ESL etc.

First time? Check out the site overview.

I love these! Designer Candy Chang’s Tenants’ Rights Flash Cards come in sets of 30, with each one explaining a different right. They would make a great addition to a class for adult immigrant students. Some of the laws referred to are specific to New York, but a lot of the information applies to other states as well. Plus, they’re only $10 and the money goes to a good cause.

Thanks Khalid

EarthPulse is a great website by National Geographic that provides an overview of many global issues. It starts with a series of essays by Thomas Hayden. He takes a much more strongly anti-consumerism stance than I expected from National Geographic.

…here we are, too far into the new century to pretend any longer that a new age of awareness and responsibility will suddenly emerge, unless we can gather the resolve to drag it kicking and screaming from our imaginations and into reality.
…
We have paused in our centuries-long push to produce and consume ever more now, and the most optimistic might say that this is our chance to breathe deeply and consider the sort of future we want for ourselves and for our planet. Will consumption continue to rule the day, or will we find ways to do more good for humanity, with less harm to the Earth? Will we make our recovery merely fast, or can we make it smart as well?

In addition to the essays, there are photo galleries of environmental migration, political migration, urbanization and irrigation.

There is also a really great infographic that illustrates a variety of statistics (population growth, water footprint, meat consumption, etc.) in an accessible way, with further links to infographics about each of the statistics. These are purely environmental in focus, though. For example, the infographic comparing meat types doesn’t mention anything about animal welfare or health, just resource consumption and pollution.

There is also an interactive quiz and links to resources for the various statistics. Finally, you can check out the 2008 version.

Thanks Larry

A new study just came out in the UK drawing a connection between learning about global issues and taking action on them. Global education also plays a part in increasing tolerance.

The study suggests that people who learn about global issues feel more empowered to tackle them, rather than being overwhelmed by the extent of the problems.

Whereas one in three of the UK population feel powerless to take action against climate change, this falls to only one in six of those who have studied the issue.

Global education also appears to be connected to respect for religious difference. Forty-seven per cent of those who had not experienced global learning in school said that they were not comfortable with there being so many religions in Britain today. This dropped to 31 per cent of those whose school experience included global learning.

The researchers found that political views are affected by global education. Fifty-two per cent of those who have learnt about poverty since leaving school believe that the UK should meet its commitment of spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on international development by 2013, compared to only 20 per cent of those who have not studied the issue.

None of this is particularly surprising, of course, but it’s still nice to see.

Af-flu-en-za n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A television program that could change your life.

Affluenza is a PBS special from the 90’s that explores the social and environmental costs of a high-consumption lifestyle. They have a collection of teaching materials, and the entire video is available online.

Admittedly, I haven’t watched the whole thing, but one way to use it might be to look at how the various ideas and assertions have aged. Are they still valid? How have predictions been played out? And, of course, I’d ask students to relate the ideas to their own lives. One nice thing about the teacher’s guide is that the activities are based on clips, so you wouldn’t need to show the whole hour-long program.

Thanks Krista

I’m a fan of statistics as conversation / writing prompts, and Worldometers features a bunch of interesting stats. The main page provides real-time stats on a variety of issues, including consumption (military expenses, car production etc.), the environment (CO2 emissions, forest loss, etc.) and food (number of overweight people, number of people who died of starvation, etc.). Many of the stats are clickable, (like this one on toxic chemical emissions) leading to pages that explain the statistic, and provide links to references.

Another neat feature of the site are the statistics of the month including topics like swine flu deaths, toilet flushes and the price of beer in Zimbabwe.

Thanks Barbara

The Institute for Humane Education has a great collection of activities, many of which could be used with English language learners. Most of them are aimed at younger learners, but many could also be used effectively with adults. I haven’t yet had a chance to go through the whole site, but I took a look at the environmental preservation activities. There are a couple of activities that ask students to discuss what they would do in an imagined future (Spaceship Earth and Sustainer) and another neat one that looks at the simulated plastic contents of a whale’s stomach. I might use this one myself in a unit I’m working on about plastic and ocean pollution.

In addition, they have activities on human rights, animal protection, and culture. They even have a collection of quick activities that can be done in 5 to 15 minutes.

Finally, check out the Humane Connection blog, a place where the folks at the Institute share ideas and new teacher resources.

I just became aware of A Young People’s History of the United States,a version of Howard Zinn’s classic targeted towards younger readers. I haven’t seen the book myself yet, but I suspect that it would work well with English learners, too.

Howard Zinn passed away on Wednesday. He is one of my favorite authors and educators, and he will certainly be missed.

Recently, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change launched the Zinn Education Project, a collection of resources for teaching A People’s History of the United States. There are tons of great materials here for introducing issues of race, war and labor rights. I’ve used excerpts from this book in my classes over the years, and I’ve always found it to be a welcome contrast to typical history books.

The Guardian has a visual representation of the words used in Obama’s 2010 State of the Union Address, as well as visualizations of earlier States of the Union. It’s interesting to see how things have changed over time. One obvious thing is how much more “America” and “Americans” feature in recent speeches, compared to earlier days.

This could be a good way to bring the State of the Union into a political unit. You could follow up by having students make their own Wordle using some other text.

Thanks Chris

Larry Ferlazzo recently posted two Christmas themed infographics. The first focuses on the economy. The second looks at a broader range of statistics. Either (or both) could be used to introduce a variety of global issues around the holidays.