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SUSTAINABILITY TALKS

Sustainability

SUSTAINABILITY TALKS

Each year, we produce a series of crisp, academically-relevant talks, presented by experts in the field, & filmed before a live student audience during a regular school day each year.

 

Our expanding video library of expert voices can be shared with classrooms through our bioregion to catalyze inquiry & inspire problem-based learning.

 

Explore the searchable database of our video categories featuring a range of sustainable systems themes.

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Youth Voice Mini-Webinars
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YOUTH VOICE MINI-WEBINARS

 

Our version of Kahn Academy, student researchers and skilled public presenters record slide presentations, no more than 2-4 minutes, on a range of sustainable systems to support classroom learning. Young people respond better to their peers walking them through technical concepts than they do to expert adults, plus, it is a great lesson in effective presentation skills for both selected Ambassadors and the peers in the classrooms.  Scripts and slide images are vetted by our coaches and other experts to ensure technical accuracy. Mini-Webinars are posted online and shared widely.

Video Note Taking Tools

BASIC

This template helps you organize your listening skills & practice sustainability systems thinking.

You will find ready-made categories for finding the hook, grabbing key concepts & vocabulary, outlining steps in a process, comparing challenges, solutions & timelines. 

ADVANCED

See all of the great note taking strategies above?

 

This template assumes that you are already pretty good at this kind of analytical thinking.

Test yourself.

Then go straight to college.

T-CHART

Use this template when you want to visualize the relationship between 2 different sets of issues or ideas.

 

In this way you can see where a problem might best match 1 or more solutions, or how one solution might solve multiple problems.

VENN DIAGRAM

In the 1880's, John Venn, an English mathematician/logician popularized this simple diagram as a way to visualize two sets if ideas, issues or factors & the number of overlapping connections that occurred between them.

NOTE TAKING TOOLS

Explore these ready-to-use note taking tools to help you get the most out of each expert presentation in our library of Sustainability TALKS.

 

Feel free to download and adapt for

your own purposes.

CAUSE & EFFECT

This is a relationship where an action over here causes some kind of effect over there.

 

In this template you can describe an issue, idea or event in the middle box, then identity all of the causes on the left hand side & all of the impacts, outcomes, or effects on the right side.

60-SECOND

Stop the video every 60 seconds or when there is a natural narrative transition.

 

In the first 60-second bite look for an effective hook or thesis statement, In each subsequent section pair & share to identify main ideas & key concepts, data, evidence, or assumptions. Jot down new questions for deeper research.

ABC

In this playful template you will find a table with a cell for each letter of the alphabet.

 

This process teases the mind into finding  main ideas, key concepts, new vocabulary, & data points that can stimulate new questions for deeper research

CONCEPT DRAWING

This template is a big blank page where you can draw or diagram the key ideas, data points, & systemic connections.

 

You may want to view 

Example 1 which is a simple set of boxes & connecting arrows, or 

Example 2 which is richly illustrated mind map

CONNECTION CIRCLE

You can drop what you find into this ring of circles then work with a partner or in small group to draw additional lines across connecting one idea to another or one idea to many others.

 

You will begin to see where the strongest ideas are & their systemic relationships by the number of connecting lines you draw.

ICEBERG MODEL

This tool helps you see underneath the surface of a particular event, issues or idea. Once you look underneath the surface of your own thinking you can begin to analyze the patterns, structures & mental models of how we hold or consider what we experience as real.

 

What we think is the main idea may be just the tip of the iceberg.

FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS

This template challenges you to choose any 5 of 14 meaningful questions, but you could do 3 or 8 or all of them.

 

You could read & discuss all of the questions before you watch the video talk, or explore them after. You could use it as a practice quiz or to inspire small group discussion.

PUBLIC SPEAKING RUBRIC

Use this rubric to identify skills the speaker applied & how they could improve.

 

Give evidence. Then apply the same criteria to improve your own public speaking. 

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