ED23C-01 13:40h
Climate Change Science: A Vehicle for Engaging Undergraduates in Science
For four years I have taught climate change as a two-and-a-half week case study in an upper-division oceanography course and a freshman environmental geoscience course, both for college students. I find that the issue of climate change engages student interest, and that it is an ideal vehicle for teaching fundamental scientific concepts. During the weeks we discuss climate change, students are much more active in classroom discussions. They particularly like the relevance to their day-to-day lives, and the policy implications of the science. Some see for the first time that science and policy and daily life are deeply related. As a result, student evaluations of the course are up and students want to take similar courses. I also find that introducing the case study before discussing scientific ideas is important. It provides the motivation leading students to study less appealing concepts such as radiation transfer in the atmosphere. The course provides many challenges: First, teaching the module is not easy because it required me to learn a wider range of concepts than I taught in previous courses. The concepts range from physics to biogeochemistry to public policy. Fortunately, others have written very useful tutorials available on the web. Second, I find that students are very sensitive to faculty bias. They prefer to discuss both sides of the issue, the uncertainty of the data and theories behind climate change, and the implications for the future. The rewards? Students turned on to science as never before. And, students see that physics, chemistry, and biology are connected. As a result, I am moving my courses toward case studies, bringing in scientific concepts as necessary, and I am moving away from the traditional science course built around scientific concepts.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/home/college.htm
ED23C-02 13:55h
Utilizing Wireless PocketPC's in Earth System Science Lectures to Expand Discourse
Introductory science teaching, including otherwise engaging topics such as climate change and natural hazards, traditionally relies on static textbooks and/or course packs, and presentation is often delivered as a monologue in front of a passive audience. Add to this the advent of extensive lecture notes on the Internet and the students are left with little incentive to attend class, much less participate. Clearly this model does not provide much opportunity for students to critically think through the arguments being developed. In order to address this issue, we are experimenting with the use of interactive spatial concept challenges utilizing wireless PocketPC computers in Earth Systems classes at the University of Michigan. The tools being developed have the goal of involving students in their own learning during lecture and focusing their attention on underlying concepts. Following Mazur (1997) students respond to spatial questions offered through the PocketPC and formulate their own answers; followed by an in-class discussion in small groups, attempting to reach consensus on the best answer. Successful implementation of this approach in climate change offers new opportunities to engage students in discourse and improved learning through peer and interactive instruction. Eric Mazur, 1997: Peer Instruction: A User's Manual, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
http://www.pocketscientist.com/
ED23C-03 14:10h
Yosemite National Park: Hydroclimate Observatory and Educational Opportunity
In Summer 2001, a network of sensors measuring stream depth, stream temperature, water conductivity, air temperature, and relative humidity were deployed throughout the Merced and Tuolumne River watersheds in Yosemite National Park. The goal of the network has been to increase our understanding of high-altitude meteorology and hydrology in order to link short-term physical processes with long-term changes and to improve water supply forecasts in a changing climate. Because of the link between short-term and long-term processes and because of the location's public appeal, the observatory has proved to be an excellent vehicle for educating the public about the changing climate and potential impacts on water resources in the Western United States. The educational component of the project has taken many forms, including: 1) talks to the public within the Yosemite Forum Series and the Parson's Lodge Series, 2) discussions with the park interpretive staff, 3) communication with park visitors while field work is being carried out, 4) online articles at Sierra Nature Notes, 5) discussions with news reporters, and 6) visits and talks to interested student and corporate groups. In order to understand climatic change, the general public needs to be able to relate personal experiences, such as visiting Yosemite's waterfalls and wildlife, to possible future scenarios, such as "Yosemite Falls will stop flowing earlier in future summers" and "Golden-mantled ground squirrels are no longer found near Crane Flat but only at higher elevations." Once they have a personal connection, people ask intelligent questions, including asking what they can do to help.
http://tenaya.ucsd.edu/{\sim}jessica/
ED23C-04 14:25h
Sharing Climate and Global Change Science with Middle and High School Educators: Approaches and Lessons Learned from the NCAR Climate and Global Change and Modeling in the Geosciences Workshops
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, is a leading institution in the area of global and climate change research worldwide. As a component of its mission of research, education, and service, NCAR supports numerous programs designed to bring this science to different audiences in order to promote better understanding of climate and global change research as well as its relevance in learning contexts. Key parts of its education and outreach program in this area are the professional development activities for teachers: the NCAR Climate and Global Change Workshop and the NCAR Modeling in the Geosciences Workshop. Each of these workshops brings 20 educator-leaders at the middle and high school levels from around the country for an intensive 2-week workshop bringing standards-relevant science content, easy-to-implement and inquiry-based classroom activities, training on computer-based modeling resources such as ArcView and STELLA, and a broad overview of Climate and Global Change related topics and the geosciences in general from leading scientists. This presentation will share approaches in developing, implementing, and evaluating these workshops and discuss lessons learned. We will also share information gleaned from evaluations on the impact of these professional development opportunities on the teachers' classroom instruction following their workshop experience.
ED23C-05 14:40h
Global Climate Change and the Wildlands of Montana: Promoting Scientific Understanding for K-12 Educators
The complexities and uncertainties associated with the science of global climate change is a barrier to the implementation of global change into K-12 classrooms. This issue is part of a larger conundrum where by teachers who are not well-versed in the content of an emerging science field are less likely to incorporate that topic into their curriculum. As such, it is not surprising that the K-12 community has been slow to embrace global climate change as a curriculum element, given that science underlying global climate change is interdisciplinary and replete with new discoveries, complex models, and competing theories. Faculty members associated with the Big Sky Institute have experimented with ways to promote collaboration between researchers and educators to enhance scientific literacy. In 2004, with funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency and private foundations, we implemented a five-day, field based professional development workshop for middle and high school teachers that focused on the research underlying EPA's Climate Change, Wildlife and Wildlands curriculum. A primary objective of the overall project is to promote one-on-one engagement of teachers with researchers whose work forms the basis of the content of the curriculum. Further, we seek to assess the degree to which increased content knowledge leads to incorporation of global climate change content into classrooms and curricula. During the workshop, we focused on two broad research findings, namely: 1) Global climate change is systemically pervasive such that even wildlands (i.e., unmanaged, pristine parks and reserves) are or potentially will be altered by global climate change. 2) At the same time, natural climate variability may enhance or mask human-induced climate impacts on wildlands and wildlife. In addition, we emphasized two broadly framed "ways of thinking" about global climate change, namely: 1) Wildlands can be used to detect and measure the impacts of human-induced climate change on ecosystems because they are relatively free of other human disturbance; they are, in essence, a laboratory for climate change detection. 2) It is unlikely that future global climate change will result in a simple, uniform change in climate. Rather global climate change will result in distinctive spatial and temporal patterns of change coupled with equally distinctive patterns of species response (i.e., a fingerprint response). In this paper, we report on K-12 teachers' pre-conceptions and misconceptions regarding global climate change and wildlands and the effectiveness of the workshop in altering misconceptions. We will also report on ongoing efforts by the teachers to incorporate global climate change into their current curriculum.
ED23C-06 14:55h
The ESPERE Climate Encyclopedia
ESPERE (Environmental Science Published for Everybody Round the Earth) is a project that seeks to bring current scientific knowledge of the climate system to schools and to make it understandable for teachers, pupils and a wider public. Within ESPERE-ENC a climate encyclopaedia is being developed for use in classes. This Internet publication (URL: www.espere.net) should not only deliver peer-reviewed, reliable and topical information, but promote also the interactive exchange of scientist and non-scientists. The consortium working on this plan consists of Earth scientists on the one hand and representatives of the national educational systems on the other hand. The English master version of the encyclopaedia has been finished end of 2003 and the translation into six other languages is currently taking place, making ESPERE one of the largest providers of climate information in Europe. Building up an international Network, concentrating on the basic processes in the climate system, ESPERE should co-operate with scientific and educational institutes world wide.
http://www.espere.net
ED23C-07 15:10h
Education and training in ACCENT - the European Network of Excellence in Atmospheric Composition Change
This contribution focuses on opportunities for education and training activities in the new Network of Excellence (NoE) in Atmospheric Composition Change (ACCENT) of the European Union FP6 (2004-2008). ACCENT (see www.accent-network.org) aims at promoting a common European strategy for research on atmospheric composition sustainability, to develop and maintain durable means of communication and collaboration within the European scientific community, to facilitate this research and to optimise the interactions with policy-makers and the general public. These overall goals of ACCENT will be pursued through specific objectives which can be classified as (i) joint research programmes, (ii) tasks for integration and (iii) outreach tasks. Here, the strategies for education and training in ACCENT are outlined, and specific objectives and activities of the Task Education and Training for the first 18 months are presented. The aim of this contribution is to exchange and seek possibilities for international co-operation on education and training in atmospheric composition change.
http://www.accent-network.org