My experience in sustainability is the idea of conserving resources for future use and restoring past damages. I am in the hospitality industry and sustainability in my experience is not using plastic for service and by practicing conservation by reusing things. There is a high amount of waste in a kitchen and trying to reuse materials when appropriate is a big step in being sustainable. When growing the produce farmers can rotate crops so the soil will not deplete and lose all nutrients dry out and create another dust bowl. By preserving the underground water resources for our future generations to have access to groundwater is sustainable. My favorite resource that needs to be keep clean and sustainable for our future generations is the oceans. Human pollution is throwing off the system of ocean evaporation and altering the hydrologic cycle. This is causing less rain fall to be added back to the lakes and icepack creating the sea levels to rise changing life for every inhabit on earth. Along with over fishing the waters and putting certain types of fish on the endangered spices list will destroy the local ecosystem altering the planet for future generations.
After watching John Seely Brown’s video “Do more with less” I learned how the web 2.0 and new technology like this is making it easier to mass communicate with others around the world and learn from each other. Peer based learning is a great way to open up social networking and give you skills to present yourself in front of peers confidently making you more prepared for the world. Education involved around who is the smartest and can stump the class and possibly the teacher doesn’t allow student to feel comfortable if they are below the par. By connecting students to students teaching each other how they solved an equation or figuring it out together is more productive than a teacher lecturing. By virtually putting student and teachers into study groups people who would normally never get an education have a chance to be taught and involved in a class thousands of miles away. Especially if MIT is posting class lectures on ITunes videos it makes it easily accessible for anyone to obtain the knowledge or lesson inside the video. I enjoyed the part were Mr. Brown talks about how amateurs are not below or in a second class to professionals but that they are lovers and have passion for their subject of interest.
rs450bassett 
I liked the part about amateurs as well. I think that is the passion that students -as amateurs- have which make a group learning setting work. As you mentioned, a non competitive setting will enable students that understand the topic very well share that knowledge. Nonetheless, I also think that competitive settings help students try to catch up to the top. Balance is the key.
competition in the world has shaped the way we live now and finding the balance in the class room is important.
It is interesting that you mentioned the fact that more sustainable practices need to be used when dealing with the ocean, and how much it affects the ecosystem when so many things are out of place. This is something that is often overlooked and forgotten since there is so much of the ocean that we don’t see directly, so we don’t fully understand the massive amount of damage that has been done to marine habitats.
I agree that social media has changes the way learning. I do think that expanding your knowledge is to expand your radius of resources even with social media.
I agree sustainability is postive and interesting that less peple are sustianable. Everything little part will make a difference. Browns video shed a new light on how student can help one another succeed in college and life in general.