Global Systems Science High School Curriculum Partnerships

Abstract:

Global Systems Science (GSS), a high school integrated interdisciplinary science project based at Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, has collaborated with many organizations and institutions since its inception in the early 1990s. To start with, there were the federal agencies that made GSS possible: WESTGEC, NIGEC, NSF, and NASA. An NSF grant enabled the project to have teachers field test GSS in their classes and meet in summer institutes that resulted in GSS module dealing with climate change and related topics including energy use, ozone, loss of biodiversity, and ecosystem change. Interacting small and large systems naturally became an overarching theme. NASA grants and relationships with other NASA grantees in the NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE) program resulted in formation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in the GSS Lifelines for High School Climate Change Education project. Teachers involved in that project participated in webinars with representatives of various climate change education resources, including SatCam, Detroit Climate Action Collaborative, Picture Post (UNH), Eyes on Earth, Earth Exploration Toolbook, My NASA Data, Digital Earth Watch (DEW), Alliance for Climate Education (ACE), the JPL Global Climate Change website, EOS-Webster (UNH), and Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution. These webinars were recorded and are available at http://www.globalsystemsscience.org/lifelines/presentations. GSS course materials are available to teachers for free online at http://www.globalsystemsscience.org/