T141 Climate Literacy: Formal and Informal Educational Activities and Community Outreach to Support an Informed Society

Tuesday, 6 November 2012
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
210AB

CLIMATE LITERACY AND ENERGY AWARENESS NETWORK (CLEAN) – SUPPORTING TEACHER'S EFFORTS TO PREPARE STUDENTS TO ADDRESS ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES

Paper number: T141-13
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:50 AM – 11:05 AM

Authors

Abstract

The citizens of tomorrow will need to be prepared to address the far reaching impacts of climate change. In order for the citizens of tomorrow to be prepared there is a clear need to support teachers, students, and the public in improving their understanding of the climate system and to enable them to use that understanding to make responsible decisions about the environment. The CLEAN project provides some of that support by enabling access to educational materials that are scientifically accurate, pedagogically effective, and technically robust.

CLEAN (http://cleanet.org) is a National Science Digital Library (http://www.nsdl.org) project that stewards a collection of resources for teaching climate and energy science in grades 6-16. The collection contains classroom activities, lab demonstrations, visualizations, simulations, videos, and more. Each resource is reviewed for scientific accuracy, pedagogical effectiveness, and technical quality. Once accepted into the CLEAN collection, a resource is aligned with the Climate Literacy Essential Principles for Climate Science, the AAAS Project 2061 Benchmarks for Science Literacy and other national standards. The CLEAN website hosts a growing collection of over 400 resources that represent the leading edge of climate and energy science educational resources.

In this presentation we will demonstrate the various avenues of how the CLEAN portal that can help educators improve their own climate and energy literacy, help them determine why and how to effectively integrate the climate and energy principles into their teaching, and facilitate educators successfully using the resources with their students.