Teacher Preparation

Overarching learning goal: By participating in this activity students will understand a variety of website extensions and are able to evaluate website according to self generated criteria. They will also participate in a critical analysis of web-based information.

Teacher content information: How can you find reliable information on climate change on the Internet? Start with these steps:

1. Understand the meaning of climate change. The term climate change is generally used to refer to ‘anthropogenic climate change’ (changes in climate due to human activity). Although this issue was first referred to as ‘global warming’, the term climate change has effectively come to incorporate both global warming and the greenhouse effect, mainly because climate change reflects the unfortunate reality that a changing climate means all sorts of variations in climate across the globe, such as hotter or colder or wetter or drier or stormier.

2. Keep your eyes on the science. Although climate change is a massively important global issue that affects everyone person on the planet, a lot of what has been written about climate change reflects personal agendas, and often uses deliberately misleading arguments, misinterpretations and misunderstandings. What’s more, some of this disinformation has been presented to look like science. Whenever you’re reading information about climate change, analyse it to see whether or not it’s aiming to be objective and investigate who has produced the information and what their agenda might be.

3. Exercise caution when using the Internet. Get your information from reputable sites that use science and present balanced information. In Australia, the following sites are useful:

4. Keep it simple. Don’t get yourself in a fuddle by trying to understand complex climate change modelling analysis. There is plenty of fantastic information written by excellent communicators who have taken the difficult details of climate science and present it in an accurate, reliable and easy-to-understand way.

5. Stick to a few sites. Keep a record (e.g. bookmark) of your favourite climate change sites and visit them regularly to keep yourself informed and up-to-date.

For more reliable information about climate change in Australia, visit the Climate Council.

The IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. It was created to:

provide policymakers (governments) with regular scientific updates about climate change;
highlight the impact climate change will have on the planet in the future; and,
offer some ideas about how to tackle the challenges of climate change's potential effects on the planet.

In 2021-22, the IPCC released their sixth assessment report. This is the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change.

The report makes a number of important points:

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.
Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades (B1). The report describes five possible climate futures, where #1 is not great and #5 is extremely bad. If we want to keep global warming at less than two degrees, which the IPCC says is the best-case scenario, we need to reduce our CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions significantly and start right away.

'Net zero' or 'carbon neutral' are terms that refer to achieving an overall balance between greenhouse gas emissions produced and greenhouse gas emissions taken out of the atmosphere. Getting to net zero means we can still produce some emissions, so long as we're doing something else to reduce the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere at the same time, kind of like balancing a set of scales (more info).

Psychological safety. The IPCC Report sets a hard challenge. While this real-world issue is essential for students to understand, there is no doubt it can make them feel sad or anxious about the future is becoming darker and scarier by the day. So, reassure students that we can have a hopeful and optimistic outlook on this report, rather than one of doom and gloom. Explain that optimism involves looking objectively at a situation and making a conscious decision to focus on the good (more info), and that hope is the belief that you can make an impact (more info). Explain to students that you are going to look ahead, identify what needs to be improved, and then work on the skills and confidence so that they can go out and do it. If you're interested in learning more about how to approach challenging topics around climate change and sustainability in your classroom through a Hope and Optimism lens, consider our PD course.

Student and classroom organisation:

Step 1.

Begin by engaging students in a discussion around the following two points:

Where did people get information before the Internet? Are these sources still available and do you use them?
How reliable do you think information on the Internet is and why?

Ask students to summarise discussion on each question in 25 words or less using the Student Worksheet.

Step 2.

Ask students to work through Part 2 on the Student Worksheet. In this part of the activity they are asked to read the quote from We Are the Weather Makers and log onto Google and enter the following phrase: ‘climate change versus weather’. They need to:

Record the number of results; and
Record the organisations/agencies/individuals that the top 10 results belong to and identify their line of argument and how opinions are expressed.

Once complete, ask students to share their results with a partner.

Step 3.

Next students are asked to look up the meaning of different 5 different website extensions, e.g. .com, .org, .au, .uk, .net, .edu, .gov.au and to research the definitions of these web extensions. As students research these domain name types, encourage them to think about the organisations associated with these extensions and their motives for publishing information on the web. For example, .com is a commercial organisation, why have the publishers created this website?

Once students have gathered their definitions and identified the ones that are the most and least reliable, faciliate a class discussion about students’ justifications for these rankings. Direct students to the idea that information from a .edu or a .gov website is more reliable than a website with a ~ extension (an individual web space).

Step 4.

In the next part of the activity students are asked to create a Venn Diagram that compares and contrasts websites and books. Using students’ Venn Diagrams and class discussion tease out the idea that a book is often considered a more reliable source of information because:

The book has been published by a publisher who has invested a significant amount of money into the book;
The authors name is clearly visible;
The date the book has been published is easy to locate;
The contact details of the publisher are available to anyone who has a query about the information in the book.

Assessment/Reflection

Ask students to create a checklist for testing internet reliability using the Think, Pair, Share thinking routine:

Think – Students independently think about an issue or question and record their thoughts.
Pair – Students work in pairs to discuss their ideas and record new thoughts.
Share – Students share their thoughts with the whole group or with other pairs to reach consensus.

A sample checklist should include at least the following things:

Does the website come from a reliable source? (Check the website extension)
Is the author’s name visible?
Are the author’s contact details visible?
Is the date the website was published visible?
Is the date the website was last updated visible?
Does the site look professional?

These are the things that students should be looking for when they assess whether or not the information published on the Internet is reliable.

The final thing you should encourage students to think about is that they should never rely on information from just one source. Use journal articles, books, television and other sources to back up the information they discover on the Internet.

Optional

Include the checklist for Internet reliability on the school or class blog, or ask students to create an infographic (e.g. Piktochart - DIY infographic background information) that can be printed and displayed in the classroom.

Extension/Homework

Ask students to write a short report addressing the following question:

What role do you think the Internet has played in making climate change such a contentious issue?

Weather Makers - Can you trust the Internet?

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