SUSTAINABILITY TALKS
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.
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.
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
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.