TEACHING THE LINK BETWEEN CLIMATE AND ICE WITH CLAST EDUCATIONAL APP

CLAST (Climate in Antarctica from Sediments and Tectonics) is an iPad educational App targeted mainly at pre college students (12 to 18 years old) and aimed at explaining the response of the Antarctic glacial system to climate forcing in the last 15 Kyears.

The key data visualized by CLAST come from the stratigrafic records retrieved by the ANDRILL (Antarctic geological DRILLing) program, a multinational (Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and United States) scientific initiative that recovered two rock and sediments cores along the Antarctic continental margin during two field seasons (2006-2007). The research comprised more then 200 people of the participant nations and implemented an innovative education and public outreach program (EPO) named ARISE (ANDRILL Research Immersion for Science Educators) that involved selected educators and based on a closer interactions between scientists and teachers.

CLAST App might be considered as a long term effect of this program since has been developed by a team made up of scientists, educators and science teachers, two of whom took part to the ANDRILL program. Crucial was also the support of a group of institutions that includes 2 Universities, 2 High schools, 2 Museums a bank foundation .

The version 1.0 of CLAST has been released for free through the App Store in January 2013. It’s entirely bilingual (italian and english) together with all the accompanying set of resources, the student and the teacher worksheets, available on the app website (www.mna.it/clast).

This work is aimed mainly at presenting for the first time the version 2.0 of the CLAST app and all the related material, together with some relevant outcome of this joined scientist-teacher outreach effort.