Environmental E‐Books and Green Goals

Abstract

Pre‐service teachers collaborated with 6th grade students to audit a College of Education building looking for possibilities to “go green.” The student/teacher teams developed an e‐book collection of project descriptions, completed budgets, estimated timelines, and sustainability requirements for the university to consider. The e‐books also included short films in which the students promoted their ideas for green awareness. In this project, flipping instructional spaces and real‐izing the curriculum created new possibilities for student‐led inquiry. In other words, literacy in the service of communicating meaningful messages, rather than literacy for literacy's sake, created a current of intent in which the students learned genres to achieve their green goals and the teachers learned how to develop authentic tasks and texts to develop students' expertise.

Start with a Seedling: Uncovering the Kindergarten Language and Literacy Curriculum One Leaf at a Time

“…While Bang-Jensen (2012), Cutter-Mackenzie (2009), Pascoe andWyatt-Smith, (2013), andSchneider, Kozdras, Wolkenhauer, andArias (2014), have begun to investigate how school gardening programs can support language and literacy learning, none of these scholars has specifically tied their investigations to examining how such programs may support provincially or state mandated language and literacy curriculum expectations. Similar gaps can be seen in research on food and cooking programs.…”

“…While literacy researchers over the past few decades have done little to consider how literacy, education, and environmental degradation are related, a small group of scholars are turning their attention to how literacy education and research might contribute to more environmentally sound ways of interacting with local ecosystems (Moffatt, 2015a). The work of scholars such as Bang-Jensen (2012), Bowers (2011), Cutter-Mackenzie (2009), Pascoe and Wyatt-Smith, (2013) Schneider, Kozdras, Wolkenhauer, andArias (2014), andYagelski (2005), amongst others, can be seen as part of a nascent movement investigating how we might shift language and literacy education and research to consider literacies for environmental sustainability as New Literacies or as New Basics (Luke, 2001;Stibbe, 2009). This paper can be seen as part of this small, but growing, wave in literacy education research, as it seeks to connect literacy learning with larger questions of social and environmental justice.…”

Imagining a Future for the Planet Through Literature, Writing, Images, and Drama

“…In responding to these portrayals, students can imagine how they would cope with the challenges portrayed in these texts by generating alternative future scenarios, a process described by members of Project Hieroglyph, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University (http://hieroglyph.asu.edu) and by students in Tracey Heatherington's course, “The Political Ecology of Imagination” (https://www4.uwm.edu/schedule/syllabi/214221545.pdf). For example, based on portrayals of potential droughts in their reading, 6th grade students in Florida discussed use of water conservation strategies leading to their use of rain barrels to collect and reuse water run‐off; they then created e‐books including videos with recommendations related to water conservation (Schneider et al., ).…”

“…uwm.edu/schedule/syllabi/214221545.pdf ). For example, based on portrayals of potential droughts in their reading, 6th grade students in Florida discussed use of water conservation strategies leading to their use of rain barrels to collect and reuse water run-off; they then created e-books including videos with recommendations related to water conservation (Schneider et al, 2014 ).…”

Validating Pupils’ Behaviour Intention to Use E-Book Technology in their Learning

“…In addition, the e-book is characterized by software and hardware including software with texts, pictures and other information, while hardware, known as s reader, is a special computer style device or program that displays the digital book on a screen (5)(6)(7)(8). In recent years, many researchers have conducted studies on the use of e-books for teaching and they have discovered that e-books could enhance the users' learning outcomes (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). In addition, a study by (10) has shown that after using e-books for study, students gained a better comprehension of science concepts and developed more proficient scientific technology application abilities.…”