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School CO2web

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CarboSchools
SchoolCO₂Web

History of SchoolCO₂web

A few years ago the Center for IsotopeResearch and the Department of Education (IDO) of the University of Groningen (Netherlands) started a cooperation with 3 secondary schools to set up the SchoolCO₂web. The schools placed a CO₂ meter and a weatherstation on their roofs. They send the atmospheric measurements via a school computer automatically to a central database of the CIO. Measurements of this database are by means of a simple tool publicly available as a graph or spreadsheet and can be used for educational an scientific purposes.

Since April 2007 the SchoolCO₂web has participated in the Teacher Scientist Partnerships (TSP) project. The goal of this European Comenius project among other things is to increase the learning capabilities of pupils by involving them in practical tasks which are carried out by scientific institutes. Now we have incorporated SchoolCO₂web into the CarboSchools project and we aim to connect approximately 15 schools in 5 different countries to the SchoolCO₂web (educational benefits).

Educational benefits of SchoolCO₂web

The goal of the SchoolCO₂web is to give pupils more insight into the carbon cycle and the fluctuations of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is a multidisciplinary topic, which includes mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.

Pupils also learn how to extract valuable information from a large dataset by means of spreadsheet programs and statistics. Data analysis is an important skill within scientific research. In this way, this project creates a bridge between secondary school and University. Moreover, you bring science closer to the pupils, because the measurements take place in the schools themselves and the measurements might be useful within scientific research.

The SchoolCO₂web is a project involving a European network of schools. This emphasizes the international nature of the greenhouse gas science and opens up possibilities for project cooperation between pupils from different countries.