Around the classrooms

Climate expert

Last week we had the pleasure of welcoming retired CSIRO climate scientist Graeme Pearman into the year 12 environmental science classroom, where he discussed his career and the science of climate change. It was a fantastic talk and I learnt quite a few new things, including that CSIRO in Aspendale was heavily involved in early atmospheric. 

Here are some to the things the students learnt or enjoyed about the visit:

• I learnt that Graeme and his group invented the technique of ice core sampling in order to provide data for paleo climate.
• How the Earth's energy balance is measured was super interesting as well as ice cores!
• I learnt more information about the greenhouse gasses biochemical cycles, and their involvement in climate change.
• I learnt about how there is a satellite that orbits the earth which is able to measure the Earth’s energy balance, the incoming solar energy, outgoing infrared radiation and the reflected solar energy.
• I learnt that the climate goals are not necessarily straightforward, in that the future of our impact on the environment is subject to change according to the decisions we make.
• I learnt through Graeme's presentation, that NASA has a satellite that measures out going radiation and incoming radiation from 700km from earth's surface which indicates Earth's energy balance.
• I learnt about all our future climate goals and how it will impact our planet if they are not achieved.
• I learnt ways that we can improve from the effects of climate change.
• Parts of Asia still produce and utilise chlorofluorocarbons.
• Something that I didn't know was that ice ages occur roughly every 100,000 years, and that they occur because the Earth wobbles.
• Graeme discussed the potential implications of fugitive hydrogen emissions on the atmosphere. I found it really interesting how this excess hydrogen reacts with hydroxide, which removes hydroxide from the atmosphere. This hydroxide then isn't able to remove atmospheric methane, which affects the greenhouse effect and increases concentrations of methane.
• Interesting to know how an ice age in the past was caused by a 5˚C decease in the world's average temperature showing how small changes can have large impact on the climate.
• I learnt that climate change is a big issue that is slowly affecting our world.
• The urgency of what I am learning about the climate and how its changing.
• So smart, I loved learning from someone who has so much experience.

Thanks again to Graeme for sharing your time and expertise with us!

Kerry Archer

Environmental Science Teacher

Adobe Workshop

Injecting Creativity into the Curriculum with Adobe

On Wednesday 25 July, Tim Dr Tim Kitchen, Senior Education Specialist at Adobe Pacificspent the day at MGSC, providing training in the new Adobe Express suite to several  year 7, 8 and 9 classes plus VCE Media students. After-school a session was run for teaching staff. DET provides access to all Adobe tools free-of-charge in government schools.

We created an animated infographic, some also  explored the Web Page tool, and we are looking at ways of including use of these digital tools into our classrooms.

Thank you for the support of the IT team Jonathan Hall, Phil Pearson, Jung Chen and Rohan Briglia for supporting the students and staff and ensuring the sessions ran smoothly.

Diana Gilbert

Director of New Technologies