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I hope you’ll join me there. Cheers!

• Can we tie sustainability to flexibility (as in flexible learning)?
• How can we measure sustainability in education where we remain critically reflective of the ideological frameworks in which we operate (e.g. economic-rationalist and corporatism)?
• Might Lincoln and Guba (1985) offer some other frameworks that bring in an emergent design, via naturalistic inquiry?

The work of Derek Ownes (1998) and others asks more questions about a sustainable curriculum, but where has this work taken us so far?

Here are some links and texts that I’ve found useful in uncovering aspects of sustainability in education so far.

• Books about sustainability (Google).
• Article by D. Owens (1998) on the sustainable curriculum.
• Lincoln, Y. & Egon G. Guba (1985), Naturalistic Inquiry, Sage.
• Check out the work Leigh has already done here on setting up a course on sustainable business practice.

I’d also like to talk with our Curriculum services team and look at drawing together Sustainability and the Employability Skills Framework (ESF) (PDF is here), which embeds generic (work) attributes for learners within the competencies of a program, so that learners can demonstrate their ability to adapt to workplace forces and changes. It seems to me that the ESF needs to include aspects of sustainable practice for learners, regardless of what they are studying. More on this again soon.

One such help has been access to Google Books. What a fabulous service! I’ve always dipped into Google Books on occassions and then have used either my institute’s library or online databases to grab the actual book or journal article if available. However, as I’ve been studying my Masters by distance (supplemented with online resources and interactions), I’ve had less than ideal access to key texts in many cases. Google books has come to my rescue! I have built up a library of books I’ve been reading over the last few months and have added labels/tags for quick searching when I’ve needed to return to a book or theme, such as ‘critical pedagogy’. The extension tools also look worthwhile; adding your booklist or library to your blog or sharing via an RSS feed, or even posting a review if you feel the urge.

In addition to Google Books, I’ve also been keeping a collection of sites, videos and articles via my delicious account. Here’s an example for my subject, Education for Social Change. Both services have been invaluable not only in collecting information, but in organising and collating information in meaningful ways, through tagging, adding notes (often I include an abstract from the site or article) and combining tags to drill down into the information I’ve collected over time. I use keyword tags together with time/date type of tags to help narrow down information (very helpful as I’ve managed to stretch my Masters out over 3 years!).

My next and final essay is for the subject, Education for Social Change. I’d like to explore the idea that the rise of social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and other sites has inadvertantly served to further embed us as ‘automaton conformists’ (Erich Fromm). I could look at Chomsky and the role of mass media, as sites like these are often owned by large corporations in many cases, but I’m more curious to explore Fromm’s notion of ‘fear of freedom’ and a phrase my lecturer, Rick, mentioned on a recent discussion thread, that is, ‘group think’. It also calls for a rethink in education about digital literacy and developing the digital citizen for a connected future.

This is close to my heart, with regards to my work, where we often promote social networking tools like blogs and wikis to ‘open up’ a teacher’s approach to teaching, but often we see there is limited uptake, especially by students, and various colleagues around the country seem to be seeing similar results – there are not many exceptions to the rule, highlighting the challenges in seeing Web2.0 as a ‘freeing’ view of the Web, for the people and by the people, and as a legitimate learning medium.

More soon…

showcases key historical figures, events and decisions that have influenced the democracy we live in (Parkes, ‘Panorama,’ The Canberra Times, May 9).

There’s more than just Australia’s democratic history on display, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington feature amongst others.

[image: RiotACT]

Curator, Johanna Parker, reckons we’ll be challenged by what the museum exhibits and the various points of view shown. It’s also described as a “museum of ideas not of objects” and we’re asked to consider what we think about events and people in our history. I’ll be visiting soon and I’m especially interested in the balance between little ‘d’ democracy and bit ‘D’ Democracy. Parker assures us that there’s a fair share of both:

“There is something about democracy, social reform, liberty and fighting for the voice of people that just inspired ordinary people to do such incredible things” (ibid).

There are other Museums of Democracy, most noticeably the US Museum of Democracy. Then there’s the Cyberhall of Democracy and Human Rights, and I’m sure plenty of projects about democracy (particularly, I’d imagine, across the US), its expression, history and activities.

And a final word from Senator John Faulkner on the Museum’s opening:

“democracy isn’t words on a page, or numbers on a ballot paper, but a day-to-day lived experience.”

The Museum officially opened yesterday.

This via Digg.

Awesome.