Friday, December 14, 2007

AAEE Conference in Darwin

The Australian Association of Environmental Educators (AAEE) will hold their 15th biennial conference in Darwin in July 2008. It would be great to have some presentations from teachers and schools that are doing some great programs in environmental education, so if you are involved in sustainable schools, dust watch, energy blitz, rethinking waste or any other great initiative of your own, please think about sharing your story. There are some really innovative things happening in the Territory and it will be great to get them into the national arena. Please contact me if you would like more information.

Information will be sent out to schools early in term 1 asking for expressions of interest from 5 remote school teachers who would like to attend/present at the conference. DEET will fully fund the attendance of 5 teachers that meet the selection criteria.

Rethinking Waste in Schools

If your school hasn't registerd for this please consider it as it is a great way to muster enthusiasm amongst staff and keep the momentum going.

The Keep Australia Beautiful Website and the wikispace developed for this project will give you more information.

Wikis are a great way for students to work collaboratively to document their planning and their projects development and share with others. If you would like to know more about how you can use wikis with your class check out the Using Wikis page.

If you would like to join the rethinking waste wiki please contact louise.fogg@nt.gov.au and she will make you a member.

Some positive changes for energy in schools

DEET have recently apponted a School Sustainability Energy Smart Officer who will initially be employed for 6 months starting 2008. They will be primarily getting info out to principals and registrars re the DEET energy smart policy, working with schools who have had audits done to prioritise recommendations and will put processes in place for funding of these, hopefully through DEET minor works program.

DEET are also investigating a model so schools can keep their savings in the area of resource management - eg waste, energy

We are also looking at implementing a fantastic online monitoring program - SETS for all NT schools which graphs energy usage and is very student friendly - , it also has nice visuals equating the amount of energy used/saved with no of cars on the road, trees etc.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Plant cells, up close


The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (USA) offers high-resolution images of plant cells for use in teaching. You can get up close and personal with a pollen grain, a chloroplast, cytoplasm and more! View all of the images on the Centre's website

Making sense of global environmental change

Do you want to stay up-to-date on the latest science and policy related to conservation and global environmental change, but just don't have the time to make sense of it all?

GreenFacts, a Belgian NGO, has put together dozens of information 'digests' on topics ranging from climate change to biodiversity. Many of their reports (in five different languages) are produced in conjunction with international bodies such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. Check out the GreenFacts website for a full list of available digests and other information