Studying Climate Inside the High School Classroom

Maria Birba

(Music School of Ileia prefecture, Greece)

Abstract: This article describes how high school students can study into the classroom the phenomenon of climate change. Specifically, the article refers to a project which includes three activities. The first activity shows how teachers and students can use real temperature and rain data from their region to investigate if these climate parameters have changed there, by using simple ICT tools and basic statistics. The second activity describes an experiment the project team can perform for producing, collecting and studying carbon dioxide, one of the most important greenhouse gases which affects climate. The third activity measures the project team’s ecological footprint and emphasizes the role individual citizens can play to decelerate the deterioration of our direct natural environment.
The author has conducted this project once with students ranging from of 15–18 years of age. After the description of the steps a school team has to follow to accomplish the three activities, the outcomes of that effort are presented as examples.
We end up highlighting how this project meets some of the 21st Century Skills according to the framework of UNESCO.

Key words: climate change, greenhouse carbon dioxide, ecological footprint, 21st Century Skills