Sustainable Development Education

Confronting global issues with decision-making tools

One of the most complex and important issues facing future generations is how to manage the trade-offs between resource use and quality of life. The Center for a Sustainable Future (CSF), a division of the Concord Consortium, has developed models, curricula, and online teacher professional development materials around this issue. The center also works intensively with organizations of all types throughout the world in integrating sustainability into their thinking.

Through its five-year project Education for a Sustainable Future, CSF has developed and disseminated over 60 technology-based curricular units that help students better understand their futures. The center has created three specific pieces of software aimed at helping learners better understand key principles of sustainable thinking.

• What-If Builder
  The What-If Builder is a tool to create decision-tree models, also known as 'Action Mazes,' 'tree literature,' 'plot branching,' or 'choose your own adventure.' A model consists of short sections of narrative, each ending with a choice for the user that determines which section of narrative is next presented.
  
  
• Community Planner
  The Community Planner is a spatial modeling and visualization tool for community design and evaluation. Students can create a map of a neighborhood, town, or community, and analyze the map based on indicators that they can help define. The software supports the learning of map-making and map-reading skills. It also encourages the visualization and analysis of communities based on the objects and variables placed on the map.
  
  
• Ecological Footprint
  Calculator The Ecological Footprint Calculator measures our use of natural resources. It calculates how much land is required to produce all of the resources we consume and absorb all of the waste we produce. The concept is described in the book, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, by William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel. We are developing the Ecological Footprint Calculator as a tool for students to calculate their own personal ecological footprint, and to visualize their footprint in various ways (e.g. how many earths we would need if everyone on Earth had a footprint like theirs).
  
  

KidSolve, Inc. an affiliate of the Concord Consortium, provides teacher training and inquiry-based science curricula. It has developed handheld applications for What-If Builder and Ecological Footprint software.

For more information, see the following:

• Geographic Information Systems: Using GIS to support sustainable development education (@CONCORD, Winter 1999)
• Education for a Sustainable Future: A paradigm of hope for the 21st century (Book published by Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers)
• Creating International Neighborhoods (@CONCORD, Fall 1999)