Education and Outreach Activities in the Tropics Get a Tune-up

 
Published: 30 September 2008
Leonard Jonli (right), Assistant Administrator for Education on Manus, discusses his perspective with (left to right) Ed Lorusso, ARM Education and Outreach Director; Hymson Waffi, local Officer in Charge for the ARM site on Manus; and Larry Jones, ARM Site Manager for the TWP.
Leonard Jonli (right), Assistant Administrator for Education on Manus, discusses his perspective with (left to right) Ed Lorusso, ARM Education and Outreach Director; Hymson Waffi, local Officer in Charge for the ARM site on Manus; and Larry Jones, ARM Site Manager for the TWP.

In August, Education and Outreach (EO) staff traveled to the ARM Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) sites where they met with site operations staff and local educators to discuss outreach activities and materials at these remote sites. In particular, they reviewed the status and use of the climate education kiosks installed in the local communities during the past few years, discussed plans for upcoming teacher workshops, and identified the need for additional educational materials. In addition to the site-specific actions discussed below, they identified a general need to develop a workbook to accompany the popular climate change education DVD and will work on this in the coming year.

While in Darwin, they met with site operations staff and Darwin High School science teachers. They also toured the Australian Bureau of Meteorology facilities and the CSIRO Science Education Centre. Staff at the Education Centre expressed interest in hosting the educational climate change kiosk, which was installed at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in 2006, but is not currently on display. Likewise, teachers at the high school were interested in using the kiosk DVD as a teaching tool and also in the educational materials available on the ARM Education website. The group discussed a pilot program to share parts of the high school climate-change science curriculum with ARM Education for use on the website.

Seventh graders at Pombrut Primary School have a serious discussion during science class.
Seventh graders at Pombrut Primary School have a serious discussion during science class.

At Manus, they also met with operations staff at the ARM site, then toured Pombrut and Naringel primary schools, Papitalai and Manus high schools, and met with school administration staff. From these discussions, EO staff found that schools on Manus are especially in need of basic references materials. They will investigate the potential for providing these resources with a requirement for feedback-in the way of class reports or projects-which can then be posted on the ARM website. In preparation for the teacher “in-service” period in June 2009, they will develop climate-change science workshop materials for the high school and primary school, covering grades 4 through 12. They also discovered that the kiosk installed in Manus in June 2007 was not being used, so are making arrangements to transfer the kiosk to nearby Manus High School. In addition to these education efforts, Manus operations staff requested a “site manual” that briefly describes the instruments, site background, and the ARM Program for use with visitors.