The first interactive lesson on climate change under the “Simulator-stimulator” project was held at the Professional High School of Electrical Engineering in Varna by the Public Center for Environment and Sustainable Development. The students of the 9th grade, majoring in “Artificial Intelligence”, entered the roles of politicians, farmers, industrialists, representatives of clean technologies and producers of conventional energy. Using the online climate simulator En-ROADS, they made their own simulation model in which they changed the global production of coal, renewable energy, nuclear power, oil, electrification of transport and energy efficiency of buildings, deforestation. They predicted economic growth, the carbon price and the number of the Earth’s population. All students were able to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement, limiting global climate warming to 1.5-2 degrees/year. The government group was the most pessimistic in its predictions and limited the temperature to 2 degrees, while that of the industry optimistically reached 1.4 degrees. All of them, however, realistically or not I went through a decrease in the population of the Earth and a halt or a decrease in economic growth, as well as a significant increase in the carbon price that businesses pay.
Over 200 students between 8th and 12th grade in Varna will go through climate change training in the 2023/2024 school year. All of them will participate in the creation of a scenario to limit climate change. The three best will be awarded at the end of the project.
The classes are organized by the Public Center for Environment and Sustainable Development under the “Simulator-stimulator” project – one of the fourteen finalists in the eighth edition of the Vivacom Regional Grant.
“Our mission is to introduce the online simulator into the curricula of schools in Varna. We will train more than 20 teachers to work with the educational software, which they will then apply in their teaching practice in geography, chemistry, biology classes or in the class teacher’s class,” said Iliyan Iliev from the Public Center for Environment and Sustainable Development. In order for more students to understand how their decisions affect the effects of global warming, we will prepare video learning content on the topic and additional online informational materials,” added Iliev.
