Introduction to Global Citizenship

Today I decided to start preparing for the “Introduction to Global Citizenship” course starting next semester. The course will have 17 classes from which 9 will be taught by me, and 8 by other 2 teachers. As a “shared” course, I will be teaching 4 classes to each of the other 2 sections.

Introduction classes (3)
Shared classes (4)
Shared classes (4)
Shared classes (4)
Review classes (2)

“Preparing” is not really the term I should have used since I already have the material I am going to use for the course. What I really started doing today was putting everything together.

The topic of the course is Environmental Issues. Since we are preparing students to be good global citizens, this topic makes a lot of sense. My choice of topics are listed below:

Batteries: every device has one in it so it is important to know how they affect the environment.

e-waste: what happens to the devices after we have no use for them? Proper disposal of electronic devices is also an important characteristic of a responsible global citizen.

Conflict Materials: every device we use have them. At what cost do we get our brand new phones? Are the companies we buy our technology devices responsible enough to avoid buying raw materials from sources that exploit humans?

Cloud Computing: Most information we use nowadays is stored in networked servers, the so-called “cloud”. What are the effects of huge datacenters on the environment?

The result was a 5 chapter book-like (including an introduction) that I will be sharing here soon.