Hamburg Round Table

Protocol and estimation

09/10/2001
10:00 – 12:30

Participants:

Ulrich Cubasch (MPI Hamburg – scientist)
Reno Graffitti (Inst. for education of teachers)
Stefan Hagemann (MPI Hamburg / ESPERE)
Detlef Kaack (GLOBE Germany)
Dieter Kasang (educational server Hamburg - teacher)
Annette Kirk (MPI Hamburg – outreach)
Hans Luthardt (MPI Hambrug - scientist)
Elmar Uherek (MPI Mainz / ESPERE)

Proceedings:

- Detailed presentation of the project ESPERE and its goals as presented on the slide show by Elmar Uherek.
- Short information about the outreach efforts of the IPCC by Dr. Ulrich Cubasch.
Basically the IPCC would like to make available the contents of the report for a wider public. It is planned to translate parts of the report into other languages. But there is no special outreach concept for refinements.
- Short information about the goals of the Hamburg educational server (HBS) by Dr. Dieter Kasang.
The HBS presents a lot of illustrative material about the climate systems and selected and refined contents / illustrations from the IPCC report 2001. The target groups are teachers and interested persons with a basic background knowledge of the field.
- Discussion of the ESPERE proposal.

An objective estimation of the discussion at Hamburg is difficult. There have been many opinions about several aspects of the project which hardly can be repeated.

Generally the participants emphasised the gap between the idea and the goal of ESPERE and the realisation which has been achieved so far.
The basic concept was judged as a good idea, but from a long term experience in the German educational system there were some doubts if a realisation is realistic.
An unfortunate circumstance of the debate was – to my opinion – that ESPERE as a concept for a future international effort was compared to the results and products of German efforts. The following points have been mentioned:

- The outcome of concrete projects strongly depends on the commitment of the single teacher. The fundament for successful online teaching and integration of modern climate science varies from school to school.
- A development of contents for online teaching on three levels depending on the age of the pupils has been recommended.
- The name ESPERE as an appropriate name for the project has been discussed but there was no real agreement. On the one hand it has been critisised that environmental science is by far more than climatology. On the other hand it is not reasonable to restrict the future contents at such an early stage of the development by a name (e.g. with respect to renewable energies, etc.).
- It was recommended to develop such a model first on local scale (e.g. Mainz and environment) and to extend the effort later. It has been stressed that the Hamburg educational server would be very interested in refined results from the MPI Mainz as one of the leading institutes in Germany.

[In this case I have strong reserves, since a) I did not represent my own institute but ESPERE b) a local effort is not in agreement with the composition of the ESPERE community and does not benefit from the advantages of international exchange for the educational system in various countries. This certainly should not exclude to make experiences in small projects on a local scale, but not only in Germany, since the local situation does not represent the international target groups.]

- It has been recommended by Dr. Cubasch to apply for funding for a so called concerted effort, in order to meet again and to make further plans.

[I would like to put up this point for discussion and also the future steering committee should think about it.]

Outlook:

The discussion suffered from different expectations and point of views and from the fact that ESPERE is not yet able to present a lot on the own website for a real exchange.
On the other hand the opportunity of such an exchange, also with respect to the different target groups (background for teachers on the one hand, teaching units for classes and information for the public on the other hand) is given for the future.
If the ESPERE pages are more developed one day there it should be no problem either to set links to each other or to exchange material if necessary.

My special thanks to Dr. Kasang for the organisation and to the participants for their interest.

(This report represents my personal point of view and is open for critisism.)

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