GEOSCIENCES WITHIN THE GERMAN IPY EDUCATION PROGRAM COOLE KLASSEN – COOL SCHOOL CLASSES

Coole Klassen (Cool classes) is the German IPY education project which was initiated in 2006 to guarantee a straight transfer of new polar science questions, methods and results into school lessons. One main focus is on geosciences. It is a nationwide, multidisciplinary network of interested teachers of the school subjects geography, biology, physics, chemistry and social sciences. The teachers work as multipliers and realize different polar projects with students. They learn from one another on meetings, workshops and via website. A very important sub-project is that teachers work with scientists on polar expeditions and take an active part in the field or on the ship, mostly Polarstern. During their journey they write blogs and accomplish telephone conferences with school classes. After that they bring their experiences into the classrooms and develop new teaching materials. They give talks on national and international conferences and share their experiences with colleagues. Some contests have been taken place. There are partnerships between schools in Germany and polar regions. The program is sustainable and goes on in the Polar Teachers Working Group which was founded 2008 in the German Society for Polar Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Polarforschung, DGP).