press-release

Washington, DC, February 29, 2008: Supporting the educational goals of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, The Energy + Environment Foundation launched the first-ever initiative to provide energy and environmental educational materials and curriculum to students and teachers around the world free of charge via the web.

The Energy & Environment OpenCourseWare (http://eeocw.org/) initiative provides knowledge sharing, best practices, training materials and curriculum to secondary/high school, college and university students and teachers to assist them in combating climate change. The initiative targets developing countries in particular, who often lack access to knowledge as well as the basic resources required to contribute to the fight against man-made climate change.

Planned subjects include renewable and non-renewable energy systems, climate change science, international climate change regulation, environmental economics, water, chemicals, air pollution, radiation, problems in enforcement, and comparative and international environmental law. Materials are currently being prepared in English and Chinese, with plans to expand to Spanish and Hindi.
 
The Energy + Environment Foundation is bringing together leading faculty from such universities as MIT, Harvard, People’s University of China, and individuals from non-governmental organizations such as the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).  MIT OCW, the first “opencourseware” initiative developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all MIT courses online, Utah State University’s Center for Open Sustainable Learning, CIEL and EnterpriseMediaPartners.net have provided critical support in launching this initiative.

Educators and experts are invited to join the initiative in a search for the highest quality course materials and plans are underway to conduct training sessions for teachers in China and other developing countries where the education systems have few teachers trained in these subjects. Other planned training sites include India as well as Spanish-speaking countries.

“This website is just the start, but we are seeking environmental experts across all relevant sectors to contribute to developing and sharing your knowledge to help others tackle climate change – particularly those countries where willingness is high but knowledge and training is lacking,” said Craig Hart, Executive Director and founder of The Energy + Environment Foundation which developed Energy + Environment OpenCourseWare. “The goal is to create a virtual interdisciplinary education resource center where all of us can benefit from the work we do to promote solutions that will create a better planet for our children and future generations through education.”

Energy & Environment OpenCourseWare develops and freely distributes high-quality multi-media energy and environment education materials, trains teachers in developing countries to teach energy and environment courses, and creates knowledge sharing and best practices that will enable better results in the fight against human-induced climate change. Contributions are subject to an independent review process before being posted on the site. 

For more information about Energy & Environment OpenCourseWare, please go to http://www.eeocw.org or contact Craig Hart at chart@eeocw.org.