Paderborn Universities and Bochum cooperate with the German Informatics Society
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing mankind. Around two years ago, the universities of Paderborn and Bochum and the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. launched the "Climate Data Entrepreneurial Club" (CDEC) pilot project to enable young people to do something about it. The aim was to combine education for a digitally networked world with a commitment to climate protection. Students were able to acquire expertise in computer science, earth observation and pedagogy in order to implement their own sustainability projects. The project is now entering its second round and is explicitly aimed at teachers. The follow-up project, the "CDEC academy", is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space with around 300,000 euros for a period of three years.
"In the predecessor project, special modules were developed for working with satellite data, which are aimed at pupils in grades 10 to 13 and cover the topics of Earth observation, artificial intelligence and entrepreneurial education," says Prof. Dr Carsten Schulte from the Institute of Computer Science, who is implementing the project together with Dr Tilman-Mathies Klar and S?ren Sparmann from Paderborn University. "Initial trials in the classroom have shown that the long-term use of corresponding learning materials is significantly facilitated by additional support services for teachers," continues Prof Schulte. This is where the CDEC academy comes in. It aims to support teachers in acquiring background knowledge and didactic concepts. Teachers of geography and computer science in particular play an important role in sensitising young people to the consequences of climate change.
There is a great demand for further training programmes in the use of climate and data-related teaching materials. The first project phase has shown this. That is why the partners are now developing suitable training courses aimed at anchoring the topics of data literacy and the use of satellite data in school education in the long term. The use of freely available European geo and earth observation data offers great potential for pupils and teachers to develop their skills and apply them specifically to climate aspects.
The implementation of the learning modules in the classroom will be scientifically monitored in order to incorporate the findings into the development of materials. The results are to be utilised in the form of guidelines for educational work at state level, among other things.
Further information can be found on the project website.
This text was translated automatically.
