DOE - Fossil Energy Techline - Issued on:  December 2, 2004

New Curriculum Promotes Climate Change Education

Interactive Curriculum Teaches Middle School Students About Climate Change Options

Keystone, Colo. - The Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has joined with the Keystone Center in Colorado and teachers from around the nation in a first-of-a-kind effort to teach a new curriculum about climate change and carbon sequestration.

Middle school teachers from across the nation were trained using the interactive curriculum at Colorado's Keystone Center. In one activity, teachers made miniature greenhouses from recycled 2-liter plastic bottles and used them as models to study the greenhouse effect.

The new curriculum is part of NETL's ongoing educational outreach to teachers from across America, and supports the Energy Department's STARS (Scientists Teaching and Reaching Students) initiative. Using laboratory experiments, role playing, and problem solving, the curriculum teaches students about local and global influences, carbon sequestration, and sustainability, as well as the economic and environmental results of climate change.

The curriculum was piloted during the 2003-2004 school year in classrooms in Ohio and Wisconsin. This year, it will be implemented by 17 middle school teachers who attended a teacher training at the Keystone Center in October, as well as others who attended workshops at a regional National Science Teacher Association conference.

The Energy Department and Keystone Center developed the curriculum because of the importance of communicating technological and other options for addressing global climate change, and the possible impacts of climate change on future societies. Teachers nationwide will have access to the same set of science-based, non-partisan information, and will have a positive impact on younger generations on a much larger scale.

"For me, it has been very gratifying," said Brooke Carson, the Keystone Center's Director of Teacher Training. "We met with global climate experts who said climate change is too big of an issue for middle school students to understand, but through this curriculum and its activities, the students are asking questions and finding their own answers."

With the importance of everyone doing their part now for our future, education at a young age is vital. "The curriculum was designed to give students the knowledge they need to make quality choices," said Sarah Forbes, a NETL policy analyst. "Climate change issues aren't going to be resolved today, so communicating to kids the different options for dealing with climate change needs to start now."

For more information, contact: David Anna, DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory, 412-386-4646, anna@netl.doe.gov

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