Climate sins and absolution

I booked a flight for Christmas a few days ago with EasyJet. After fighting my way through all the rental car , hotel and insurance offers, deciding about number of bags and priority boarding, I suddenly found a new tick-box: Carbon Offsetting. Intrigued by this new option, I took the time to find out what this new check box was about. On the "Fly Greener Environment" page I found out that, by clicking the box (and spending a few pounds more), you

"[...]balance the effect of the carbon emitted from your flight by supporting UN certified projects like Perlabi Hydroelectric in Ecuador."
(from: EasyJet)

It seems that the opportunities to save the world are rapidly increasing! That means that the world should be save! Or not? Somehow the whole thing reminds me of the absolution practice in medieval times. You could buy a letter of absolution from the church to save your soul and be free from the sins you've committed. Great!
One can't help to see parallels to the emission trade and the carbon offsetting options these days. If I tick the box, does the plane I plan to board blow less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Unfortunately not! Although it's good to invest money into "green" projects, it doesn't solve the problem itself, it just tries to counter the effects of flying (which isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong!). But it seems to make people feel better about polluting our world! I can't help thinking that a lot of people seem to feel too good about it and just found a good excuse for not doing anything that really cuts down pollution. Something along the lines of: "I can drive the 5mins to the shops as I paid 5 pounds yesterday for the Brazilian rain forest!".

People always ask how I can cycle 20mins every day to my office and back. That's miles away!! Yes, it is! But only a few. And I can also stop at the shops on the way home. It really isn't difficult and one can avoid taking the car most of the time. I agree, there are times where you have to use one. But if we are honest, there are many times we could walk or cycle and therefore produce less carbon dioxide and even live more healthy (fresh air and so on!).

There are also many other little things we can do:

• Bring a reusable bag when shopping! Billions of plastic bags are used every day and this the most unnecessary waste of resources of all times! There are folding boxes you can put in your car, backpacks (if you are cycling ;-) ), jute bags that can be used for ages,..... the list of "green" alternatives is long!

• Try to buy goods that come in a recyclable container. Why does milk have to come in plastic containers? Glass bottles are reusable! In many countries now you can leave unnecessary packaging at the shops to force them to use less and recyclable packaging.

• Use public transport! It's a lot less stressful most of the times compared to driving at rush hour and it's a good alternative to cycling if the weather is bad.

• You can even save the world while jogging and become an Eco-Runner :)

I could go on for a long time! There are so many little things everybody can do without much change to our lifestyle. And you don't have to buy your peace of conscience by paying more and more for carbon offsetting. Paying for our climate sins seems to be the easy way out, but we can't buy a new earth if we've finally destroyed this one. And the "I'm only one individual in 6 billion, I can't change anything"-excuse doesn't apply here! If everybody is contributing even a little bit, the overall changes are huge! To say it with the words of a german punk band: "It's not your fault that the world is like it is, it only would be your fault if it stays like that!"

Ok, so...
recyclable bag with me? ...tick
cycled to university today? ...tick
£ 2.95 for a better conscience when flying home over Christmas??.....ah, whatever: TICK!

Take care!
Sven

Where should we teach?

I'm doing a course right now on teaching in higher education where I'm supposed to learn how to teach students at a university. When I started the course, I thought we would be taught how to teach students in a classroom (the way most of us were taught!). After watching some videos on Youtube I'm asking myself if the term "classroom" is still appropriate in this sentence?
In times of Web 2.0 with it's Youtube, blogs, Wikipedia and many others, is the way we still teach really the best or do we also have to move on to Academia 2.0?

Before the web was there, going to a university was the way to study because the information was there: In form of teachers and libraries. With the internet this suddenly changed. Information is everywhere. We can access libraries online, find thousands of journal articles, ask the world if we have a question and can answer questions if we know the answer. Information can be broadcasted in many ways: It's not bound to be in books anymore, it can be found in videos, podcasts, online discussion forums and many more. All there on our screen within seconds. So why should students attend lectures any more if they can access all the information online from home?

From a constructivists point of view, this is a dream come true: The teacher can act as facilitator who helps students to find the information they need, organize it into comprehensible chunks and build up their knowledge by linking these chunks. The students can learn the way that they choose is best for them (and that itself is a learning experience) and can be spread over the whole planet. The knowledge can still be assessed at the end to obtain different university degrees.
Teachers have to let loose of their classic views on learning and teaching. They are not longer in front of their class. The teacher is now faced with a distributed learning community in which he has the role of a guide. The information doesn't necessarily have to be prepared in a lecture because it is already out there, but the students have to learn how to use and evaluate it.

Nowadays, students already know how to use modern technology. They most likely already had to learn that information has different degrees of reliability and use multiple references to verify it. They grew up in a different environment than most of their teachers and we shouldn't ignore that. The world is constantly changing, so why should we stick to classical teaching styles? Just because they worked for centuries doesn't mean we can't improve them.

The world changes faster and faster. Perhaps teaching should, too!

Here are the videos:

• The machine is Us/ing us
• Information R/Evolution
• A Vision of Students Today
• Rethinking US (a students answer to the first one)
• and a quite famous one: Did you know?

Thanks for reading,
Sven

It took a long time...

...but finally even I managed to start a blog. It might not be the big thing the world was waiting for for decades, but that might change :) First I have to disappoint many people: In this blog I won't give away any secrets about my life (you still have to email me for that!), tell you what to do with your life nor bombard you with mostly useless advice.
As the title suggests, I want to comment on unusual things I read, saw or even experienced! I don't want to do that to prove to the whole world that there are interesting things happening in my life, but to make at least a few people think about facts, news or events. Might be a bit much to ask for, but hope dies last!

One rule I want to enforce is that no anonymous comments are allowed! If you have an opinion and want to share it, be man (or woman) enough to put your real name under it! I'm going to remove anonymous comments.

Looking forward to some interesting comments and discussions! The first comment is going to be there soon...

Sven