1 ENVIRONMENT EDUCATION OF TEACHERS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY MEDIATED OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING

The earth’s environment is in crisis mainly because it is being abused beyond its capacity by human beings. The present paper examines the need for environmental education and awareness in the present times. The paper focuses on the role of teachers and educators to spread awareness about environmental issues and problems. The emphasis is on sensitizing the student community through their teachers who can play a pivotal role in transmitting the requisite knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, essential to restore or at least arrest the irreversible damage being caused to the environment. The paper describes various technology mediated initiatives by the developed and developing world to spread environment awareness. It delves into the need for use of open and distance learning methods by institutions to train teachers in the area of environment education. Since environment education cuts across all disciplines and levels of study, it is time that education planners and policy framers incorporate the elements of environment education as a compulsory component at all levels. The teacher training curricula could be redesigned to include the environment education component in the theory and practical courses. Convergence of formal and non-formal systems can be heavily relied on for capacity building of teachers in the area of environment education