News - University of Arkansas
New GLOBE Carbon Cycle Teacher’s Guide Protocol/eTraining Now Live!
The GLOBE Program is pleased to announce that a new “Carbon Cycle Protocol” and Carbon Cycle eTraining modules are now live. Carbon is the most abundant element in living things. It is also present in the Earth’s atmosphere, soil, oceans, and crust. The global carbon cycle is the movement of carbon between the atmosphere, land, and oceans – and is a key regulator of Earth’s climate system and is central to ecosystem function.
The new GLOBE Carbon Cycle Protocol (which has been added to the GLOBE Teacher’s Guide, Data Entry, and the Visualization and Advanced Data Access Tool/ADAT) and eTraining module use a systems-thinking approach to gain a foundation in the carbon cycle and its relation to climate and energy. The new materials (which ask students/teachers to enter measurement data for three types of vegetation: trees, shrubs, and herbaceous) incorporate a diverse set of activities geared toward upper-middle and high school students, including:
- Introductory Learning Activities: Hands-on activities that use a systems thinking approach to understanding the global carbon cycle, while introducing important concepts such as pools, fluxes, and equilibrium.
- Plant-A-Plant Experiments: Hands-on cultivation experiments for the classroom, with options for structured, guided, or open levels of inquiry.
- Protocols and Field Learning Activities: Skills designed to help you collect and analyze data to determine the biomass and carbon storage in the vegetation near your school, including guides for uploading and interpreting data. Protocols can be done in Standard (homogeneous vegetation) or Non-standard (school yard, city park) sites.
- Modeling: Computer models (at varying levels of complexity) to help you predict the change in biomass and carbon storage over time, and give students the opportunity to use an important scientific tool.
- Teacher Support: Comprehensive eTraining modules; NGSS-correlated materials; ready-to-use assessment materials; and background information on carbon, systems, models, and inquiry teaching.
To check out this new protocol, click here. To check out the eTraining modules, click here.
To learn more about GLOBE eTraining, click here.
type: globe-newsNews origin: GLOBE Implementation Office