of doing things in an organized society, conceptualizing complex causation without being paralyzed, recognizing that there are multiple factors influencing environmental problems, understanding that differing social, cultural, and economic factors play a complex role in how we deal with our environment, and understanding the interconnectedness of human civilization to the earth such as environmental resources to name a few.
 * Does this curriculum teach the kinds of literacy that the EcoEd Research Group advocates?**

A few things that this module could add would be to address government’s role in human’s relation with the environment and how political influences affect how we live sustainability. This could be layered into why we are in the situation we are in now. The one main criticism I have is that many of the educational modules is more of just an outline for teachers, but this site is mainly for teachers, it is still clearly a work in progress and not all topics in the outline are filled out and have links.
 * What could be layered into this curriculum so that it addresses more of the learning outcomes that the EcoEd Group advocates?**