Podcast

The PODCAST

Ecovillage questions and Dr. Becker's teaching.

After listening to the podcast i enjoyed hearing that living in an ecovillage was a nice balance between privacy and community. Being in harmony with nature and gardening has been a positive aspect of living in a sustainable community. Taking part in cooking and sharing the responsibilities of cleaning helps to establish community. Gardening and eating locally develop a bond between community members. I have witnessed this form of social bonding during times like Thanksgiving diner. Everyone comes together and contributes to making a large family meal and it can be a very positive uniting factor.

Even the children get to take part and learn from the other community members. They become friends with the other young people and are able to watch out for each other while hanging out naturally.

Post-graduate sustainability classes may be found in the Northwest United States. Oregon and Washington have made efforts to support the education of sustainability. Another option to further your knowledge of sustainability is by taking part in an actual ecovillage. Some universities allow you to use this experience as part of a masters program. There are many ecovillages that allow people to come visit with out having to buy property.

It can be difficult to keep up with a sustainable lifestyle when having to also maintain work, school, and family. Dr. Becker admitted to having a hard time giving up her car. She thinks the county should have a better public transportation system. Andreava said that she had a problems eating healthy in the winter. One benefit of living in Hawaii is that fresh fruits and vegetables are available year round.

Dr. Becker plans to come back to Hawaii and create a connection with the big island, ecovillage, and Cornell. More development is needed and the people of hawaii have a good opportunity to be sustainable, but the only way it can happen is if the students of UHH and our generation take the initiative.

Questions on teaching seemed limited to the summer class. The answers the students give in our responses to the modules are supposed to reflect our understanding of the readings. That is why we have 3-4 paragraph response to asses the students without testing. Dr. Becker is not sure whether she prefers online or in class teaching. There are positive and negative aspects of having an online class. I would also prefer a high bred or mix of online and in class learning structure.

My questions for Dr. Becker are:

Was it hard to keep up with the over 250 blogs that were posted on the Fall sustainability class's blog-site? Would you have started with the individual blogs from the beginning? Did the class run into problems posting blogs?

Thanks for the opportunity to be part of your class.