Connecting extreme heat to students’ lives and empowering them to help shape local policy Primary education Primary school students, 5th-7th grade Mathematics, Science, and Design & Technology modules Educating youth on extreme heat and empowering them to influence policy Beat the Heat is a digital learning material aimed at primary school students about extreme heat, developed in collaboration with the Cyprus Ministry of Education, Frederick University, and the Cyprus Energy Agency. Uniquely, it also uses the classroom format to gather meaningful input from students about the issues they’re facing in relation to extreme heat, and makes this input available to key policymakers, safely and easily. With Beat the Heat, we’ve use a broad set of the DiBL toolset to create a unique, yet familiar, educational experience. For the teacher, it looks almost like a regular slideshow format, but here, students can participate directly on their own devices, by answering questions to prompt discussion, sharing their thoughts in customized word clouds, and playing different mini-games designed about different aspects of heat adaptation. Mini-games range from a “spot the differences” game showing a school before and after a number of heat adaptations were made, to a game about planting trees on a playground for maximum shade, to a game where students try to guess which parts of a roof are coolest on a hot day. The material crosses over with multiple different school subjects, from mathematics to science to design and technology, bringing them all together into a short, unified whole. It’s designed to be flexible, allowing teachers to pick and choose which exercises and mini-games they want to use, on the fly or ahead of time. Exercises build on each other, and are interspersed with non-interactive sections providing further background and factual information. Accompanying physical exercises outside the DiBL also has students go and document heat adaptations in their environment, and make collages about how they would improve their own school. Throughout development, we kept a strong focus on anchoring the material in its Cypriot context, and the lived experience of the students. We also focused on making the material flexible to different contexts, for example not relying on students having access to particular types, or numbers, of devices. Many of the questions included serve a double function – while designed to prompt reflection and discussion in the classroom, and thus serving an educational purpose, the answers given by students are also collected, to be shared with policymakers, thus giving a group of citizens otherwise excluded from the democratic process – children – a voice in public policy. DiBL’s robust server and data collection architecture ensures that this data is handled anonymously and securely, and that, even if the material evolves over time or is adapted for new contexts, the data stays backwards compatible and accessible. Primary education
Playful climate education for primary school
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Fun and playful climate education for primary school
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Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen
DiBL CEO
