“We’re in a race between education and catastrophe,” wrote H.G. Wells. Both public education and formal education in schools are imperative to teaching how nature functions within the interdependence of all living systems, and how people can re-design the human enterprise accordingly using full-spectrum sustainability. Educational systems are a key leverage point in catalyzing and embedding sustainability in their local communities, the larger society and the world.
The 2012 Bioneers conference is in itself a rich and rewarding educational feast, and we’re featuring several cutting-edge programs specifically focused ecological literacy education this year. We’re highlighting action-oriented programs that are interactive and help create networking opportunities to connect ongoing with other educators and students.
We’re also featuring the remarkable GeoDome, an immersive, interactive visualization environment that brings Earth systems alive for participants – a don’t-miss that’s transformative for students, educators and entire classes.
Continuing education credits will be made available through partnership with Dominican University and San Francisco State University in education and nursing. Please visit the CEU booth, or contact Education for Action Program Director, Shana Rappaport, at srappaport@bioneers.org
Note: The entirety of the Bioneers conference provides countless multidisciplinary educational content, materials and opportunities for classes, classrooms and curricula.
Panels, Workshops and Special Events
Education for a Sustainable Future: Mobilizing Our Network to Act
A vital movement is growing within the Bioneers community to combine our shared experience and wisdom in the service of education for sustainability. This highlyinteractive session is for educators, students, and social change agents who believe education is central to creating a truly sustainable future – and are committed to leveraging the strength of our collective capacity to do it. This is a unique opportunity to learn, share and connect around one of the essential questions of our time: “How can education ensure the long-term integrity of the biosphere and human well-being?” Participants will explore a core set of principles and practices that define Education for Sustainability (EfS), engage in framing central questions of value to the field, and begin building an allied network to put them into action. (Extend the experience by joining the “Wiser Together” session on Saturday, and the Friday evening Education for Action (EfA) Networking Reception.) With: Jaimie Cloud, Founder and President of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education; Kirk Bergstrom, Founder and President of WorldLink; Emily Ryan, Program Director, Cultivating an Ecoliterate Worldview, Schumacher College; Shana Rappaport, Bioneers Education for Action Program Director.
Transforming Education at Every Level: Whole Human Learning Toward a Regenerative Future
Both within existing systems and by innovating new ones, education is changing, thanks to the perseverance, courage and commitment of dedicated and visionary teachers and learners. In an emergent conversation, come discover new methodologies and vehicles for raising-up, informing and equipping tomorrow’s leaders. With: Kate Lipkis, who teaches traditional Council methods in the L.A. Unified School District; Alan Webb, whose P2PU (Peer to Peer University) and Citizen Circles are creating innovative forms for peer learning; Megan Cowan, whose Mindful Schools teach mindfulness practice to thousands of youth throughout the San Francisco Bay Area; Gary Martin, whose Global Environments Summer Academy annually cultivates 18 exceptional graduate and professional-level individuals to become environmental leaders. Hosted by Margaret Golden of Dominican University.
Leadership Lessons from the Living Earth: Turning to Nature as Mentor
How can we lead our organizations and social change movements to become more adaptive, resilient, locally attuned and life-enhancing? Looking to nature's wisdom opens us to learning from 3.8 billion years of systems success, and guides us toward leadership patterns, practices and principles that are rooted insustainability. This experiential and interactive workshop will introduce natural models that can be applied to strategy development and organizational change. Participants will work with "Life's Principles" developed by Biomimicry 3.8, and meet natural mentors to help answer their own leadership challenges. Led by Toby Herzlich, Biomimicry Specialist; and Karen Allen, Certified Biomimicry Professional and Biologist at the Design Table, Biomimicry 3.8.
Wiser Together Café: Education for a Change
Education is a key tool that helps us understand the world around us, and act in transformative ways. Yet there is more to learn beyond traditional education modelsin order to be most effective. At the heart of it, education for action requires each of us to contribute our brilliance and gifts in order to design our shared future. What might be possible when we transcend conventional teacher-student relationships and form learning communities based on curiosity and collaboration across generations? Creating these kinds of opportunities fosters the emergence of collective intelligence and wise action that are needed to transform our world today. What are the big questions that motivate action across generations? What questions are we are forgetting to ask? Please help us be wiser together as we learn how education may be used for positive change, for a change! With: Dave Shaw, Ashley Cooper and Susan Kelly.
Council for Educators and Educational Settings
We'll explore how Council practice can be applied in educational settings to support the social and emotional learning environment, and how Council can support your role as an educator or student by engendering attentive listening, authentic expression and creative spontaneity. With: Kate Lipkis; Laura Weaver, PassageworksInstitute; John McCluskey, Colorado Center for Council Training; Casey McCarroll, Leadership Council, Stepping Stones Project. Hosted by Sharon Shay Sloan, Council trainer and community steward.
A vital movement is growing within the Bioneers community to combine our shared experience and wisdom in the service of education for sustainability. This highlyinteractive session is for educators, students, and social change agents who believe education is central to creating a truly sustainable future – and are committed to leveraging the strength of our collective capacity to do it. This is a unique opportunity to learn, share and connect around one of the essential questions of our time: “How can education ensure the long-term integrity of the biosphere and human well-being?” Participants will explore a core set of principles and practices that define Education for Sustainability (EfS), engage in framing central questions of value to the field, and begin building an allied network to put them into action. (Extend the experience by joining the “Wiser Together” session on Saturday, and the Friday evening Education for Action (EfA) Networking Reception.) With: Jaimie Cloud, Founder and President of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education; Kirk Bergstrom, Founder and President of WorldLink; Emily Ryan, Program Director, Cultivating an Ecoliterate Worldview, Schumacher College; Shana Rappaport, Bioneers Education for Action Program Director.
Transforming Education at Every Level: Whole Human Learning Toward a Regenerative Future
Both within existing systems and by innovating new ones, education is changing, thanks to the perseverance, courage and commitment of dedicated and visionary teachers and learners. In an emergent conversation, come discover new methodologies and vehicles for raising-up, informing and equipping tomorrow’s leaders. With: Kate Lipkis, who teaches traditional Council methods in the L.A. Unified School District; Alan Webb, whose P2PU (Peer to Peer University) and Citizen Circles are creating innovative forms for peer learning; Megan Cowan, whose Mindful Schools teach mindfulness practice to thousands of youth throughout the San Francisco Bay Area; Gary Martin, whose Global Environments Summer Academy annually cultivates 18 exceptional graduate and professional-level individuals to become environmental leaders. Hosted by Margaret Golden of Dominican University.
Leadership Lessons from the Living Earth: Turning to Nature as Mentor
How can we lead our organizations and social change movements to become more adaptive, resilient, locally attuned and life-enhancing? Looking to nature's wisdom opens us to learning from 3.8 billion years of systems success, and guides us toward leadership patterns, practices and principles that are rooted insustainability. This experiential and interactive workshop will introduce natural models that can be applied to strategy development and organizational change. Participants will work with "Life's Principles" developed by Biomimicry 3.8, and meet natural mentors to help answer their own leadership challenges. Led by Toby Herzlich, Biomimicry Specialist; and Karen Allen, Certified Biomimicry Professional and Biologist at the Design Table, Biomimicry 3.8.
Wiser Together Café: Education for a Change
Education is a key tool that helps us understand the world around us, and act in transformative ways. Yet there is more to learn beyond traditional education modelsin order to be most effective. At the heart of it, education for action requires each of us to contribute our brilliance and gifts in order to design our shared future. What might be possible when we transcend conventional teacher-student relationships and form learning communities based on curiosity and collaboration across generations? Creating these kinds of opportunities fosters the emergence of collective intelligence and wise action that are needed to transform our world today. What are the big questions that motivate action across generations? What questions are we are forgetting to ask? Please help us be wiser together as we learn how education may be used for positive change, for a change! With: Dave Shaw, Ashley Cooper and Susan Kelly.
Council for Educators and Educational Settings
We'll explore how Council practice can be applied in educational settings to support the social and emotional learning environment, and how Council can support your role as an educator or student by engendering attentive listening, authentic expression and creative spontaneity. With: Kate Lipkis; Laura Weaver, PassageworksInstitute; John McCluskey, Colorado Center for Council Training; Casey McCarroll, Leadership Council, Stepping Stones Project. Hosted by Sharon Shay Sloan, Council trainer and community steward.
Special Events & Exhibits
Education for Action Networking Reception
Join us for this special reception, on Friday evening from 6:30-8:30, to nourish yourself and Bioneers' growing educational community! Come mingle and munch with other formal and non-formal educators, students and education for sustainability allies for an evening of light programming, dinner and networking to form connections and guide experiences with intention throughout the rest of the weekend.
Advanced RSVP required – Cost $10 – Sign up when you register online.
The Whidbey GeoDome at Bioneers
"The world gives us data. We look for patterns. Then we find a reason for the pattern, and that reason becomes a story. The stories cascade upward and are fit into bigger and broader narratives of our deepest, most compelling questions." -- astrophysicist Adam Frank, in "The Constant Fire"
"The world gives us data. We look for patterns. Then we find a reason for the pattern, and that reason becomes a story. The stories cascade upward and are fit into bigger and broader narratives of our deepest, most compelling questions." -- astrophysicist Adam Frank, in "The Constant Fire"
The GeoDome is a portable immersive visualization environment (an inflatable dome, 25 feet in circumference and 13 feet high) that can provide breath-taking visualizations of a guided tour of the universe, the evolution of life on earth, the unfolding story of humanity, and ecosystemic insights into one’s own bioregion.http://whidbeygeodome.org, http://geodome.info and http://www.youtube.com/user/elumenati
Bioneers 2012 will feature the Whidbey GeoDome, an immersive learning environment designed to facilitate dialogues about what it takes to increase the resilience of communities and bioregions. Combining interactive storytelling with immersive visualizations of the latest scientific data and visualizations from NASA, NOAA and elsewhere, it provides a big picture context that demonstrates the profound interconnectedness and interdependence of ecosystems at multiple scales and inspires participants to reflect on humanity’s function in the cosmos at this unique time in history.
The Whidbey GeoDome experience strongly resonates with the Bioneers “Revolution from the Heart of Nature” by providing a cosmic context for exploring the patterns of nature and finding biomimetic strategies to tackle to the world’s most pressing problems. Come join David McConville, President of the Buckminster FullerInstitute, on live interactive tours of the observable cosmos to explore what Fuller meant by his appeal to “start with Universe” when attempting to solve global challenges. Regular showings of the signature production “The Earth Portal: A Guided Tour of the Universe and Our Place in It” will also be featured.
The Whidbey GeoDome team is currently exploring the use of immersive learning environments for the teaching of STEM literacy and Next Generation Science Standards in K-12 settings. Examples of innovative approaches to transformative education combining the GeoDome experience with pre-and-post-GeoDomeintegrative learning activities (e.g. arts-based self-expression with poetry, free writing, drawing, small group discussion, as well as direct encounters with the natural world) will be demonstrated at the Bioneers exhibit.
Lexicon of Sustainability
The Lexicon of Sustainability is based on a simple premise: People can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t even know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability.
In all, nearly 200 leaders in food and farming from across the country have contributed their valued experiences to this rapidly growing Lexicon of Sustainability. Theseinsights have been translated into large format “information art” photo collages, a series of short films, and pop-up shows across the U.S. Study guides, a book and a social network of good ideas, a place where people can dig deeper into these terms (and even add to our ever evolving lexicon) are also in development.
By illuminating the vocabulary of sustainable agriculture, and with it the conversation about America’s rapidly evolving food culture, the Lexicon of Sustainability educates, engages and activates people to pay closer attention to how they eat, what they buy, and where their responsibility begins for creating a healthier, safer food system in America.
And it all begins with learning a few words.
Soltrekker RV
Soltrekker’s primary tool for education and advocacy is a motor-home converted into a mobile green-building showroom. “We like the idea of taking a symbol from an old, unsustainable and inefficient system, and transforming it with new, renewable, sustainable solutions. To our knowledge, this is the ‘most eco-friendly motor-home in the universe!’"
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