Environmental Science

EcoMUVE (ecomuve.gse.harvard.edu) is a middle school science curriculum in which students explore an immersive virtual ecosystem and learn its causal dynamics through collaborative inquiry activities. In one experience, students explore a virtual pond and its biodiversity, traveling in time to see changes over the course of a virtual summer. They discover a fish kill and are tasked with figuring out why it happened. In another experience, students explore population dynamics and predator-prey relationships over 50 years in a virtual forest.

DR K–12 projects have been funded to conduct (1) activities and develop materials that are beneficial to the STEM education community (teachers and students) and (2) education research to ensure continuous improvement of these activities and materials.

Digital, large-scale scientific data have become broadly available in recent decades, and analyzing data, identifying patterns, and extracting useful information have become gateway skills to full participation in the 21st century workforce. Yet, pre-college classrooms are falling short in preparing students for this world and are missing opportunities to harness the power of Big Data to engage students in scientific learning. To address this issue, scientists, educators, and researchers at Education Development Center, Inc.

The objectives of this session are for the group to map DR K–12 projects onto the Climate Literacy Essential Principles (CLEP) and Environmental Literacy Competencies (ELC) and to use that map to explore how to leverage all of the projects’ efforts both within the DR K–12 projects and in the larger community of climate and environmental education efforts. The session sets the stage for thinking about how DR K–12 projects address the CLEP and ELC with two brief presentations of these initiatives and examples of how specific projects align to them.