Communications Technology (TGJ) focuses on digital media production, including print, video, audio, photography, and online content creation. As more than a purely technical discipline students have the opportunity to connect craft and artistry all centred around core goals of practicing audiovisual storytelling. The technical skills available to students in our studios allow them to tell stories of climate change beyond the page. It’s potentially a uniquely powerful distinction of the utility of multimedia content production as students get to show, tell and experience the change they hope to create in their communities and their changing world.
Be it a critical documentary of our local watershed’s, an in-depth podcast on the challenges of recycling device batteries that are soldered to their circuit boards or the overuse of freshwater for cooling neural chips; the technology we teach is inexorably connected to environmental impact both positive and negative. While often perceived as environmentally neutral, this field is deeply connected to sustainability issues, particularly water consumption and electronic waste. The very infrastructure that supports digital media production, like data centres, cloud storage, and AI systems, requires significant amounts of freshwater for cooling. Recent studies suggest that large data centres consume millions of litres of water daily, raising concerns about water security in regions already experiencing scarcity (Yañez-Barnuevo, 2025). It’s for these reasons we feel it critical to connect the story of our daily technology to the story of our water sources and the critical role water plays in life on earth.
Students in communication technology have a powerful opportunity to move beyond just learning this material and skills but become, as Greenwood puts it, intellectual resources for their community (Greenwood, 2008). When students produce their own documentaries about their local watershed they are not only providing essential data to themselves but expanding the conversation to the community and put in a position to inform city planners and regulators. The content isn’t for an audience of one when students take the effort to reveal stories of their community and place.
In addition, the rapid cycle of device consumption in media production, cameras, smartphones, microphones, and computers, contributes to growing e-waste. Many devices are filled with unswappable batteries making them obsolete years early then their other components may have otherwise. These devices contain toxic materials that will leach into soil and groundwater when disposed in landfills; left to rot. With our culture focused so heavily on rapid advancements in concert with planned obsolescence the endless consumption of digital content and insatiable appetite for the next new thing in tech has consequences. Could right to repair laws and holding manufacturers accountable by weighing these choices with it’s impact to even just our water supply help students end the trend toward unrepairable devices? Its these large questions that allow students to explore the deeper story of technology use and, hopefully, allow students to sustainably use some of that technology to reveal this issue beyond the classroom. Much of this discussion on waste and repair connects to Kimmerer’s concept of the Honourable Harvest (Kimmerer, 2015). When we advocate for right to repair laws we are acting to reciprocate the Earth’s gifts of minerals, water and energy so we may maintain our stewardship of the land.
From a Communications Technology perspective, there is also a responsibility to address how environmental issues are represented in the media. Misinformation, sensationalism, and algorithm-driven content can distort public understanding of climate change and water crises. As educators, we can empower students not only to understand the environmental impact of technology but also to use media as a tool for advocacy, education, and positive change.
By integrating sustainability into Communications Technology education, students can critically examine both the environmental cost of their tools and the power of storytelling to influence more sustainable futures.