A UPEI professor is designing a set of educational tools to make climate change easier for children to understand.

The resources will be a mix of online and print materials that show how climate change affects the weather and creates natural disasters.

“This is really important in helping us not only raise awareness about climate change, but more importantly encourage people to eventually take action,” said Xander Wang, director of the Climate Smart Lab in the School of Climate Change and Climate Change. the adaptation of the UPEI.

“For some concepts or maybe some extreme events, we can kind of use what we have for P.E.I., just like real-life examples for teaching.”

The goal is to eventually include these resources in the curriculum for K-12 students, in both English and French.

The new resources are in their early stages and will require quite a bit of research and feedback before becoming a reality for public school students on Prince Edward Island.

Teachers looking for resources

Wang says he often hears from Island teachers looking for teaching resources because kids ask them questions about climate change that they don’t have answers to.

“There aren’t a lot of resources available that they could actually use for teaching,” he said.

“We get a lot of bad news about climate change. Extreme weather, wildfires, floods…when they see that, they definitely worry about the future.”

Wang said the more young people know about climate change and how researchers are trying to address it, the better.

“They really need to know what’s going on, what scientific problems we’re facing,” he said.

Working with teachers, students

The resources will be a mix of different components, Wang said, ranging from cartoons and comics for younger children to traditional print resources for teachers.

“We also want to look at some online resources, like maybe videos, animations or maybe interactive web pages, so they can take quizzes and get feedback,” he said.

Wang is used to teaching undergraduate students. He therefore believes that it will take a lot of feedback to attract a younger audience.

“I think there will be a lot of challenges with this because it’s the first time we’re tackling this type of educational resources for a younger generation,” he said.

With financial assistance from the PEI Climate Challenge fund, Wang says he hopes to have the resources ready in about a year, then take another year to refine them with feedback from teachers and students before fully launching the tools.

“Eventually, I think they will be interested in studying climate change to some extent,” he said.

“We really need the younger generation to get involved.”