2009 Volume 5 Issue 3 Pages 338-343
In order to establish a sustainable society, we should not turn our eyes away from large consumption of energies and materials. Science literacy is also an important parameter for understanding the influence of our life on the environment to take responsible action for it. A large number of programs for environmental education (EE) have been carried out at schools in Japan. There are many EE programs for energy issues, but the number of EE programs on materials consumption is very small. While activities on education for sustainable development (ESD) have been building up recent days, but there is little ESD program based on materials consumption as well. Our group have therefore developed a new EE program based on mobile phone technologies for the above two educational objectives, to recognize the influence of our life on the environment with respect to materials consumption and to gain science literacy on industrial products. In this paper, the outline of our program with its characteristics is described. The importance of EE based on industrial technologies is also discussed from the aspect of the potential of EE as a career education program as well as the development of human resources in Japan.
