ESPERE-ENC: Environmental Science Published for Everybody Round the Earth - Educational Network on Climate

The main aim of the project is to raise public awareness on the climatic system, including climatic processes and various kinds of environmental feedback. As we have entered the information era, society has been constantly exposed to an enormous amount of information, which is often selective, presented without broader context and even manipulated. This applies also to environmental information. The future of our climate depends on many political, economic, global, local and personal decisions, as they contribute to sustainable development. What is needed for success is first of all a good understanding of the global ecosystem by the majority of society, including an understanding of the climate system. Then an awareness of environmental problems is essential, but based on sound knowledge and unbiased information. Therefore, raising public awareness should be achieved first of all through various educational means.

ESPERE-ENC (www.espere.net) is a project realized within the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission, in the period Jan. 2003 - Dec. 2004, in seven European countries: France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Norway, Poland and Spain. The coordinator is Max Planck Institute of the Atmospheric Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. There are seven scientific and four educational institutes and universities involved in the project. Poland is represented by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University, as a research partner, and Ma3opolska Teachers' Advancement Center, as an educational supporter.

The most important target group of ESPERE-ENC are students from two age groups: 13-15 and 16-18 years old. It corresponds well to the organization of the European education systems, e.g. in Poland students of that age attend "gimnazjum" and "liceum", respectively. However, any person interested in climatic issues can benefit from the materials prepared by ESPERE-ENC.

The project is realized mainly via the Internet. Its most important final result is a climatic encyclopedia. This is a web site where anybody interested in climatic issues is able to find required information or extend his/her knowledge. First of all, the encyclopedia gives the teachers and students a chance to enrich traditional teaching about the climate and provides them with up-to-date, unbiased information. The encyclopedia accurately visualizes the complexity of the climate system, and yet explains it in clearly arranged, comprehensible sections. The navigation system allows better orientation of the material. The reader not only understands single processes, but also sees them in a wider context, which is achieved by applying Internet techniques, e.g. hypertext, links etc. The contents of the encyclopedia are divided into eight thematic fields. Each field is first divided into two levels, for younger (13-15 years old) and older students (16-18 years old), and then further divided into three or four teaching units, and each unit into three or four topics. Every teaching unit consists of a research and a didactic part. The research part is prepared by research institutes and universities and contains an explanation of the discussed issues. The didactic part is prepared by the educational partners, and contains various kinds of quizzes, descriptions of simple experiments, worksheets, tests etc. First the whole encyclopedia was completed in English and then translated into the national languages of all the partners participating in the project.

In addition to Internet and e-mail contacts, direct meetings have taken place within the project too. These were both meetings of the ESPERE-ENC consortium group, and of ESPERE-ENC partners with encyclopedia users, i.e. teachers and students. The whole ESPERE group met in Mainz (Germany) in February 2003, in Oslo (Norway) in September, 2003, in Kraków in March, 2004, and in Budapest (Hungary) in October, 2004. The meeting in Kraków was accompanied by a third workshop for Polish teachers and an announcement of the results of two students' competitions during the Open Day of the Project ESPERE-ENC (24 Mar., 2004).

Workshops for teachers were organized only in Kraków, by the Jagiellonian University and the Ma3opolska Teachers' Advancement Centre. The teachers were able to meet in person first the Polish (May-Jun., 2003, Nov.-Dec., 2003) and then the foreign (Mar., 2004) scientists and pedagogists working on the project (e.g. from the German platform "Teachers-on-line", http://www.lehrer-online.de/), ask questions and present their own opinions. As evaluation of the encyclopedia by users is an important part of the project, teachers were encouraged to use in practice the Internet encyclopedia and submit their opinions, comments and suggestions.

One of the goals of the project is to create a sort of internet guide that would help non-scientists to orientate themselves around the enormous amount of information on the climate available on the Internet. Therefore a link list accompanying the encyclopedia has been created containing the addresses of web pages with verified and valuable climate information. Moreover, a guide for teachers will be published both in traditional (only in Polish) and digital (in Polish, Hungarian and English) form in December 2004. The book will present the structure and content of the encyclopedia, the relation between the encyclopedia and the school curriculum, the possibilities of enhancing teaching about the climate while taking into account the teaching programmes of geography, chemistry, physics and biology. It will also comprise the scenarios of lessons using ESPERE-ENC materials prepared by the teachers who participated in our workshops.

In addition to schools, mass media and decision makers there are other target groups who could benefit from the project's results in the future. ESPERE's ideas and activities are likely to become a part of common international educational efforts, as in July, 2004, the coordinator of the whole project, Dr. Elmar Uherek from the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany, and the coordinator of the Polish part of the project, Dr. Anita Bokwa from the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University, were invited to become members of the Committee on Education of the European Geosciences Union (http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/EGU.html).

Acknowledgements

The project ESPERE-ENC is realized within the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission, contract No. HPRP-CT-2002-00002. It is also financed by the State Committee for Scientific Research, contract No. 158/E-338/SPB/5.PR UE "Sieci"/DWM 563/2003-2004.

Anita Bokwa

Coordinator of the Polish part of the project ESPERE-ENC

Institute of Geography and Spatial Management

Jagiellonian University