Educational materials for teachers and students of lower and upper secondary schools to enhance literacy of Arctic Observations among teachers and students

This report provides an overview of educational materials, which were produced specifically by INTAROS for teachers and students of lower and upper secondary schools in order to enhance literacy of Arctic Observations among teachers and students. In the Deliverable 7.7 rReport on existing teaching and outreach material the INTAROS Consortium provided an overview of the various products targeting for teaching and outreach purposes. Although, there are many polar materials available, they were not specifically targeting schools in the context of monitoring and field works. This material includes real life examples of field campaigns and observations conducted in the Arctic, which goes beyond the more general picture of scientific work presented in the previously available resources. It is also oriented towards demonstration of various monitoring tasks in order to inspire interest of youngsters in undertaking similar careers in the future. Moreover, the presented packages have a different form of structured online activity created on the platform dedicated to usage by STEM teachers.
The educational material is foreseen as a tool for promoting natural science to students and early recruitment of future potential polar researchers. The educational materials consist of two packages dedicated to terrestrial and marine observations in the Arctic. Packages are created on an open-source online platform, which enable using them in classrooms as well as individually by students at home. Each package consists of materials for students organised in a structured way in the GO-LAB platform and guidelines for teachers included in this report.
The materials for students consist of texts, graphics, videos and online games and quizzes. They include products produced within the INTAROS project as well as material from other Arctic projects connected to INTAROS. Furthermore, the material includes the (4 videos with researchers, INTAROS trailer, INTRAOS video and graphic on field campaigns in the Arctic, INTAROS marine TABOO game, all apps inside the Graasp spaces) as well as products produced outside the project that are considered particularly relevant, informative and useful for achieving educational goals set in each package (e.g. National Geographic videos, Beautiful Destinations video, WMO video, TedEd lesson by William Chapman, Polarpedia resources from the EDU-ARCTIC Horizon 2020 project). Video material created by INTAROS partners (IG PAN, NERSC, GEUS, and GINR) and dedicated to this purpose is considered especially useful for career path counselling purposes.
The first package is dedicated to the terrestrial monitoring of the Arctic. Students get the general information about the Arctic, its borders and living conditions and find out why integrated Arctic observation system is crucial for understanding our Planet. Moreover, they learn what is observed and what are the main ways of collecting of data. They also become familiar with researcher’s work at polar stations.
The second package is dedicated to the Arctic Ocean and its monitoring. Thanks toThrough the videos provided by INTAROS package and related projects students learn about the importance and uniqueness of the Arctic Ocean, how the sea ice extent is changing over years and what are the consequences of the melting ice and why the Arctic Ocean observations are crucial for understanding the planet. Moreover, they can become familiar with researcher’s work in polar regions and learn about various parameters measured and observed within marine monitoring.
In the final section of the report a summary of dissemination and training activities foreseen for educational packages are briefly described.