NEXT.cc E-Learning DESIGNOPEDIA Green Homes, Green Schools, Green Cities Workshop

September 23, 2017

Intro to Scales of Design via NEXT.cc E-Learning Website; Participants will design a STEM hat, (to wear around Fermi), Draw from Nature and create forms; Pattern; learn about 9 scales of home and greening homes, greening schools and green city design fabricating over the day an acropolis with sustainability practicing connecting the built environment with larger earth, air, water, and energy sources.

NEXT.cc’s STEAM by DESIGN eLearning Journeys connect art and culture as dynamic creative processes combined with STEM practices as drivers of 21st century ecological imagination. STEAM by DESIGN scaffolds project-based learning building subject matter mastery and developing meta-cognitive skills that encourage informal and lifelong learning in students and teachers. Habits of attentive observation, heuristic discovery, and self-reflection through access to sustainable science and design practices blurs boundaries between work, play, creativity and fun. STEAM by DESIGN connects art, architecture, engineering and construction as dynamic creative processes and drivers of 21st-century innovation. Connecting young people to the very places that they live and learn through the mind of the architect and engineer, NEXT.cc looks at how culture, society, technology, and the environment shape design responses. Accessing architecture through tools, languages, discovery, and design, participants draw, paint, write, sketch, animate, model online inside and become architectural investigators outside. Journeys link with virtual field trips, global institutions, museum collections, and global art, design, and architecture practices. Participants research relationships between objects, people, and space and brainstorm ideas to solve problems.

Environmentally assessing homes and schools, construction is seen as part of larger energy, water, air and material systems. Students analyze sites, develop programs, experience the iterative design process and design making. They propose streets, bridges, buildings, cities and landscapes. Empowered to collaborate, create and communicate, students become active participants, place makers and urban stewards of the built and natural environment.
Based on over 100 teacher professional development workshops, the award-winning eLearning eco web, NEXT.cc, empowers educators with new transdisciplinary connections, local and global, inspiring new ways of thinking, learning, and making.

Intended impact of project

Increased environmental & sustainability literacy