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A snowman nowadays.
The snowman of the future?
We wanted to study our course of environmental ecology in a totally new way in Kouvolan Lyseon lukio upper secondary school. The students planned the course, we had cooperation with partners outside our school and we studied the subjects of the curriculum with one main theme (climate change). We opened this Internet site about climate change - and we will update this site regularly also after our course.
During the first two lessons the students planned the course with the teacher. We also got several partners: beekeeper M. Linnala, E. Lundqvist from Fauna organization, the library of Kouvola, Finnish Meteorological Institute, our local electric utility KSS-Energia and Hartwall soft drinks industry.
In the beginning of our course the library of Kouvola offered us to see the document film ”Canned Dreams”, the new Finnish film produced this year. It tells about the long trip of 30,000 kilometers, which the ingredients of a ravioli can have to go from around the world to the shelf of a Finnish supermarket. This was a good way to start discussing energy consumption and using fossil fuels. We also took part in the national Energiansäästöviikko 2012 (Energy Saving Week).
After the theoretical study of climate change the students played different climate change games and wrote several blog postings about climate change. Besides textbooks, the students also read novels and other fiction books about climate change. After that they wrote reviews about these books and those reviews were published on our web page.
The students made many interviews about climate change and reported about extreme weather events.
We arranged a quiz about energy consumption and climate change for the whole school in the corridors of our school for one week – and also for the Kouvolan iltalukio upper secondary school for adults which operates in the same building. We gave prizes for best competitors and we also gave some prizes with a lottery. We got those prizes from our local electric utility KSS-Energia.
Seal photographer Juha Taskinen (Photo 1) visited our school. He showed us his wonderful photos and he also lectured twice about threats which climate change causes to Saimaa ringed seals (Pusa hispida saimensis), which nests in snow banks on a lake ice. We also invited groups from Kouvolan iltalukio upper secondary school for adults, KSAO vocational school, Yhteiskoulu upper seconday school and Urheilupuisto upper comprehensive school to listen Taskinen's lectures. Both groups studying biology, geography, mathematics, English, visual arts, philosophy and Russian took part in these lectures from our school.
Photo 1. Seal photographer Juha Taskinen (on the left) visited our school. Students E. Sippu and E. Töyrylä on the right. Photo: S. Hammouda.
In the evening we took Juha Taskinen to the library of Kouvola in which he also lectured. Two students from our school interviewed him there. There were many residents from the city of Kouvola there to listen Taskinen (Photo 2). The students of our course of journalism will write about this event and the article will be published in our school's newspaper called Logos which will be published in the next year as an attachment of our provincial newspaper named Kouvolan Sanomat.
Photo 2. Two students from our school interviewed Juha Taskinen in the library of Kouvola. Photo: S. Hammouda.
We also had other visitors at our course. Beekeeper M. Linnala told about the importance of weather and climate to bees and E. Lundqvist told about ecological food choices. We also took part in a webinar (a live lecture on the net) about climate engineering. Scientist H. Korhonen from Finnish Meteorological Institute lectured about geoengineering (Photo 3). Besides, our students visited national Ilmastotoimintapäivät (Climate Action Days) in Helsinki, December 1-2, 2012 and Ympäristötoimintapäivät/Miljöaktionsdagarna (Environment Action Days) in Virrat, February 1-3, 2013.
Photo 3. We took part in a webinar (a live lecture on the net) about climate engineering. Scientist H. Korhonen from Finnish Meteorological Institute lectured about geoengineering. Photo: J. Kolehmainen.
At the end of our course we had an excursion to Hartwall production plant in the city of Lahti in which I. Kellokumpu lectured us about Hartwall's environmental responsibility (energy consumption in factories, emissions in transportation, environmental effects of the whole life cycle of Hartwall products).
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