Description
Clima@EduMedia it’s a project that seeks innovative approaches for teaching and learning content related to climate change, specifically in the areas of mitigation and adaptation. The Project will address public education on climate change at school level, focusing on training of teachers, production of educational materials and a competition for climate change measures at the school level.Through the network of school newspapers, television channels and radio, the project develops a transdisciplinary strategy of learning through media. By creating communicative materials (a video, a radio program, infographics or a press kit), students will be able to learn, think about solutions for adaptation and mitigation for their schools and cities, communicate and share their ideas on climate change to everyone.The project encompasses several activities:training on the use of media, educational materials, workshops and labs for collaborative content production, online platform for experience sharing and a final contest for schools to present their best ideas for mitigation and adaptation of climate change.
Summary of project results
Clima@EduMedia is a project with a mission to support national education on climate change (CC) through media. We aimed at having CC issues across the curriculum with the support of school media. We counted on 30 schools from all over the country for the project. We worked simultaneously climate and media literacy in order to promote learning through practice and to bring the content closer to everyday life. A secondary gain was obtained by developing teachers’ skills on using media as a tool for teaching a broad range of topics. Clima@EduMedia’s milestones were as follow: - Online course for teachers about using media to teach CC (MOOC); - Training for students on CC through media production; - Organization of a school contest for the presentation of project proposals of adaptation and/or mitigation measures on CC to be implemented in schools; - Development of an online platform where all educational contents are freely available to the Portuguese educational community. Being online (with distance monitoring), the course allowed participation of teachers from all over the country. Several materials on how to teach CC through media were developed for the MOOC. The proposed methodology proved to be an innovative way of teaching CC. Several teachers reported positively about that. Students’ participation was marked by a general enthusiasm, in part by the possibilities that producing digital media brings: long distance interviews to scientists and making their own multimedia news pieces about CC. Their learning from this process allowed change of attitudes and behaviors. We would like to reinforce that bringing teachers and students together in a common project (competition for CC measures at school) was capital for a general community commitment. 3 projects were implemented but the big winner was the environment. All the school community became environmentally more aware and even other schools decided to implement some of their measures. Besides these main activities, the project also developed an extra activity, allowing the participation of more students and teachers: 2 conferences about CC transmitted via live streaming to dozens of schools in Portugal. At the end of the project, the educational materials developed were organized and made available in the online platform.
Summary of bilateral results
There were two face-to-face meetings with the Icelandic partner, represented by the researcher and Professor Thorvardur Arnason of the Hornafjordur Regional Research Center. One of the meetings took place in the middle of the implementation, in which the tasks in preparation were discussed, and another in the final balance sheet phase. Besides these meetings there were several contacts for discussing ideas with the Icelandic partner through video conferencing and email. Bilateral funds also strengthened bilateral relations in the end of the project through the exchange activities between Iceland and Portugal.