Social Media, Social Justice & Environmental Education
Social Media Week, Los Angeles
(3BLMedia/theCSRfeed) September 22nd, 2010 (Santa Monica, California): KooDooZ to be joined by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, Alliance for Climate Education, Green My Parents, ReUse Connection,Team Marine and Real Curriculum on September 25th, 2010 for a bonus Social Media Week event.
Social Media Week, a multi-city global conference connecting people, content and conversations around emerging trends in social and mobile media, amassed experts from all over the social media landscape to showcase the impact our 2.0 worlds have (or could have) across industries, countries and economies.
The KooDooZ event, entitled “Social Media, Social Justice & Environmental Education” will examine our current and future capabilities of advancing environmental literacy, and the import thereof.
“At the surface, Americans appear to be environmentally literate and capable of making sustainable choices,” said Lee Fox, founder of KooDooZ and moderator of the event workshop. “But when it comes to practicing what we preach, everyday Americans aren’t taking an action-oriented approach to environmental stewardship. As most social and economic issues have major environmental components, the quality of information we put on the grid can’t be so significantly different than what’s in our classrooms.”
Reportedly, 85% of teens (13-17 years old) rely on school as their main source for eco-education, which is alarming being that last year a groundbreaking study revealed that U.S. students ranked 34th out of the 57 countries in both environmental science and geosciences.
As American youth have grown up with climate change as a big part of their national dialogue and were witness to the most severe environmental disaster our country has ever seen, there is an agreed-upon need to put a higher emphasis on environmental education, as seen by Obama’s inclusion of environmental literacy in his new education budget. As a further punctuation, just today, the Maryland school board ruled that their schools must include environmental education in their pre-kindergarten through 12th grade classes, but will not make it an official graduation requirement.
“Our classrooms are in need of an upgrade,” asserts Fox who recently authored an editorial entitled Empower Kids With Service To Their Community. “My hope is that we get the public to consider how leveraging the best part of social media – essentially providing more peer-to-peer and user-generated opportunities – will further cultivate environmentally literate citizens.”
Research indicates that interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning environments provide a meaningful way to ignite youth's participation. If "green" has become the new face of youth activism, with millions of young people around the world recruited online to impact change, should educators be structuring environmental education (i) as a “core subject” status in schools and (ii) in tandem with the social web, to ensure real-time, relevant information?
"When we ask young minds to work together as a group to investigate environmental problems and solutions, we're empowering them to take action on issues that directly affect them," concludes Fox. "Schools should give students the best tools to nurture leadership."
09/25/10 Event Details 2:00pm MOVIE "Bag It" See what happens when an ordinary guy takes on a global pilgrimage to explore our plastic world and understand our addiction to supposedly disposable items. 3:30pm Q&A with Assemblywoman Julia Brownley Are Californians "too plastic"? Will we be able to give up our 19-billion bag a year habit? With the failure to pass AB 1998, what should concerned citizens be doing to help with this community challenge? 4:00pm WORKSHOP "Social Media, Social Justice & Environmental Education" For many students, relevancy in the calssroom is extraordinarily low. Though digital natives respond best in peer-to-peer environments, schools continue to teach one-to-many. Additionally, too few schools are leveraging a resource kids care about most -- social technology. "Social Media, Social Justice and Enviornmental Education" is a workshop designed to explore how educators can bridge social media with social justice through environmental education. 5:00pm WRAP For the benefit of families who might also want to get their youngest kids involved, during the entire length of this event (from 2pm to 5pm) hands-on activities will be led by KooDooZ partner, Team Marine. For additional event and registration information please visit: http://socialjustice.eventbrite.com/ also see KooDooZ blog About KooDooZ KooDooZ (Kü - Düz) is a “cause-based” social networking site designed to cultivate youth social entrepreneurs by “challenging” them to achieve specific philanthropic goals. In partnership with nonprofits, educators, and profit-for-purpose organizations, each challenge is authored with easy-to-follow methodologies and anticipated times to complete. By sharing these challenges with friends and family, kids can virally garner support for the causes they care about most and earn credit towards the President’s Volunteer Service Award for those tasks that meet volunteerism, community service and service learning standards. For more information, visit www.KooDooZ.com. About Social Media Week Los Angeles: A multi-city global conference connecting people, content and conversations around emerging trends in social and mobile media. From September 20-24, 2010, dozens of free events hosted at locations all over the city will bring together the influential hyper-connected: CEO's and CMO's, entrepreneurs, journalists, bloggers, brand managers, social media strategists, artists, activists and the technology/media digerati. With over 50 events already on the schedule (http://losangeles.socialmediaweek.org/), the momentum continues to build. The breadth and depth of topics and participants is tremendous; from the guilds (DGA, WGA, PGA) to MySpace, LiveNation, RedBull, WholeFoods, the US State Department, City Hall, CleanTech LA, USC, mommy bloggers, the VC/startup community, and more. Select media and event partners and sponsors currently include the City of Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, Fast Company, Wired, the LA Business Journal, LA Weekly, Meebo, iCrossing, LivePerson, Thinkwell and others. Social Media Week Los Angeles, conference participants will be invited to contribute to Inner-City Arts, a learning oasis in the heart of Skid Row where professional artists teach students in a real studio environment.KOODOOZ9181
