Win a digital camera! During the week of Earth Day (April 22), U.S. students in grades 5-8 are invited to participate in the Institute of Global Strategies’s (IGES) national effort to capture our changing world. Anytime from April 22 – April 29, take a photograph of something that is changing in your local environment, write a short paragraph, and win a digital camera.

For submission instructions, entry form, and suggestions for using this activity in the classroom, please visit: www.strategies.org/EarthDayPhoto.

IGLO suggested a similar project and we are happy to see it implemented in another context. We urge our memebers to help organize this contest with their local schools and community organizations. Good Luck!

Photo: Photo Contest Logo. Courtesy IGES

PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, has contacted IGLO to promote a new website, The GREENS as a science resource for environmental educators. The site includes numerous activities for teachers as well as for young people. The GREENS Activity Guide, downloadable from the site, and also available in the IGLO Toolkit under the section of “Online Resources,” includes information for teachers to present to their students about global warming and the carbon footprint, as well as directions for a soda-bottle demonstration of the greenhouse effect.

Other features of the site include web-based flash animated episodes covering topics such as recycling, land-fills, waste reduction, and even how to donate hair. The site also offers such interactive activities as a carbon calculator, a movie quiz with questions of how environmental concepts are portrayed in popular Hollywood children’s films, and a blog where visitors can post their own comments and ideas. The GREENS project was conceived by WGBH, a public television channel in Boston.

Photo: The GREENS web site provides multimedia educational activities on the environment and global warming. Courtesy PBS

A new video produced by POLAR-PALOOZA uses rap music and popular music video techniques, combined with graphics of global warming and images of the Earth’s poles, to teach young people about man-made climate change. The video, “Take Aim at Climate Change,” can be seen online at www.takeaimatclimatechange.org as well as in the IGLO Toolkit under “Videos, Comics, and Podcasts.”

With lyrics by Ben Jackson and music by “Rhythm, Rhyme, and Results” featuring Tommy Boots and Jené, the video’s song and images call on audiences to “Adapt, Innovate, and Mitigate.” With its combination of pop and rap, the lyrics and images demonstrate how carbon dioxide emissions trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. The music video also explains how the effects of climate change can be felt everywhere—not just at the Earth’s poles—but that the poles play a particularly important role in maintaining our planet’s fragile climate. “Take Aim at Climate Change,” encourages audiences that it is not too late to help our warming planet, but warns that everyone must make changes in their lives and also educate themselves on the issue.

POLAR-PALOOZA is a multimedia initiative supported by both the National Science Foundation and NASA. This international effort brings together polar scientists, educators, and those who live at the Earth’s poles to develop videos, audio podcasts, blogs, and other media resources to help people appreciate the beauty and culture of the polar regions while learning about polar science.

Photo: Satellite image of Alaskan glaciers featured in the POLAR-PALOOZA resource kit. Courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey

As a result of the IGLO initiative’s work in organizing international citizen science activities on global warming, ASTC has been specially invited by Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) to participate in a private planning workshop. This workshop will be held among 20 to 30 GLOBE partners to prepare for a worldwide 2011 to 2013 campaign on climate change. GLOBE is an international citizen science and public education initiative conducted in partnership with research organizations including NASA, the World Meteorological Organization, and university research centers. To date, 110 countries participate in the GLOBE initiative, and these numbers are growing.

The planning workshop, scheduled to take place in late January 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland, marks the start of two years of preparation for GLOBE’s Worldwide Student Research Campaign on Climate Change. The workshop will bring together both the climate science and climate education communities to secure commitments to this global campaign, which will engage over 1 million secondary and undergraduate students and teachers—as well as citizens—in climate science research. The campaign will further develop curricula and educational materials and activities for educators and learners. It aims to promote climate literacy for millions of citizens around the world.

ASTC has been asked to guide discussions on how the Worldwide Student Research Campaign on Climate Change can effectively engage science center visitors in climate literacy activities and events that will not only reach large public audiences, but also support students and teachers involved in climate research. To explore current GLOBE lesson plans and to learn more about the project’s ongoing citizen science activities, visit the “Other Resources” link in the IGLO Toolkit.

Photo: Students record data for the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) initiative. Courtesy of GLOBE headquarters

Cap Sciences, a science center in Bordeaux, France, has developed an online game to help players learn about not only the science of climate change, but also the political and popular will needed to make substantive changes affecting the Earth’s climate. Clim City, modeled after the popular online game SimCity, features an imaginary town with typical agriculture, energy, transportation, and building infrastructures. Players can make changes to different sectors of the city’s economy and infrastructure in order to alter Clim City’s carbon footprint.

A large, interactive map of Clim City allows players to click on features such as a farm, an experimental photovoltaic power plant, or a cluster of buildings. Accompanying graphics describe how much energy each of these features either creates or uses and their respective quantities of greenhouse emissions. Players may make changes to each of these features–opting to grow the photovoltaic industry or to develop green buildings–but each one of these choices entails the use of “political power,” “social movement,” or “individual will” points. Players must try to optimize Clim City’s carbon footprint within these sociopolitical constraints.

Clim City designers aimed to address learning objectives such as: Why is global climate change accelerating? What kind of climate can we expect by the year 2100? What human activities contribute most to the emission of greenhouse gases? And how is it possible to reduce these emissions? The game can be played free online–available in French only. The game may be accessed via the Cap Sciences site and is also featured in online activities in the IGLO Toolkit.

Photo: The online Clim City game, produced by Cap Science of Bordeaux, France, challenges players to alter a town’s carbon footprint while also responding to political pressures and to individual and social inertia. Courtesy of Cap Science web site

The International Society for Bioluminescence and Chemiluminescence (ISBC) works to promote the fundamental and applied sciences of bio- and chemiluminescence throughout the world. Bioluminescence works to replicate processes for creating light found in chemical reactions in the natural world–such as with certain jellyfish or bacteria–for human purposes. Chemiluminescence refers to the emission of light with limited emission of heat as a result of chemical reaction. Many researchers feel that both of these processes have the potential to produce sustainable, non-petroleum-based light sources. Among ISBC’s objectives are promoting the application of these two light technologies in education and fostering the public’s understanding of this branch of science through initiatives targeting the general public and schools. The organization has posted a gallery of bioluminescence project pictures on its web site, including a photo submitted from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines touted as the first bioluminescent Christmas tree in history illuminated by an extract from a squid.

Photo: Bioluminescent Christmas tree. By Edward Quinto, University of Santo Tomas, Manilla, the Philippines

One-hundred-fifty school children convened in Paderborn, Germany this past November 15 to tackle the problem of climate change with, of all things, the children’s toy, LEGO building blocks. The event was organized by the FIRST LEGO League, a world-wide educational initiative. Participants in Paderborn represented Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Additional regional LEGO climate change competitions also took place in other parts of the world.

Andreas Stolte, a representative of the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, an ASTC member and host of the Paderborn competition, commented that “fifteen teams battled for victory and a place in the next round of the competition with robots which they had constructed and programmed themselves.” He added, “they were required to prove their skills in the fields of robot design, research presentation, and team play in addition to contesting the actual matches.”

To enter into the contest, teams were required to construct an autonomously operating robot from sensors, motors, and those colorful plastic LEGO bricks. Each team then used its robot to solve problems in the field of climate change research.

You can see some of the projects in action on the YouTube website. One example shows a robot that automatically buries carbon pellets at safe storage sites. Another robot moves blocks into place in levees that have been breached by rising ocean waters.

FIRST LEGO was founded in 1989 to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. Based in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S.A, this informal science public charity designs accessible, innovative programs that motivate young people to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math, while building self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills.

Photo: Participants in the FIRST LEGO competition demonstrate their climate change robots. Courtesy of FIRST LEGO league

A new website, magicporthole.org, allows visitors to explore the fascinating and fragile world of coral reefs online. The site includes underwater photographs, detailed text descriptions, and computer animation. Site visitors can learn about saltwater creatures ranging from a sea slug which eats stinging Hydroids to the Porcelain Crab which lives in symbiosis with sea anemones.

The site also features various video clips. Visitors can watch how Goby fish and shrimp interact and how Clownfish hide in stinging sea anemones. “A Trip With Drip: The Water Drop,” an animated page, helps young peoplke to learn about the water cycle. In conjunction with 2008 representing the International Year of the Reef, the Magic Porthole project has also announced a contest for children of different ages to submit information about thier own efforts to help save coral reefs.

Horizon International, based at the Yale University Department of Biology, produced Magic Porthole with the support of a grant from the National Science Foundation and donations from Peter and Helen Haje and other individuals. Members of the advisory board represent such institutions as the Museum of Science in Boston, an ASTC member, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the Smithsonian’s Marine Systems Laboratory.

Photo: Coral Spawning. Many species of stony coral spawn in mass synchronized events, releasing millions of eggs and sperm into the water at the same time. By Emma Hickerson for NOAA Ocean Education Service.

The Fourteenth Annual Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP14), takes place from December 1 to 12 in Poznan, Poland, and will bring together leaders from around the world concerned about man’s escalating impact on the climate. Attendees will consider such topics as research and observation of climate change, sustainable economic development, and means to reach emission reduction targets. Among the delegates will be a coalition of young people selected from across the subcontinent of India, according to the Indian Youth Climate Network, a coalition of Indian youth and youth-serving organizations.

Work is also already underway for COP15, slated to take place November 30 to December 11, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark with an estimated 10,000 people from around the world expected to attend. In connection with the conference, Project Zero and the Danish Association for International Cooperation are holding a youth event in August, “Bright Green Youth.” At Bright Green Youth, 500 young people from every corner of the world will communicate knowledge about climate change. The conference, which will take place over three days, will produce a website, teaching materials, and documentation and testimonials from around the world, and scientists and researchers will lead workshops specially designed for youth.

ASTC has been tapped to bring together a delegation of 50 youngsters from around the world to participate in the conference. So far, the Saint Louis Science Center in Missouri, the Miami Science Center in Florida and the Science Centre Singapore have pledged to recruit young people from their cities. His Royal Majesty the Crown Prince of Denmark, Secretaries of State, the Mayor of Sønderborg, and others will attend the opening ceremony, and musician and activist, Bono, will be at the closing ceremony.

Photo: Youth at Science Centre Singapore participate in climate change experiment.

Cinnabar, Inc., a creative firm specialized in developing museum exhibits, has launched a new initiative on climate change. Their latest effort, “Altered State,” is currently showing at the California Academy of Sciences. Altered State, a 10,000 square foot exhibit, draws upon the findings of research scientists and employs specimen collections, live animal displays, media and interactives to explain how unchecked climate change will alter weather, water, flora and fauna in California.