Have you heard about the Open University's free short courses at http://openlearn.open.ac.uk? After a breeze through the prospectus, we've cherry picked three fascinating units about sustainability. AfSL's Annabel Bradbury tried and tested her first Open Uni module U216 Environment last year (and passed with a 2:1 hurrah!) and recommends the Open University as a first rate educator. Here's our short list:
Claiming connections: a distant world of sweatshops?
Sweatshops and the exploitation of workers are often linked to the globalised production of ‘big brand’ labels. This unit examines how campaigners have successfully closed the distance between the brands and the sweatshops, while others argue that such production ‘kick starts’ economies into growth benefiting whole communities.
Climate change: island life in a volatile world
The unit uses the example of climate change to highlight the dynamic and volatile character of the planet, and how globalisation links together, in often unequal ways, people and places across the world. The unit focuses on the potentially momentous impact of global environmental change on Pacific Islands like Tuvalu. It introduces students to geographical ways of thinking about the world.
LETS: A community development
This unit give examples of how LETS work as a community development. Local Exchange and Trading Schemes (LETS) expanded rapidly in the UK after the first scheme was set up in Norfolk in 1985. LETS are associations of people who make offers of goods and services to and from each other. What is on offer, and the requests people make, are listed in local directories. Currencies have local names, there is a new scheme in Manchester called The Manchester Green Pound.
