MIT Portugal Director, Dava Newman, launches free online course around climate change
Are you curious about climate change? Do you want to help educate others? Check out EarthDNA’s Climate 101 on MIT Open Courseware today.
Update: The EarthDNA Climate 101 course is now offered with Portuguese and Spanish subtitles. Check this link and on each video you click the “Settings” button and then “Subtitles/CC” to pick the language!
Climate 101 is a resource developed by Brandon Leshchinskiy in collaboration with Professor Dava Newman, MIT Portugal Director, and EarthDNA, in an effort to mobilize young people as educators on the issue of climate change. This presentation was designed to provide volunteers with all the materials they need to plan and deliver interactive presentations to educate young people at universities, secondary schools, or other organizations about the urgency of climate change. The creators of EarthDNA’s Climate 101, hope that the young people who attend these presentations will be motivated to speak with their family members and persuade them that immediate societal action is urgently needed if the earth is to remain habitable in coming years.
The audience of EarthDNA’s Climate 101 is anybody who’s interested in learning more about climate change. The idea of Climate 101 is that by creating an interdisciplinary and interactive presentation, they can reach people who haven’t typically been part of climate activism. Climate 101 covers the science, the economics, and the civics of climate change, all within 45 minutes.
This resource includes the PowerPoint slides (PPTX – 81 MB) for the presentation itself, along with an introductory video from Prof. Newman, a video of Brandon Leshchinskiy actually delivering the presentation to a classroom full of students, and extensive supporting materials that will help users to become climate ambassadors and deliver the Climate 101 presentation themselves.
The program is currently focusing on leadership training. The materials are still available to anyone, but especially for people who want to develop their own leadership skills and enhance their personal and professional growth, and at the same time are passionate about climate change. They envision a community of leaders, called Earth Ambassadors, who engage their own communities at their schools on climate change.
A global platform for climate advocacy and action. EarthDNA is a nonprofit organization created by our MIT Portugal Director, Dava Newman and her partner Guillermo Trotti.
“With EarthDNA we’re just trying to design a healthy relationship between people, technology, and our Earth systems for the sustainability of humanity.”
— Prof. Dava Newman
In this short video, Professor Dava Newman explains her motivation for creating the EarthDNA program.
“Climate change is real. And if we’re going to solve climate change, the moon shot of our generation, we need everyone on board. That’s why with the support of the MIT Portugal Program, my partners and I started EarthDNA, data into action for the Earth.”
Find more here: https://earthdna.org/