Teacher
Forum
Notes
on the Future Classroom
How to Use Classroom
Encounters’ Media to Teach Science and Global Change and
How Classroom Teaching is Changing
The full length DVDs obviously
offer teachers the opportunity to learn themselves (build confidence)
about global, climate, and environmental change science, as well as
to see modeled how science is actually done and the habits of minds
of leading scientists. The chapter
stops let teachers navigate through the content as they like,
and at their own pace. In the classroom, the chapter stops put teachers
in charge – they can grab what they want (short
video clips) when they want it - before, during, or after a lesson,
hands-on activity, or lab. Teachers pick the clip that fits their
performance need: to grab attention, model inquiry, connect to research
and data, apply a concept, explain evidence, paint the big picture,
or wrap up.
Our experience with teachers (and I'm a teacher), is that the most
innovative ones want to intersperse short video into their "performances"
to do just what I mentioned above. Students want it, and teachers
create better and more interesting lessons. And they can also bring
the outside world in, share first hand observations of scientists,
explain and interpret real world data, and show the minds of scientists
at work (at least with Classroom Encounters’ video this can
be done easily).
We also find that the "market" is finally recognizing the
needs of classroom teachers, and targeting them (by listening to what
THEY want) and moving quickly in this direction. This summer, there’s
been a growing interest in what we've been doing. Our
library of media in particular has received attention since the
video shorts fit teachers’
needs. In bite-sized segments, teachers can intersperse their lessons
with media that connects students, via world-class scientists, to
society’s quest to understand one of the greatest challenges
of the day - our rapidly changing planet.
The media itself, and the
participatory process of creating it with scientists, teachers, and
students
working together, also shows teachers and students how they can
transform the learning process - engaging, inspiring, and motivating
all participants - by building cooperate learning communities and
harnessing 21st century communication technologies. The impetus to
build media libraries - creating or accessing existing media assets
that enable teachers to teach the standards and tackle 21st century
science issues (like global change) - is clearly where the educational
innovators are headed.
Rita Chang
Classroom Encounters, LLC
August, 2008
Look below for suggestions
on how to introduce global change topics into formal or informal classrooms,
and how to link literacy building topics in climate and environmental
change science to the state and national frameworks.
Classroom Encounters has
led many workshops on how to integrate video into standards-aligned
hands-on activities and labs to build scientific literacy. Below is
an article Rita Chang wrote for the MEES Conference in March 2008
called Teaching Climate “Aha!s”. (Click
here to jump there.)
Please share your experiences
and teaching suggestions, so we can learn from one another's and our
students' creativity. Email us at supporters@classroomencounters.org
if you have suggestions, lesson ideas, resources or experiences to
share.
For suggestions and teaching
ideas, there are several additional places to explore on this site.
Check
out the STUDENT
GALLERY to see what students have created after their learning
encounters with scientists. We have modeled some award winning student-made
"after the classroom encounter" films, poetry, art, research
paper topics and bibliographies, PowerPoints, and even student created
sound tracks for science videos.
For supporting material
for each scientist, please visit the SCIENTIST
GALLERY. Behind each scientist's image are materials that augment
the DVDs, and show how you can use video clips to help you “team
teach” with top scientists. Materials include photos from the
field, recommended articles, links, chapter stops, outlines, PowerPoint
Presentations, teaching tips, curriculum and lesson ideas.
For example, for some ideas
on how to introduce students to Dr. Hoffman’s "Thin
Ice - Earth in the Time of Climate Change" DVD,
(he and Dr. Schrag worked collaboratively, and together wrote the
highly recommended Scientific American article on Snowball Earth.)
please click
here.
Standards-aligned topic
recommendations for earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics
at the middle and high school levels are being developed and will
be posted soon.
NOAA has just published
a Climate Literacy Brochure. Go to www.climate.noaa.gov/education
for more information.
Additional information
can be found at www.epa.gov/climatechange;
http://nsdl.org; www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov
Click
here to read Rita Chang's article for the Massachusetts
Environmental Education Society (MEES)

Climate
Teaching "A-Ha!s"
By Rita Chang
Want to grab the attention of students prior
to a lesson? Want to communicate the essence of science as well
as the passion of today's leading scientists? Try showing close-up
video clips of pioneering scientists as they talk with students
about the latest field discoveries in climate science.
Click
here to read Scott Gordon's article about teaching
with Classroom Encounters DVDs for the Massachusetts Environmental
Education Society (MEES)
A Classroom Encounters® Hands-On Activity
By Scott Gordon
The scientific principles behind global climate change cross
the boundaries of all major scientific disciplines. The topic
of "climate change" can be used to integrate the sciences
and show how scientists in the field use expertise from each of
the areas of earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics. Specialists
studying climate change with expertise in each of these areas
come together in teams to try to understand the larger picture.
a
newsletter for Massachusetts Marine Educators, Fall 2006 that also
features a lead article by climate scientist Dr. Kenneth E. Trenberth,
from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and articles
by two scientists from Woods Hole and NOAA/North East Fisheries.
Here
is a first class "in a nut shell" guide to teaching global
warming and climate change.
It's also a quick primer
for anyone - student, teacher, parent, citizen - who wants to separate
misinformation from the consensus views of thousands of scientists
from around the world. The Classroom Encounters DVDs can then augment
your teaching by bringing alive climate science and a science-way-of-thinking
through intimate, "face to face" learning encounters with
top field scientists.
http://hdgc.epp.cmu.edu/teachersguide/teachersguide.htm
http://www.globalwarmingart.com
- This “global warming art” site has some terrific graphs,
created by Robert A. Rohde, that visually convey the state of knowledge
on climate change. They speak volumes about what we know and how
we know it, so are worth close study by teacher and student alike.
Under Featured Galleries, you’ll find graphs on past
temperature, carbon dioxide through time, sea level changes, glaciers,
and predictions of future changes which can be used in research
papers and PowerPoint presentations. Students could be asked to
interpret the stories these graphs tell; teachers could use them
in lesson plans to show how climate research is recorded and the
evidence we have of the past.
Classroom
Encounters recommends this presentation for State of the Art Information
on Carbon Sequestration Technologies (6MB, so this may take
a while to load, depending on your connection speed and web browser)
"This
is a PowerPoint presentation that contains the state of knowledge
on carbon sequestration technologies as of 2005. It was approved
and published by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change in 2005, written by over 100 authors from 30 countries
on all continents, and extensively reviewed by over 200 experts.
It was Presented at UNFCCC COP-11/ Kyoto COP/MOP-1 in Montreal.
"