SEED Launches New Theme in Malaysia

Voices
SEED Launches New Theme in Malaysia

March 13– 18, 2006 [Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia]

Workshops Promote Awareness and Action to Address Energy Use and Climate Change

It’s not every day that middle school kids get the chance to participate in a ceremony to launch a new environmental initiative and plant trees with government officials and business executives. Or to tour and study traditional, sustainable architecture. Or to attend a lecture on solar and hydrogen energy use in homebuilding. Or to compete in a university-sponsored robotics competition.

	Visiting a traditional Malay house at the Badan Warisan Malaysian Heritage Centre
	Inside the SEED Collaborative Workshop at the YMCA in Kuala Lumpur.

Well, it certainly can be during a SEED Collaborative Workshop, where firsthand learning and exposure to science and technology are attracting the attention and participation of kids and teachers in SEED Network schools around the world.

These events and more—including team projects—were all part of just one week’s activity at the most recent Collaborative Workshop in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia, on March 13-18, 2006. Success with two previous collaborative workshops in Malaysia in 2004 and 2005 has generated strong interest in SEED, resulting in requests for more—and more frequent—workshops.

Doreah Jalaludin, the SEED Malaysia Coordinator who organized the event, commented, “Malaysia has been incredibly responsive to SEED and its approach to education, and vice versa. In less than two years, we have hosted 3 collaborative workshops, and already some of our students and teachers who attended the first and second workshops have been helping as facilitators. This means that we will be able to hold our own workshops, and more of them, soon and that the program is really taking hold. There’s no greater measure of success, I believe.”

As a result, this workshop was extremely popular. In attendance were 91 people, including 61 participating students and teachers from 14 SEED schools throughout Malaysia and 30 facilitators, including 13 Schlumberger/WesternGeco volunteers, 2 Schlumberger Spouses Association volunteers, 4 teachers, 9 students and 2 international facilitators.

Kicking Off a New Theme

What made this workshop particularly special was the launch of a new global theme for SEED activities: Climate Change and Energy. Michael Tempel, SEED Educational Programs Manager, introduced the new topic by leading a discussion about Climate Change and what could be done to deal with the problem of excessive energy use and global warming.

SEED workshops build on one another over time and focus on a variety of educational and environmental themes including waste and recycling, deforestation, my country/my school, and most recently, water. The workshops explore the topics from global and local perspectives and often inspire students to take their learning beyond the lab through action that benefits their communities. They take their inspiration from many different sources, including books, articles, websites, presentations and exhibits.

This time around, ideas for the projects that were developed during the workshop originated from documents, web sites and field trips. The fourteen projects that emerged were variations of energy-efficient homes that combined traditional Malay building methods with modern technology. The projects will continue for several weeks beyond the end of the workshop so that participants can refine their models and reports in preparation for a SEED exhibition at the Malaysian National Science Museum in August 2006.