Kermit the Frog might have sung that it wasn’t easy being green, but we at The Knowledge Tree wanted to find out if he was wrong! But, of course, the ‘e’ in our ‘easy’ stands for e-learning. In what way can it help make it easy for Australia to be green?

Edition 20 explores various ways the vocational education and training (VET) system is responding to the Green Skills Agreement, endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in December 2009. The Agreement aims to create national standards for sustainable practice in VET; to revise training packages to include sustainability principles and competencies; and to upskill VET practitioners on sustainability skill delivery.

With this in mind, Edition 20 examines how e-learning can provide a model of training delivery that uses sustainable practices, and helps to meet the demand for green skills training.

Highlights
Jason Patten and Michael Abulencia from RMIT University in their lead article ‘Eyes on a green horizon‘ discuss how RMIT successfully transitioned its Optical Training Program to an e-learning model, and explain how the program implemented sustainable practices with benefits for training organisations, learners and the community.

Michele A Parker, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership, Watson School of Education, University of North Carolina, in her article writes about how virtual classrooms can foster sustainable practices in education and training delivery. She argues that as technology advances it is increasingly important to use it less for convenience and more for systemic practices that will benefit learners and the environment.

Steve McVey, Director of Skills Strategies International in Western Australia, in his article discusses the Great Gardens project, funded and supported by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s (Framework) E-learning Innovations business activity.

Helen Zwicker, Kiama Community College in New South Wales, explains in an interview how the Business Sustainabilit-e project helped Business Treading Lightly (an environmental and sustainability consultancy) to adopt web 2.0 technologies and web conferencing. Business Treading Lightly used these technologies to network and communicate with their clients, and to reduce the ecological and financial expenses associated with travel.

Carole McCulloch, freelance e-learning consultant and Penny Neudendorf, e-learning manager, Canberra Institute of Technology, answer questions in their interviews on how specific e-learning technologies are facilitating environmentally friendly and sustainable practices. Carole examines virtual classrooms while Penny looks at virtual worlds.

We hope you enjoy ‘It’s not e-asy being green‘ edition 20 of The Knowledge Tree and, as always, we look forward to your feedback.

Post a Comment | Trackback URI