ESPERE-ENC Agenda
... Objectives, Membership and Workplan:
ESPERE-ENC - The Network on Climate Information in Detail
ESPERE-ENC means 'Environmental Science Published for Everybody Round the Earth - Educational Network on Climate'. ESPERE represents the climate information project. This project introduces both the basic processes involved in the climate system as well as our current knowledge of environmental science in a form suitable for use in schools and also by any interested non-scientist. The pilot project ESPERE-ENC is funded by the European Union under its Fifth Framework Programme
Objectives..
The project ESPERE aims to inform European Citizens about our current scientific knowledge of the climate system, including its natural processes and the role of humans, in an understandable and topical manner. ESPERE-ENC, as a first step, focuses on the development and demonstration of concepts for the education of the younger generation in schools. It will also prepare the framework for a future extension of the Network to all European Citizens in order to enhance public understanding of climate related processes and issues.
ESPERE-ENC rests on two fundamental principles:
1) Communication and coordination of group-bridging dialogues
2) Uniting available resources / material and product development
1 ESPERE will bring together scientists, educationists, educatioNet-providers, teachers and pupils on an international level. The participants aim to coordinate scientific input and pedagogic processing, to discuss and demonstrate teaching models and the applicability of an Internet platform for this purpose, and to involve teachers and pupils in dialogues and evaluation processes.
2 The dialogue requires a concrete basis. ESPERE-ENC will develop an Internet platform and provide state of the art background texts and teaching material, grouped in 8 thematic fields and in the long term 32 teaching units. Optimisation of material collection, processing and product evaluations by the user, i.e. teachers and pupils, will be subject to debates and continuous improvement during the network's lifetime.
Overall objectives
ESPERE pursues the idea of making the scientific knowledge on the climate system, as presented in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climte Change (IPCC), available and understandable for the public on an Internet platform. This will be realised through condensing the information while retaining the accuracy, including illustrative descriptions, and maintaining an attractive layout. ESPERE-ENC will discuss and work on methods suitable for the integration of this knowledge into classes. Text contributions, developed in research institutes specialising in the respective fields, will be complemented by teaching material, including worksheets and experiments developed by educationists. ESPERE will use the Internet as a privileged medium, and use its special devices in order to complement classic teaching through topical information, more plastic illustrations, and a sort of interactivity that allows the user to judge and improve the character of the teaching units even during their development.
The scientific objectives of ESPERE are:
1) to make the major processes driving our climate accessible and understandable for non-scientists.
2) to guarantee high quality contents through a peer-reviewing system and the assistance of a scientific advisory board.
3) to involve increasing numbers of scientists as voluntary supporters, and to promote outreach efforts in the scientific community.
4) to accurately visualise the complexity of the climate system, and yet explain it in clearly arranged, comprehensible sections. This should be achieved by a breakdown of the climate system processes into 8 thematic fields and 32 teaching units in the basic version, each of them explaining a separate process while also indicating the various links to other parts. The design of the basic version shall be open for further extensions. The reader will not only understand single processes, but also accept that predictions for the whole climate system have to be subject to uncertainties.
5) to provide reliable and unbiased background information, including uncertainty ranges and disagreements within the scientific community. The reader should understand the reason for apparent contradictions in the diverse media, which often focus on extreme estimations, and learn to judge the verity of issues without losing confidence in the associated science.
6) to update outdated information and complement existing textbooks by new results.
7) to guide through existing information on the Internet and to evaluate its quality.
The educational objectives of ESPERE-ENC:
1) ESPERE-ENC intends for all pupils to be presented with the current understanding of the climate system and the possible impact of its future changes. An impartial explanation should help to prevent ignorance of the issues related to climate change and human endeavor, while simultaneously preventing horrible apocalyptic visions.
2) Through the cooperation of scientists, web designers and educationists, ESPERE-ENC guarantees that contents will be processed in an excellent way for the target group. The expertise in pedagogy will be assured via the involvement of educationists and texbook authors in the developing consortium and proofreading by members of the educational advisory board. Educationists will complement the background texts through worksheets, experiments and teaching concepts.
3) ESPERE-ENC will guarantee that all schools can benefit from the contents. They will be deliverable as mastercopy, CD-ROM, downloadable versions and Internet versions.
4) ESPERE-ENC has a strong focus on the promotion of a special teaching and visualisation quality via Internet tools (most of them also suitable for CD-ROM). Scientists and educationists will closely cooperate with programmers and web designers. In the long term text contributions shall be illustrated by graphs, animations and further Internet based media applications.
5) ESPERE teaching units shall demonstrate that theories explained in schools have a real reference / application in nature or in daily life. To integrate this reference into classes is the idea of the concept of 'didactic integration', combining theory and practise in short units. ESPERE units will be suitable for this purpose and not require the reading of further background texts. However a short overview of the whole climate system will be given, in order to promote a more complete understanding.
6) ESPERE-ENC explicitly promotes the active participation of pupils and teachers, wherever the equipment in schools allows it. The involvement of schools is planned from the beginning. A school competition should enhance the attractiveness of participation. Moderated interactive tools (forum, chat) are provided to allow pupils and teachers to ask questions and criticize and evaluate the contents and layout of the pages, in order to help the developing consortium to improve the pages.
7) ESPERE will enhance the international communication of educationists and promote pan-European school-projects.
Documentation and Presentation
The core product will be presented after two years of development and application in classes: a short encyclopaedia of the climate system, divided into 8 thematic fields of 3-4 teaching units each, developed in two levels for pupils of the age groups 13-15 and 16-18 years.
In a key initiative east a special guide 'teaching climate science' will be developed for the mid-European states Hungary and Poland and as English master version.
The progress, difficulties, solutions, results, concepts, and recommendations for the future of the project will be discussed during the whole process. Results will be presented in an Interim and a Final Report.
Membership..
The guiding principle of ESPERE is to establish a community open to everybody where two way exchange between scientists and non-scientists can occur. At the same time it guarantees, through strict supervision, that the information preseented is highly reliable and as unbiased as possible.
ESPERE members will include:
a) The groups and advisory board of the ESPERE community:
Steering committee, educational and scientific advisory board, developing consortium, and regular members
b) Representatives of the national educational systems:
didactic institutes, teaching centres, educatioNet-providers, teachers and pupils
c) Representatives of the scientific sector:
research institutes, international and governmental organisations.
d) Supporters and non-scientists
The ESPERE community
ESPERE will be founded as an association and managed by an elected Steering Committee. All its legal representatives are bound to its constitution.
ESPERE-ENC, as an educational project, will be a send-off project developed with commitment to the organisation, driven by scientists and representatives of the educational system. The exploitation of ways for continuation and expansion of the network is part of the assignment of ESPERE.
The Steering Committee and the members of the ESPERE-ENC consortium are advised by a Scientific Advisory Board, recruited from experienced members of the scientific community. A peer-reviewing system, as is common for scientific publications, will be built up for ESPERE in an analogous way. The consortium will also be advised by an Educational Advisory Board, whose members are recruited beyond the duration of the EPSERE-ENC.
Scientific and Educational representatives are invited to support the ESPERE project on a voluntary basis as members, and make qualified contributions to the network. They will participate in the elections of the legal representatives and in decision-making. The supreme decision-making body is the general assembly of the members.
Representatives of the national education systems
Educationists and teachers are invited as members as well as users. As users, they shall be contacted both directly and via educatioNet-providers, journals and newsletters for teachers. Within ESPERE-ENC an additional development of media concepts for the use in courses is planned through small subcontracts as pilot projects in Germany and Poland. Recruited members, supporters and users will be kept informed via the ESPERE newsletter, which will be distributed twice a month. Cooperation of teachers with ESPERE will be coordinated by the national representatives within the consortium.
Representatives of the scientific sector
Reviewers and advisors of the scientific advisory board will be recruited from the scientific community. The immediate linkage of ESPERE projects to science and the provision of reliable and up-to-date information will occur as the organisers are involved in research themselves. They shall be positioned in research institutes and promote the project ESPERE not only through internal workshops but also at scientific conferences.
Supporters and Non-scientists
Although responsibilities for projects and publications of ESPERE limits the regular membership to circles with appropriate expertise, everybody is invited to contribute to the network and to make use of it, as long as the outcome is in agreement with its constitution. ESPERE will willingly cooperate with voluntary contributors who help with translations, web design, internet inquiries, proofreading, comprehensibility checks and personal advice in order to support the idea of an international climate information network.
Workplan..
Goal
The goal of the project ESPERE is to raise public awareness and understanding of the climate system through the development of an informative and educational Network for use in schools and by a wider public.
ESPERE-ENC as an initial part of this Network aims to integrate the interdisciplinary subject 'climate science' into school lessons. The current state of research will be explained in basic texts, which will also be valuable for the wider public, and complemented by worksheets, experiment descriptions and guidelines for integration into classes. The result will be teaching units which can either be used separately in order to explain climatic aspects of special subjects within the national curricular framework (e.g.: topic: condensation, application: formation of cloud droplets) or be combined in order to give a deeper insight into the climate system. This integration will occur in 7 European countries: France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom. ESPERE-ENC also aims to initiate, administer and promote an extension to further countries during the Network's life time.
Media
Because of the flexibility and the rapidly increasing propagation of this media and the achievable topicality of the contents, ESPERE focuses first of all on Internet teaching and provides state of the art aid and tools for this purpose. If Internet access is not available, we also offer the contents as CD-ROM, downloadable text-files and mastercopies, which can be delivered on a self cost basis.
Definition of target groups
The teaching units (TU) will be developed in two levels for students of either 13-15 or 16-18 years. In the long-term ESPERE is also going to process the basic material developed during ESPERE-ENC in a web-atlas that should be clearly addressed to all citizens.
Contents and volume
The contents will be developed in eight thematic fields, covering key processes in the climate system.
1) Tropospheric processes
2) Stratospheric processes
3) Urban climate and anthropogenic emissions
4) Weather and global circulation
5) Aerosols and clouds
6) Oceanography
7) Climate impact on agronomy
8) Human influence on climate: scenarios, impacts and mitigation.
The text compilation is assigned to partners in the consortium who do research in the respective fields. The fields will be broken down into 16+8 teaching units (extension envisioned) suitable for use in schools (2-4 lessons each). The volume of a teaching unit should be in the range of 2-4 web pages background text and 2-3 pages of worksheets, tasks and experiment descriptions for each level. One web page should include 2-3 illustrations on average and not exceed one A4 page of pure text. The work material provided is regarded as a basic deliverable for all involved countries and can be easily extended, depending on the ideas and commitment of teachers on a local scale.
Integration into classes
ESPERE teaching units should be interlinked, but also be of use independently from one other. They can be integrated into the respective national curriculum without the inclusion of other units as reference. In order to help individual teachers to integrate the Teaching Unit, the educationists cooperating with and within the ESPERE consortium will compose a very general European science curriculum listing key subjects, which are generally taught in science.
ESPERE steadfastly promotes the idea of a general understanding of the whole climate system, not only of the integration of a few units in different subjects and different years. The promotion of a more complete understanding is realised in three ways:
a) ESPERE supports a grouping of several units during special projects.
b) We develop a very short overview of the climate system as background unit.
c) We support the understanding of one TU as part of a whole system visually by a structured navigation system.
Internet teaching
ESPERE background texts can be treated like a textbook, the worksheets plotted and lessons continued as usual but, unlike a text book, the contents will be kept up to date. Additionally ESPERE aims to support teachers and pupils allowing them to really benefit from the special options of Internet teaching. The German partner "Schools Online" will develop concepts, together with teachers, on how to benefit from computer use. ESPERE will provide such concepts, tested in daily practise and including positive and negative experiences, in the languages of the Network. A special manual will be developed for the teachers in Poland and Hungary by native educationists.
Interactivity and communication
Through their teachers, pupils will be invited to ask questions and to communicate with the scientists and educationists in the consortium and also with invited experts via interactive tools (forum, e-mail, chatroom). If the equipment allows it, they will also be able to ask questions and make suggestions for improvements during the lessons and in this manner participate in the authorship. Questions of interest and the best way of presentation for most efficient learning will be discussed with the users themselves and proposals of teachers and pupils will be integrated into the web site. The basic idea behind this is an answering textbook that changes as a result of the experiences of the users.
Management and Adminstration by Science Institutes
Each research institute of the ESPERE-ENC consortium is an administrative centre in a twofold manner. First, each institute has to administer the text contributions, illustrations and cooperation with educationists and web-designers for a certain thematic field. Secondly, each institute has to administer the set-up of an educational Network and communicate with educationists, teachers and pupils in their respective country.
ESPERE-ENC will translate both the scientific language English into respective national languages and also explain the complexity of the climate subject in an understandable form.
Management and Administration by Educational Institutes
Expertise in pedagogy is assured through the involvement of educationists. Three educational institutes, specialising in chemistry, physics and geography, will complement the work of the research institutes and provide teaching material (slides, worksheets, experimental instructions) to supplement the background texts . Hungarian and Polish subcontractors will develop special concepts for their countries. The educational partners will bring advanced experience in the development of Internet material for schools.
Quality assurance measures and advice
The work of the consortium will be evaluated by an educational advisory board divided into national sub-units, along with a scientific advisory board representing the respective research fields. Each part of the Network will have to pass the reviewing system to get the stamp "quality assured" as described in part five "Management". The contribution of the advisors will not be restricted to reviewing, they will also be invited to suggest changes to the teaching units during the development of the project.
Cooperation
ESPERE will co-operate with many school based organisations and local programs (educatioNet-providers, educational Networks, teacher societies, national GLOBE contact points and smaller initiatives, and also governmental organisations).
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