What happened to me in Master EdTech
How was I thinking at the beginning of the year? More like a a top-down teaching, using moocs, classical teaching and maybe hiding some learning in serious games. But then the master EdTech happened, and my ideas changed.
What I have to say? The master EdTech made me change my objectives concerning Sustainable Development Learning (SDL).
While working with Sophie Pène, I understood connections between the educational inequalities problem and environmental awareness. In my opinion, developing a good and general SDL is a good way to ensure reduction of those inequalities, or at least to reduce the segregation and exclusion problem. Indeed, by taking care and being attentive for your environment, people are becoming more aware and are developing solidarity, community. In that spirit, several schools have launch project with their pupils, making them interest and active in the structure. For example, they developed composting device for their restroom, or put what they called “eco délégués” in place inside each class, to encourage pupils to think about ecology in everyday life.
But what precise skills is needed to be consider as aware of environmental, and how can someone be evaluated on it? Indeed, one of the characteristic of the SD is the fact that it’s concerning everyone. We are all on the same boat, in need of each other help. So, a competition between students with a notation seems to be pretty inappropriate for that. Some schools tried to integrate the notions around sustainable development in each of their classes, making it an inter-disciplinary topic for the children.
As Albert Jacquard said : « Les professeurs devraient créer des emmerdeurs ». In my own mind critical thinking, and the ability to argument about environmental questions should be the main point of those learning. By critical thinking, I’m talking about the capacity for people to not make free assessment, without proof or data, but to have reasonable doubt, to accept discussion, argumentation, and more important, to be able to accept when you’re proven wrong. This theme is profoundly link with the development of the self-esteem for the young one.
In terms of data and arguments, I think that an initiation to notion of LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) is important for student. Indeed, with the capacity to understand the complex past of object, and energy, and their probable future, people could choose and debate on a clearer and better basis. My project when I came to the master EdTech was to develop a serious games, on the basis of an adventure game, to initiate people about LCA. But a discussion we had with François Taddei inspired me something a bit different. It was about an event in the 90’s, a chess play called Kasparov against the world, where people from all other the world, using the beginning of MSN, played against Kasparov. They had one day to debate, discuss, and vote for what should be their next move. I thought that this way of closing people together to a common problem was really inspiring, and that could be an interesting way of doing an online game, with debate, choices, ect…
Another point of interest for me during this year was the cognitive sciences, and especially the lecture of an article concerning the cognition behind the perception of the environmental risk. This perception need a multifactor analysis of information and scientific announcement, which is a very complex cognition. This cognition depends on the environmental and cultural background. For example, one of the main objective concerning the global warming is to limit it to 2°C maximum for governments, but how could a French citizen understand what a 2°C warming means when the temperature change of 8°C everyday ! Plus, if you’re living in city, it’s more difficult to feel that the global warming will affect more than just the weather, but also the interaction with nature.
In the end, I was wrong when I came here. I thought the environmental education in a monolith way, when it’s something that fit completely in the CRI: interconnected, interdisciplinary, international. It’s goes through evolution of school, society, life and need to be think and worked by as many people a possible. That’s why I will keep looking for my thesis project, but also search for other way, other path to develop new way of make this learning possible.
