Global Systems Science (GSS) is an interdisciplinary, integrated course for high school
students, based at the Lawrence Hall of Science at University of
California, Berkeley. The course emphasizes how scientists from a wide
variety of fields work together to understand significant problems of
global impact. Collectively, the GSS books constitute a unique combination of studies in the natural and social sciences through which high school students may view the global environmental issues that they will confront within their lifetimes. One of our key goals is for students to make intelligent, informed decisions that can translate into personal actions, such as conserving energy, recycling, and preparing for their role as voting citizens in a modern industrialized society.
![]() Self-Organizing Systems (SOS)...is a resource created by the originators of GSS (Richard Golden and Cary Sneider). It is a valuable concept to help students achieve a coherent view of the world/universe, an understanding of connections throughout nature, and an appreciation the unity of all scientific endeavor. Systems is a theme that all national science education reform programs embrace. To explore how these ideas can be easily woven into your teaching, read the article by Richard and Cary and visit the SOS website.![]() E-ReadingThe GSS project provides the option of replacing hard copy textbooks with electronic files (e-books) that students read on computers at home and/or at school. This can reduce school textbook costs by an order of magnitude for schools where a significant number of students are ready to use e-textbooks in place of the hard copy books. See
For a considerably more "anti-computer" perspective, see the article " Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Children and Computers - Alliance for Childhood." GSS is part of the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) GSS and GLOBEGSS is highly compatible with the GLOBE project which enables students to take scientifically valid measurements in the fields of atmosphere, hydrology, soils, and land cover/phenology and report their data through the Internet to the GLOBE student data archive. GSS is also collaborating with the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance (MMSA) in their current project to develop curriculum materials for GLOBE at the middle and high school levels.Editorial comment from GSS Director, Alan Gould (2016 April 29): The GSS curriculum materials explore two root causes along with solutions:
By obvious solutions, in energy use I mean sustainable energy systems such as solar panel arrays, wind generators, biofuels, geothermal energy, and hydro-energy systems based on rivers, ocean tides and waves. By obvious solutions, for exponential population growth, I mean finding ways to stop the exponential growth. One important aspect of that is education for women (and men) which often results in smaller families.
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