Let’s get serious
about Climate change
This is most probably
one of the hottest topics at the moment...
About three months ago,
I finished editing 17 videos about the SDG’s.
The unusual thing about
this group of videos is not that they are all
teachers who recorded the videos,
but the truly amazing thing is that
the teachers are from various countries
from around the world who all
met at the same place to record the videos. Although there were language
barriers as not
everyone spoke a common language, we produced a video
on each of the SDG’s.
(The videos can be
seen at http://wsparrow.blogspot.co.uk/p/sdg.html)
My philosophy is that
one person can make a difference. Regardless
of
how big or small that difference is, it can start with you and me. The beauty
behind this is if you make a small
difference to one person, and that one
person makes a difference to another
person, exponentially, very soon
it will be a huge difference.
One of the group
members who I worked with in creating the SDG’s,
was Koen Timmers. He is one of my greatest inspirational and
innovative
teachers that I know. Last year he
created a global project
called Climate Action project. (https://www.climate-action.info)
This was a digital
group project where 250 schools in 69 countries
worked together to learn about
climate change. The project ran over
5 weeks and each week the students
conducted research, brainstorms
and discussed various ideas before presenting
their finding via videos
or online presentations. This was a brilliant student centred approach
where students where learning from each other from various parts of the
world.
(Koen Timmers has
once again created another global project that starts
in April concentrating on
SDG 4, 6, 7 and 11 and if you are interested,
you can join at http://bit.ly/climatechange2018)
For me, I decided to allow my students
a bit more free reign and allowed
them to create videos about their own
topics. The students created videos
about anything that they felt strongly about.
The videos in essence gave the
students a voice to be heard, a video
that allowed them to give their own
views and opinions. Although I gave them time to research their
topics,
this was not based on facts, but more about feelings or impressions
that
they wanted to convey to the world.
The videos that the students created
covered poverty, gender equality,
health, peace, but the surprise to me was
that the largest number of
videos that the students created was about climate
change. Is this a
sign of the times that
even though I had not given the students a specific
task, climate change came
through as the most featured topic?
There are incredible resources that you
can find online that you can do
easily with your class and there are global
projects that involve
thousands of students and cover many continents.
The choice you need to make is an easy one.
How are you going to make a difference?
The choice you need to make is an easy one.
How are you going to make a difference?
How are you going to take action against
climate change?
#TeachersMatter #MIEExpert #Education #RubinWorldEDU
