Latest in GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE News

For 300 years the world saw the colonialism , not by British, not by French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese , but by Fossile Fuel. This 300 seconds of 300 years of fossil fuel by black colonialism!

‘300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds’ is a very unique and innovative clip that has attracted over 1 million viewers on YouTube. It provides the viewer with a broad outline of how Climate Change came to be and alerts of the immediate need to address the situation. Although it employs language that may be too advanced for some students, teachers would benefit from using this as a resource for their own learning about the topic as well as a stimulus for teaching ideas. Students would profit from viewing the clip and the illustrations that accompany the narration would help them make sense of the content, however it is fast paced so I would recommend a double viewing to enhance comprehension. The first run through could purely be for observation and the second run through could provide an opportunity for students to practice their note taking skills, thus creating a link to literacy. “The impact of the internet has been global and far-reaching in its facility to disseminate information quickly to online users.” (Winch, 2010, p. 400)

Teaching Idea: Construct a timeline as a class of all the major events in history that have contributed to Climate Change/global warming eg. Industrial Revolution, population growth & consumerism. There is a numeracy link here in which students are to come up with an appropriate scale for the timeline. (Students may have to conduct further research)

Alternatively, a class discussion could take place surrounding an important quote from the clip “We must live within natures budget of renewable resources at rates of natural replenishment.” Ask students to elaborate on this – What does it mean? What are renewable resources?

Assessment Task: Ask students to evaluate the positive and negative aspects of the effects of human changes on the environment. Divide the class into two and ask each student to contribute one response and allocate a scribe to put the ideas into a mind map. Students can then write an exposition (literacy strategy) using the points as cues in determining whether or not they believe the positives outweigh the negatives or vice versa.  

Winch, G., Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (2010). Literacy : reading, writing and children’s literature (4th ed.). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Really cool video that talks about the basics.