Climántica: A Web 2.0 Education Project An innovative, trilingual project provides a model for climate change education
by Francisco Sóñora Luna I
N THE SPANISH REGION OF GALICIA, interest in environmental education rose dramatically after two major environmental disasters: a catastrophic oil spill
which polluted thousands of kilometers of the Spanish coast in 2002, and the 2006 forest fires that affected more than 40% of Galicia’s forested region. The oil spill remains the largest environmental disaster in Spain’s history, and the forest fires resulted in severe erosion of topsoil that impacted shellfish beds in many of the region’s estuaries. These disastrous events raised public awareness of environ- mental issues throughout the region. Following the disasters, an increased public demand for
environmental information, along with the emerging issue of climate change, prompted the Galician government in 2006 to establish the Climántica project. The project was initi- ated as an interdisciplinary educational component of the “Galician Action Plan Against Climate Change”. It has been developed by four working groups of experts that collaborate via an intranet platform. From the beginning, these groups recognized that to achieve the scope of climate change education they desired, a fundamentally new approach was needed—one that included the use of online technology. Although the program was initially focused only on second- ary school students in Galicia, the Climántica team soon
Page 28
began to explore the educational aspects of global climate change for an online audience of diverse ages, nationalities and languages. From its inception, Climántica has been committed to
establishing a web presence that allows teachers and stu- dents to exchange, assess and publicize their ideas, experi- ences and initiatives. It has also sought to enrich school curricula to provide environmental education resources on a range of issues related to climate change. The project was strongly influenced by the project-based
learning methodology originally proposed by John Dewey and W. H. Kilpatrick, whose writings have been instrumen- tal in the development of critical thinking and the ability to create opinions on contemporary scientific issues. It is also based on other educational concepts such as social-construc- tivism, communication and argumentation processes in the classroom.
Website organization
Climate change is the framework we use to introduce the eight environmental issues dealt with in Climántica – energy, waste, water resources, biodiversity, landscape and land use, rural and urban environments. This framework enables us to tackle these global issues through an interdis- ciplinary approach. The corresponding eight sections of the website are directly linked to the secondary school Biology
GREEN TEACHER 93
Climántica
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52