Climate Smart: A new transition unit for climate adaptation
The Climate Smart project, run by Trinity College Dublin’s department of geography, has developed a new transition unit to educate young people about the need to adapt to our changing climate. No expert knowledge is required to run the unit, teachers can learn with students as they follow the workshops and play the iAdapt game. You could even set up a competition for all staff and students to see who gets the highest score!
The unit consists of six online and interactive workshops with videos and quizzes which focus on:
- The science of climate change, and the policies developed to combat it
- The recent history and future of flooding in Ireland
- Sensing, monitoring, and predicting floods
- Visualising floods and flood-related damage
- Approaches to adaptation – from sea walls to community adaptation plans
- Processes of adaptation planning: an intro to the iAdapt serious game.
Each workshop has been designed to fit within a 40 minute class and incorporates content related to many subjects, from geography and maths, to politics and economics. When students have completed the workshops they will be ready to test their knowledge by playing the iAdapt Game, an interactive map-based game which can be played on computers, tablets, and mobile phones. The game puts the player in charge of a flood-threatened Dublin in the year 2045: they must use what they have learnt during the workshops to effectively plan, consult on, and implement Dublin’s adaptation plans to manage future floods, striking a balance between keeping people safe, and keeping voters happy.
More Details
Each workshop is broken down into a series of short videos (approx. 5 min) which can be watched as a class or by individual students, followed by multiple-choice quizzes to test participants’ knowledge. Additional resources and discussion points will also be provided so teachers can adapt the unit to suit their needs: watch the videos and use them as the basis of in-class discussion, or allow students to complete the workshops as self-directed learning while you monitor their progress on the climate smart platform. A Climate Smart certificate is provided for each student or teacher who completes all the workshops and plays the game.
The Climate Smart workshops and iAdapt game on this site are the culmination of several years of research and co- design activities. Supported by a Science Foundation Ireland Discover grant we are now looking for schools to use our resources between September-December 2023. The unit can be run without any prior knowledge of climate change or climate adaptation and we will provide teachers from participating schools with induction materials and resources.
If your school is interested in trialling the unit, please contact shugel@tcd.ie or daviesa@tcd.ie as soon as possible. We expect demand for this new unit to be high and will offer places to schools on a first come first served basis placing schools on a waiting list.