Guest Editor: Simon Mallett - Is the UK Government scamming us on its Green Credentials?

One of the big problems in taking action to change things is knowing where you are to start with. Lack of public information allows Governments to announce big funding increases, get the brownie points then only later is it revealed that the money was actually allocated some time back under a different scheme but with equal aclaim! Similar is happening with the Governments Green policies and the anouncement this week of a massive increase in wind power projects!

But all of these projects are part of Phase II of the Government’s existing renewables scheme which was anounced last year and initially mooted back in 2004. This years anouncement adds nothing apart from an intention to support domestic generators, but again that’s nothing new, there has always been support of sorts, its just usually ill thought out and implemented! LCBP (Low Carbon Buildings Programme) was a disaster and in my opinion when looking at the way the preferred installers were selected - long established and reputable companies were sidelined, big companies with no experience in renewables were selected - verging on the corrupt!

What to do? Well, I’m developing an online a map of all major renewable energy schemes in the UK. There are loads, most in planning and about half on the map! See www.renewables-map.co.uk what with this most recent Govt smoke and mirrors I will be adding an additional field showing date project was 1st proposed! My own website is www.solarkent.co.uk

References:

• The Crown Estate: Round 1 and 2 Wind Farm Sites: (Initially proposed in 2004)
• The Crown Estate Offshore Wind Farm Map
• Low Carbon Buildings Programme - Wikipedia
• LCBP - problems with initial tender process leading to ongoing implementation problems

Guest Editor: David Fletcher - Too Rich to Care?

One morning I was walking to work in London when I passed a woman unlocking her shop on Old Bond Street. I noticed that all the lights in the shop were on, yet she clearly hadn’t been inside that day as the shutters were still down.

Realising the lights had probably been on all night, I couldn’t shake a sense of curiosity at why she was wasting electricity.

I began to investigate the subject more and found similar concerns expressed on websites like Green Girls Global. I also began to make late night trips to Old Bond Street on my way home to see how many shop owners had the same attitude as the woman I saw unlocking her shop.

I was horrified to discover that nearly every shop on Old Bond Street left at least some lights on after dark even though they were closed.

One night I had a chat with the security guard who has the unfortunate task of patrolling the street at dark. He told me that my fears were right and that most of the shops left their lights on all night. Some were even timed to come back on as the sun went down.

In looking to understand why shop owners may leave their lights on at night I came across two main responses. The first is that it is for security reasons. This I think is a crazy excuse. Surely it would be better to turn the lights off as any thief breaking into a shop with its lights turned off would need a torch to see where they going. The security guards would find this torch light very easy to spot.

The second and more plausible reason is that the shop lights are left on to attract shoppers. This I find more convincing especially on a road like Old Bond Street with its overt sense of wealth and extravagance. However surely we should be putting the fight against catastrophic climate change above mere window shopping? There are so few people on Old Bond Street at night it doesn’t seem worth the bother of leaving all the lights on. Surely the act of saving energy would be a much more powerful and environmentally positive statement to their customers?

To spread my concerns I created a website called www.bondstreetbaddies.com which has the aim of publicising which shops leave their lights on and which are going green.

Obviously this is a problem that blights many streets and I’d encourage anyone interested in this subject to find ways of drawing attention to it. I’d also encourage people to ask at their favourite shop whether they turn off their lights at night and if not why not?

Guest Editor: David Hayes - Social Networking for change

It’s safe to say that the use of social networking sites worldwide has exploded in the past year, with popular sites seeing total visits increase by as much as 270 percent, according to a recent study by ComScore Inc. MySpace, alone drew more than 114 million global visitors in June 2007, a 72 percent increase over the past year while Facebook, experienced a 270 percent increase in worldwide visitors over the past year.

Alongside the growth of these networks the emergence of niche networks is also growing, coupled with the increased media attention on climate change its no wonder that we are now seeing a host of green social networks emerging. Personally I welcome this for a host of reasons but primarily anything that puts climate change at the centre of the debate is both necessary and essential. While I enjoy dabbling with Facebook and other networks the communication involved seems to be rather limited and the content rather egocentric. This is not a criticism rather an observation and it’s totally natural given that we are really just beginning to explore the potentials of this form of communication.

What ever your beliefs in regard to climate change and its effects it’s hard to ignore the problems we are facing in relation to escalating fuel prices, food shortages and extreme weather conditions. Whether we believe it or not they are inextricably linked and the need to address these issues is paramount. For the first time in human history the Internet offers us the tools to communicate and collaborate on a global scale. While the net may not offer all of the solutions it does however allow each of us to partake in the discussion and therefore it is unquestionably a truly democratizing tool and one that needs to be safeguarded.

As I said earlier I welcome the proliferation of green focused networking sites and I myself am part of a new networking site www.edenbee.com that offers users a platform to tackle climate change through better personal choices (with a little encouragement from like-minded souls). It has all of the essentials of a social network — ways to build a network with friends, and groups and discussions — but on Edenbee, personal profiles get a unique spin with “Lifestyle Profiling” and “Carbon Logbooks,” and a framework for setting goals against the two.

Edenbee encourages not only information sharing, but also a way for people to cheer each other on. If you are looking for up to date news and information you can browse through the blog posts that offer a host of news and interesting articles on how to be more eco conscious and other topical green issues. We feel that we are encouraging a more meaningful conversation, one that is necessary if we are to leave any kind of lasting legacy for future generations.

Guest Editor: Ben - Used Car versus Brand New Hybrid - What is the Greener Choice?

At first glance, the above choice seems pretty straight forward. A new hybrid, like the Toyota Prius, gets much better mileage, so how can it not be the greener choice? A recent article on Cut Your Carbon Footprint says that in many cases buying a used car is actually better for the environment.

How is this so? What your everyday mileage numbers don’t take into account is the amount of energy used up in actually building your car. If you buy a new hybrid, you drive it off the lot with a carbon footprint equivalent of burning 1000 gallons of gas. With a ten year old Tercel, for example, you don’t have to add that to your carbon footprint, giving you an instant advantage. It could take you years and thousands of miles to overcome that initial handicap before your ‘Eco-Friendly’ car is actually the better choice for the environment.

Certainly, this is simplifying the argument. There is something to be said for buying a hybrid car where the money you spend supports further products and investment in fuel efficient cars. As bad as most car manufacturers are for the environment, the truth is that if they didn’t make any money then we would be even further from having the more efficient and electric cars that are so badly needed to stop global warming.

Ultimately, the decision has to come down to the individual and there is no ‘right answer’ for everyone. But don’t get trapped by looking only at the mileage of a car when there are in fact so many other aspects of the car that contribute to your carbon footprint.

Guest Editor: Frans Prins - Organic Cotton, a Travel Story

Eco fashion is hot. It is cool that green lifestyle is in the trend but let’s make it more than that. I hear some people say that organic cotton is already a bit over. Now it’s eco silk! Bamboo! Whatever as long as it is eco chic!

Well, there are more reasons to wear organic cotton than because of its coolness or quality. And these reasons last for longer than a fashion season. Conventional cotton kills. Worldwide thousands of people die yearly because of pesticide related illnesses. Not to speak of the children getting blind or the environmental impact of all those chemicals. There is a clear alternative: organic cotton is free of pesticides and pays off better for the farmers. And that cotton carries wonderful, positive stories.

Last year I visited organic cotton farms and production places in Turkey and Uganda. In Northern Uganda, in the region around Lira, there is as much as 27 thousand farmers growing organic cotton.

It was quite a trip from Kampala, it takes about six hours on extremely bad roads. This area has been under control of the cruel guerilla Lord’s Resistance Army until very recently. Now the area is calmer and the farmers, who lived in refugee camps, are living on their lands again. Until one, two years ago they had to go to their lands with fear and go back to the camps before the evening fell.

The farming life now looked all quite romantic to me: traditional huts, some chickens running around, people chatting or working on their fields. But of course there is a lot of extreme poorness and insecurity about life’s basics as well.

The farmers have small fields with different crops. They do not make use of irrigation, so depend on the rain seasons that occur a few times per year. Next to cotton they grow sesame, red peppers and vegetables for local consumption. The income from cotton and sesame, which is exported, gives income which the farmers can use to send their children to school or buy medicines from. From the extra income they gain with growing organic, the farmers can afford building small houses which give more security and protection.

The farmers are united in a cooperative with chosen representatives. What makes a difference here, is that the organic farmers are trained in methods to prevent their crops in a natural way. For example by planting red peppers around the cotton. Animals don’t like peppers and as a side effect you also produce peppers. Another part of growing organic is using crop rotation. The different crops use the ground differently, which keeps the soil fertile, so one does not need artificial fertilizers to pumped into the ground. The crop rotation also results in a more efficient use of the landfill and a higher production. In this way it is also more economic. And of course the non-organic farmers are very interested to see what their neighbors are doing…

In the end, the social effect of this organic cotton project might be even bigger than the ecological impact. The farmers get a guaranteed price and buy for their cotton, they get training and a organic bonus of twenty percent. This can really mean the difference for sending their children to school or having a proper housing.

Frans Prins is managing director of the Grass Routes Foundation, a young international NGO working in the field of sustainability and design. He is also one of the founders of the new, green fashion label Pamoyo. For the first collection, Pamoyo used organic cotton from Turkey and Uganda and recycled vintage elements.
www.grass-routes.org
www.pamoyo.com

Guest Editor: James Russell - How to Turn our Children Green

It’s hard to remember what the world was like before we found out about climate change. For children it’s probably impossible. Yet ten or fifteen years ago Greens were still perceived as slightly crazy, unrealistic misfits – people who refused to engage in the eternal political battle between right and left, but instead wanted to send humanity back to the Dark Ages.

With Green politics rapidly becoming mainstream and the Environment high on everyone’s list of important subjects, we’re moving into new territory. The old campaigners from the 1970s are suddenly discovering that politicians and pundits are listening to them, and you can hardly pick up a newspaper or open a web page without somebody telling you how to Green up some aspect of your life. Rarely a day goes by without an alarming news story about melting ice or vanishing species. In fact the news story that doesn’t have climate change as an important component is now as rare as the Panamanian Golden Frog.

News and opinions inevitably filter from the adult world into the playground, and children are worried. A government-sponsored UK survey of primary (4-11) education last year found that kids were pessimistic about the future and concerned about everything from climate change to trade injustice. Many equated these huge issues (which they felt powerless to address) to their immediate environmental problems – traffic, bullying and so on – creating a general climate of anxiety.

This has worsened a tendency that should alarm environmentalists across the spectrum: children’s abandonment of the real world in favour of TV, the internet and fantasy fiction. A recent editorial in the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust magazine suggested that children’s lack of enthusiasm for nature (in reality, rather than on TV) did not bode well for wildlife organisations that rely both on the work of enthusiastic volunteers and donations from supporters. The people currently filling the ranks and the coffers of the RSPB and other organisations developed their passions when they were children, but if our children spend their free time at home (or in manmade playgrounds), how can they do the same?

Other factors are at work here, for instance the misguided health and safety rules that make it so hard for schools to arrange trips. My son went to a wonderful pre-school set beside a city farm, yet the kids never went to the farm during school time because to take them fifty metres required supervision at a ratio of one adult for every three children.

If children are raised in these surroundings, driven everywhere in cars and offered the easy solace of the bedroom computer, it’s no wonder they find the real world alarming. Add to this fears of climate change and you have a generation ill-equipped to face any sort of challenge, never mind the ones our kids are likely to encounter.

Yet many children want to be active and informed citizens, and thankfully they are now getting more and more opportunities to do so. The international organisation Eco-schools (www.eco-schools.org) is one that doesn’t yet have the cachet of Greenpeace, but it could prove a vital force for change. Some 40,000 schools around the world (8,000 plus in the UK) have signed up to this programme designed to help schools teach kids about a whole range of Green issues and carry out practical work.

A glance at the nine topic areas listed on the UK website (www.eco-schools.org.uk) shows that this programme goes way beyond light bulbs and composting. It is, in fact, a revolutionary exercise in consciousness-raising, covering everything from Fair Trade to Biodiversity. It insists on the importance of children leaving the classroom and experiencing the world as much as possible, emphasizes that the Environment is all around us and ours to look after, and empowers students by putting the school council rather than teaching staff at the centre of the decision-making process.

Of course schools can ignore the whole thing if they choose, but this is part of a wider movement to encourage and facilitate children’s involvement with their environment. A few years ago play workers in the city of Bath launched a Play Rangers scheme, which offered children adult supervision in local parks, encouraged adventurous play and gave lessons in outdoorsy skills. Now local authorities all over the country are launching similar schemes, and children are coming out to play.

Personally, I am less excited about the much more loudly-trumpeted Greening of children’s TV and websites. While it might be inspiring for children to see their favourite characters saving the planet, the children themselves are still staring at a screen. If we want a new generation of eco-warriors to stand up to governments and corporations in the future, they need the opportunity to fall in love with the world around them and to develop the strength and imagination to become its protectors.

James Russell is the author of How to Turn Your Parents Green
howtoturnyourparentsgreen.blogspot.com

Guest Editor: Henry Coppola - Help save the environment, and have fun doing it.

Are you tired of the boiler plate, run of the mill action emails steadily filling your inbox? Sure you want to help out—you want to change the world, end the war, save the environment, and so on—but does it have to be so boring? Skim the petition, enter your information and details, maybe email some friends; rinse, repeat.

What if instead of the standard request to sign a petition or donate to the cause, you were asked to play a game? Does an interactive and entertaining way to make a difference online sound too good to be true? It isn’t. Environmental action games of various shapes and sizes for all sorts of causes have been popping up all over the web and are beginning to make appearances in many online activists’ inboxes. You can help save whales, learn to reduce waste, calculate your carbon footprint, and my personal favorite–learn about and help bring an end to overfishing.

These games range in complexity and scope and can vary widely in the levels of entertainment and education that they provide. Many of the more entertaining games function in a simple arcade style, there are several games in this mode based on fishing practices in which you control a fish attempting to avoid various hazards and fishing gear. Other environmental action games work on more of a simulation model where the player makes a series of choices and is presented with the consequences of their decisions. While informative, this style doesn’t lend itself to repeated play or function as an interesting break from the daily grind, the way some of the action games do–with features like high score tracking and an increasing level of difficulty as you progress.

The best environmental action games are entertaining, re-playable, and informative. Whats the point to a game that isn’t any fun? Perhaps more importantly how can you create change without educating your audience? When these two qualities are combined to create an effective environmental action game the drudgery of filling out petitions and sending emails can be alleviated. You can have fun while making a difference online!

Three environmental action games to try:

• Whales Revenge is currently the leader of the pack, having generated over 1 million comments to date largely because it’s so fun to play. Its a bit like Missile Defense except with harpoons instead of bombs and bubble blasts instead of missiles. While Whales Revenge has done a remarkable job of collecting signatures and will help you wile away some time, you won’t learn anything by playing it.
• The Garbage Game has you make personal choices regarding a variety of common disposables, then you get to play garbage commissioner for New York City and decide where all that waste and recycling will go. This game is both interesting and informative, but it won’t have you coming back for more.
• Ocean Survivor lets you take control of a bluefin tuna cruising the seas and trying to avoid ending up in a net or on a hook. This game is fun to play, tracks high scores (you get to leave your name just like on Ms Pacman back in the day), and will also teach you about the fishing practice that eventually snags you.

What green games have you played recently?

- Henry Coppola

Guest Editor: Scott James - 5 Easy & Inexpensive Guerrilla Marketing Strategies for Fair Trade Organizations

Guerrilla marketing is one of the most effective methods available to small businesses and nonprofit organizations for increasing sales or expanding the reach of your cause. These unconventional techniques are designed to produce maximum results using minimal resources.

Today, the Internet provides the best medium to use guerrilla marketing in fast and easy ways. The most effective strategies are:

1. Email Marketing

You must give visitors to your website a reason to leave their email address and give you permission to continue communicating with them. Offer a free subscription to a newsletter about your niche within the Fair Trade movement or provide another type of bonus.

Use an autoresponder service to capture visitor sign-ups and send out follow-up messages and newsletters to your list. For my company that sells Fair Trade soccer balls online, I route our emails through the free tools available at Gmail (look at their Vacation Settings for the autoresponder functionality). Be sure to provide valuable information, not just blatant advertising. By developing a rapport with your readers, you’ll build a larger and larger list of responsive subscribers.

2. Blogging

Blogging has taken the online world by storm. Blogs (short for “web logs”) are dynamically editable websites people use to talk about topics important to them.

Post to your blog as often as you want and include links pointing to your website. This frequently changing, unique content and the numerous incoming links are extremely favorable to the search engines.

You can use Blogger.com to set up an attractive template for your blog and post messages right away. The best part, it’s free. I personally use WordPress – an open-source platform with lots of community support – on our blog at www.fairtradesports.com, as well as FeedBurner to make subscribing to our blog fast and easy for our website visitors.

3. Forum Marketing

Forums give people a place online to congregate and talk about what interests them. To find forums in your niche, just Google “[keyword] forum” and see what you get.

Once you sign up for a forum, post messages regularly. This is a great way to build relationships. Post questions. Answer questions. Tell people where to find good information. Putting blatant advertising in your posts is against the rules. But you are allowed to put a link to your website in your forum signature. Consider changing your signature based on the forum to which you are contributing. For example, this is my standard signature for any forum related to Fair Trade:

- Scott James
Fair Trade Sports
Blog: www.fairtradesports.com
Fair Trade soccer balls!

I use a different signature for forums related to the eco-aspects of our sports balls, my work with the abolitionist Not For Sale Campaign, or my work with the sustainable MBA school, Bainbridge Graduate Institute.

4. Direct Link Building

Search engines – Google, in particular – favor pages with lots of incoming links, both one-way and two-way links, because it increases your website’s “popularity” across the Internet.

A simple example of one-way linking is the kind of link you get when you submit an comment on someone else’s blog. Your comment can have a link to your site in it, and the comment can be picked up by related websites and ezines if the topic is interesting.

For two-way links, you can contact other website owners within the Fair Trade movement and ask to trade links. Or, just Google “[keyword] trade links,” and you’ll get back a bunch of sites that are offering to do a link exchange with you. Then, you can add them to a section on your site titled “Related Links,” “Resource Center,” or something similar. It’s that simple.

Go through the list and start asking if you can trade links. Slow and steady wins the race. Do a little every day and pretty soon, you’ll grow your links a lot. The key is to reach out to others with authentic sites doing work to further the Fair Trade movement.

5. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites are wildly popular with people under 25, and several (like MySpace, Facebook, and Ning) have become some of the most visited sites on the web.

Squidoo.com is different from other sites because you can sell blatantly without worrying about being shut down.

Squidoo lets you create what’s called a lens, which is an information portal about your topic. The secret is to provide helpful information for people in your niche. Along the way, you can point them to your website, getting you laser-targeted traffic. We made one to alert Squidoo readers of Fair Trade products available on the web (http://www.squidoo.com/shopfairtrade).

By implementing these guerrilla marketing strategies, you will be spreading the word about your product, your organization and your cause across the Internet in ways that will have both an immediate impact and a long-term effect for years to come.

by Scott James
Founder, Fair Trade Sports
Bringing you eco-certified Fair Trade soccer balls and more!

Guest Editor: Nigel Berman - Reduce Your Carbon Footprint: “It starts from home”

I run an online eco retail shop and am committed to helping the earth in whatever way I can. I firmly believe that we as individuals can all make a difference by making greener and more ethical choices. For me, saving energy is a priority because this will not only save money, but it will also help preserve our planet. It means a change of attitude and giving up old habits, but ultimately it’s something we’re all capable of doing. Here are my top energy saving tips:

Don’t use stand by
Gadgets left on stand by are responsible for producing 4 million tonnes of excess carbon dioxide (CO2) each year. An average family can save 150kg of CO2 a year just by turning off appliances. Appliances in standby mode account for around 10% of UK household energy use. If we switch off or unplug devices when not in use, or invest in a standby saver, you’ll save around £40 per year.

Use energy efficient lighting
In most homes, lighting accounts for 10 to 15% of the electricity bill. If we use a smart meter to compare the power consumption of normal light bulbs with that of low energy and energy saving light bulbs, we save about 80% of the energy of normal bulbs. It’s simple - use energy saving light bulbs!

Recharge those batteries
We throw away over 650m batteries every year in the UK, polluting the soil and clogging up landfill sites. Rechargeable batteries save energy, and the slightly higher cost is recovered in the first five charges. Recharging costs are also minimal.

Watch your washing
I try not to wash my clothes on a setting above 40C. A wash at 60C uses 30% more energy, as 90% of the energy used by a washing machine is used to heat the water. I also use Eco Balls or a natural laundry soap called Soapods to minimise the effect of harmful chemicals being released into the environment.

Defrost your freezer
It’s a messy job, but I try to defrost my fridge and freezer on a regular basis to maintain efficiency. I acquired a saving device developed in conjunction with the Department of Energy that helps me save up to 20% of my fridge’s energy by better regulating its power use. When fitted, it helps my fridge or freezer run more economically by adjusting the electricity supply according to the motor’s needs.

Lower the thermostat
I like woolly jumpers - wearing one means I can turn down the heating. Lowering the thermostat by just 1.5C can save up to 10% on heating bills and reduce the greenhouse gases households produce by up to a tonne.

Go to my website for more eco-friendly ideas and to see the full range of products available.

By Nigel Berman – Founder of www.nigelsecostore.com

Guest Editor Steu Mann - Students Motivate Themselves in Environmental Education

K-12 students in Kenya, Paris, or San Diego all have one significant commonality: the environment. What Inconvenient Truth did for raising the bar on environmental education is, without a doubt, “global awareness?” I think whoever watches it, even if they don’t agree with the message, gets a clear picture of how different aspects of the environment are directly connected to our life styles.

Every class of my high school students watching that movie have concluded with the question, “What can I do?” Young people today do care about what happens with the environment; yet many feel overwhelmed or powerless in dealing with environmental issues. My experience leads me to believe that the time has arrived to capture their interest with learning experiences to discover appropriate care of tomorrow’s healthy environment, which means providing environmental education that is academically focused and civically pointed.

Service learning contributes to student education, along with building social skills: character building. Service-learning is considered a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. Constructivists (e.g., Brooks & Brooks, 1999) propose that students actively create their own knowledge using real world situations to examine essential concepts in a context that is personally meaningful. Service-learning has been around since for almost 100 years as a method to enhance education. Since the early 1990’s there have been more and more legislative efforts and comprehensive national programs to emphasize and support this learning. Today, there’s a growing interest on the part of educators as more studies point out the cross- curriculum benefits.

Producing projects that combine service learning and environmental education is easily accomplished to fulfill lesson objectives and it can be molded to fit class characteristics. Here are two examples of projects for grades 5-12: A) students in a middle school science class studying the environment help preserve the species of birch trees, local to their area, by raising money to purchase some small birch trees and then plant them at a local park or forested area; B) students concerned with the quality of the environment organize a recycling effort at school by establishing and carrying-out a schedule of regularly picking up recyclable materials from classes and offices; then depositing that material in a campus bin that is picked up by a recycle vendor. There are volumes of benefits for students participating in a project.

Educators have to take the lead in class environmental projects. The teacher has to get them pointed in the right direction, assist them in getting organized, and keep them on track. When I hear my students asking about what they can do, I take their interest down to our local level. We begin talking about ideas to clean up the campus, teaching other students about the environment, or doing some work in the neighborhood. We begin with brainstorming on ideas as a class. The next step is alignment, making a commitment as a class to take some action on at least one project we have discussed. The last step is the most comprehensive because it involves the actual project work. The pivotal point is the students taking control and running the project work, which happens when the teacher becomes a resource or Subject Matter Expert. If you want a copy of my Environmental Project Packet, which helps the students and I stay organized. Receive my Environmental Project Packet for free by clicking here.

There’s a multitude of projects that integrate environmental stewardship with academic success. This project type is totally complaint with current Standards. From a teacher point of view, as much as I want to deny it, the fact remains: I must teach to the test to have my students succeed. Below are two of the National Science Education Standards whose scope is deep enough to encompass most environmental service learning projects for grades 5-12:

- Content Standard B: The program of study in science for all students should be developmentally appropriate, interesting, and relevant to students’ lives; emphasize student understanding through inquiry; and be connected with other school subjects.

- Content Standard C: Teachers of science engage in ongoing assessment of their teaching and of student learning.

I guarantee all teachers this: if you have the time and sincere motivation, the students will gladly partner with you on completing an environmental project. It’s a win-win situation: the students win in academics and in skill building, the teacher wins as the students learn while practicing responsibility, and the environment is nurtured. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want to receive support in getting an environmental education project started with your class(es).

Resources

North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Education

National Service Learning Clearinghouse

National Student Service-Learning and Community Service Survey

References

Brooks, Jacqueline Grennon, Martin Brooks. In search of understanding: The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA; Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development,1999.

About the Author: Steu Mann is a high school biology teacher as a second career. He established Education Reporting, Inc. in his effort to provide a resource for improving K-12 education. Any questions or comments can be sent to him at smann@educationreporting.com.