Last but not least, all of you who are working on sustainable education with students are encouraged to send Keith Kelly and Stefka Kitanova your own work, classroom materials and articles for publication . Requirements and details are described in the inside cover of the journal.
Factworld Journal 17: Sustainability Education
Youth citizen entrepreneurship competition
Encourage your students to participate in the UNESCO Youth
Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition. In their own words, young people aged 15+ can
demonstrate all their STEAMS (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art,
Mathematics, Sports) skills by submitting their innovative ideas and projects
with a societal impact, which champion and implement one or more of the 17
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). The 17 Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) and 169 related targets address the most important social, economic,
environmental, health and governance challenges of our time.
First of all, register and create an account. If you have an
innovative idea on one of the 17 SDGs, you can send your
entry until the entry deadline (31 July 2017). You may also support
your entry by submitting a video presentation of your idea or project (up to 3
minutes).
Entries will be posted on the competition website and
are subject to online commenting and public voting. From among the
finalists, the judges will make the final selection of three winners (Grand Prize, 2nd Prize and 3rd Prize) in each category.
Entries will be evaluated based on their
entrepreneurial vision, feasibility, innovation, leadership, social
impact, and sustainability, among other factors.
The People's Choice Prize will
be given to the entry with the largest number of votes in each of the two
categories.
In addition, an Entrepreneurship Campus Prize will
be given to three entrants who have demonstrated outstanding
‘entrepreneurship spirit’ by actively taking part in the Entrepreneurship
Campus.
I reckon this is a great opportunity to empower
young entrepreneurs to create a sustainable world so I would like to
thank Stiftung Entrepreneurship and Goi Peace Foundation for organizing this competition. Good
luck to all the young entrepreneurs ready to take part in it!
Debates in the classroom to help students handle the 4Cs
In addition to providing meaningful
listening, speaking and writing practice, debate is also highly effective for
developing argumentation skills for persuasive speech and writing. Debating is,
indeed, an essential thinking skill that our students have to practise in order
not to be afraid to express their opinions when they are not the same as
others’ . Equally important is the ability they will acquire to respect others’
opinions.
I would like to share a lesson plan that any teacher can use either for
English language or for any subject which is implemented through English. It includes some guidelines for the chairperson, the timekeeper and the
audience. You will also find a very simple assessment tool so that the students
who act as the audience can take an active part throughout the debating
process. I reckon this peer assessment tool would be an effective way to engage
students and foster their critical thinking skills by asking them to
assess their peers.
Apart from the lesson plan above, teachers will also need a tool to assess their students debating
skills.
(With permission from: http://course1.winona.edu/shatfield/air/classdebate.pdf)
I believe that the 4 Cs which have become a must in our English classrooms can be developed in a natural way by setting up debates in our lessons
throughout the academic year. We can also use debates as a tool to review argumentative language and specific vocabulary before the exam period we are immersed in right now.
Finally, I would like to recommend debatingmatters.com,
a website which will help you to develop debates with your students on a huge
range of topics. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics, Sport).
Just brow subjects by A-Z here.
I hope that
this article provides those of you who are interested in debate with
enough to get started. Then, you will need to adapt the resources to suit your
educational context needs . The best argument to defend debates is
to keep in mind that they bring creativity, communication, collaboration and
critical thinking together. Therefore, let’s debate in our classrooms and
help students to become
well-practiced critical thinkers.
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