The unconscious consumption of the resources of our planet by human beings has led to the emergence of the concept of sustainability in the last half century. We need to make an effort to leave a livable world to the next generations. The UN Sustainable Development Goals summarize the common problems of our world and guide us. Undoubtedly, at the center of realizing these goals, there is quality education, which is goal number 4. Education is the most powerful path to sustainability. At this point, teachers, who are one of the most important actors of education systems, have a great responsibility. The starting point of the Code 4 SDGs project is also based on this situation. In this project, it is aimed for teachers to provide their students with sustainable development knowledge and skills through coding.
The project received a small grant (about 2800 Euros) under the EU Sivil Düşün programme. The coordinator of the project, the owner of this application, Dr. Selcuk Yusuf Arslan. Arslan also wrote a doctoral thesis on this subject.
Participating teachers were selected in the first phase of the project. 100 teachers have applied to this program. The target audience of the project is secondary school teachers. The teachers were given basic coding and SDGs training in two different sessions online. Afterwards, teachers were asked to develop learning scenarios in which they would contribute to the sustainable development goal, which they determined with the information they learned, by coding. For example, a teacher designs a lesson with coding and a solution for the purpose of climate action number 13. Source codes prepared with Makecode are also given.
At the end of the time given to the teachers, learning scenarios were designed and finalized by experimenting with their students. Then, the best 25 learning scenarios were determined by a team of experts in the field. These scenarios were turned into a book and made available to all teachers in Turkey as PDF format. In the learning scenarios prepared within the scope of the project, 13 of the 17 goals were processed in the scenarios. The teachers also used innovative approaches such as gamification, STEM, project-based learning, challenged based learning etc. in the scenarios.
Thanks to this project, the participating teachers produced a material for their other colleagues. In addition, vectorial images supporting all scenarios were prepared. Instagram Reels videos of 10 determined scenarios were shot.
To reach the images and videos of the project on @code4sdgs instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/code4sdgs/
To access the project book: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cDjsQbI_cuMAMDaJA8ha2lsONZ9QKlDS/view?…;