Climántica is a project has started in September 2006 and it has been done by an experts’ team. The Climántica team consists of four working groups – teaching, graphic edition, multimedia and scientific advice- that work together by means of a intranet platform.
Climantica’s section addressed to Secondary Education students, deals with the main environmental problems related to the global climate change through eight teaching units. All units were designed to be applied in the different areas, subjects and modules dealt with in Secondary Education syllabuses, so that their implementation becomes efficient, easy and interesting. It also includes Primary Education materials with a more user-friendly and recreational content such as comics, 3D cartoon series, video games, and materials addressed to the general public such as blogs, documentaries and magazines.
The teaching units’ content “feed” the whole project and are particularly related to the subjects of Biology and Geology taught in Secondary Education, although they could also be useful for other subjects such as Physics, Chemistry, Technology and Economy. Their target consists of developing and associating the key concepts used to understand and study climate change. Climate change is, therefore, the framework used to explain the main environmental issues – energy, waste, water resources, biodiversity, landscape and land use, rural environment and urban environment – so that this global issue can be tackled globally through an interdisciplinary approach.
Teaching units can be used as a whole by a teachers’ team coordinating the project, so that it can be taught in different Secondary Education subjects. In addition, its structure also makes possible for teachers to use isolated chapters, or extract those parts considered more useful for students.
Texts can be easily selected in the website Climantica, since the whole project is included in the websites http://mediambiente.xunta.es and www.climantica.org. Teachers can also make personal choices of contents by means of the link “Resources”: Chapters, contents, activities, illustrations, photographs and posters of each unit, cartoons, documentaries, articles, comics, etc. It is also possible to find digital versions of units, so that their contents can be developed independently by using IT supports. In this way, teachers can adapt efficiently the project to their educational interests.
Finally, the information included in the units is accessible through the website www.climantica.org, by selecting the 8 teaching units on the left-hand-side menu. When a unit is selected, all the chapters it includes are displayed. At the same time the sections of the different chapters are displayed on a right-hand-side menu. In order to make this project widely accessible, the contents are translated into Galician, Spanish and English.
Francisco Sóñora Luna, director of “ Climántica ” project.
