Friday , March 29 2024

ICT Challenges and Issues in Climate Change Education

Adriana ALEXANDRU, Marilena IANCULESCU, Eleonora TUDORA, Ovidiu BICA
I C I Bucharest
(National Institute for R & D in Informatics)

8-10 Averescu Blvd.
011455 Bucharest 1, Romania
adriana@ici.ro, manina@ici.ro, gilda@ici.ro, ovi@ici.ro

Abstract: Climate change is likely to define the global concern of the 21st century. This concern is a huge educational challenge which relates to the global aim of the educational network founded by Changing with the Climate project that is discussing, learning, engaging and committing students from secondary as well as primary schools to undertake actions for limiting the change in climate. As specific aspects and impacts of climate change are discussed in various academic disciplines such as: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography and Citizenship, the primary objective is to adopt a more holistic approach and link the teaching of all these issues from multidisciplinary perspectives. Thus, science may become more interesting and applicable to everyday life. This paper analyses the ICT challenges emerging from this type of approach.

Keywords: climate change, renewable energy sources, Education for Sustainable Development, Life Long Learning, eLearning, role of ICT in education.

>Full text
CITE THIS PAPER AS: Adriana ALEXANDRU, Marilena IANCULESCU, Eleonora TUDORA, Ovidiu BICA, ICT Challenges and Issues in Climate Change Education, Studies in Informatics and Control, ISSN 1220-1766, vol. 22 (4), pp. 349-358, 2013. https://doi.org/10.24846/v22i4y201310

  1. Introduction

The impact of global warming arises primarily from our usage of fossil fuels at local level such as in heating our homes or providing our transport, as a by-product of their combustion being carbon dioxide. It is this gas together with other greenhouse gases which congregate in the upper atmosphere and by absorbing some of the earth’s radiation, results in global warming. Consequently changing with the climate is the global concern of the 21st Century. The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the chance of combating dangerous climate change will be lost forever.

The Changing with the Climate Network is a Comenius funded educational network linking schools across Europe to enhance teaching and learning and to encourage positive action in response to climate change. The network proposes an increased emphasis on actions to mitigate the extent of climate change by reducing those aspects of our behavior that negatively affect climatic conditions as well as our ecosystems, and, where possible, to adopt a lifestyle that will enable us to adapt to the inevitable changes. A major target of this increased emphasis will be the school-going population because it is the world youth who will be most directly affected. The challenges for using an ICT based approach is analyzed bellow.

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