Earth School keeps locked down students connected to nature

Earth School provides free, high-quality educational content to students, parents and teachers around the world who are currently cooped up.

Earth School takes students on a 30-day ‘Adventure’ through the natural world and was created by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and TED-Ed and is the biggest online learning initiative in UNEP’s history.

The curated Earth School content features videos, reading materials and activities – which will be translated into 10 languages – to help students gain an understanding of the environment while considering their role within it and is available for free on TED-Ed’s website.

UNEP and TED-Ed – in coordination with 30 collaborators, including National Geographic, WWF and UNESCO – came together to launch Earth School in just over two weeks. Built for children and youth ages 5-18, it spans 30 school days that run between Earth Day and World Environment Day on June 5, which this year will take place under the banner of Time for Nature.

Australia’s Littlescribe is one if those collaborators and is creating 150 Adventures to cater for five age groups, from preschoolers to 18+ years. Participants can access each Adventure and the inspirational content provided by collaborators to create their own Earth School project.

Launched in 2018 by Jenny Atkinson, Littlescribe inspires and motivates children to write by transforming their writing projects into digital and printed projects such as books, cards and other materials to share with their class, family friends and the world. Littlescribe is available for students based at home and school.

TED-Ed creates free, video-based lessons on everything from animals and climate change to underwater farms. It is the educational arm of TED, whose library of thousands of interactive lessons – built by a network of 500,000 educators from across the world – spans all ages and subjects.

Each Adventure has been selected by a panel of expert practitioners and caters to different age groups. Each consists of a hands-on experiment and nature discovery. In addition to TED-Ed’s own content, Earth School will feature videos from notable media organizations including National Geographic, PBS LearningMedia and the BBC with the goal of empowering participating students to be caretakers of our planet.

“Despite being confined to their homes, this project shows that students, parents and teachers throughout the world can still engage in science-based learning and adventures together. Earth School is a collaboration between so many talented educators and incredible partners from around the world, which is why we’re proud and thrilled to see the initiative feeding the global curiosity of home-bound students, all of whom are the future environmental stewards of our planet. This platform is a gateway to some of the most inspiring lessons on nature and the environment, and each lesson comes with practical and fun activities that students can engage with and share,” said Logan Smalley, founding director of TED’s youth and education initiative, TED-Ed.

The lessons were curated by a team of environmental education experts including Kathleen Usher Ph.D, Jessie Oliver and Juliane Voss, who worked with over 100 contributors in creating Earth School. The initiative is in support of SDG 4.7 and the Decade of Delivery and will contribute towards the Global Education Coalition launched by UNESCO last month to convene governments, technology partners and leaders in the education field to keep pupils learning. As part of this coalition, UNEP will be exploring how this content can be adapted and shared with children who aren’t able to access the Internet.

Collaborators who have agreed to support this initiative include: BBC Ideas, Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Conservation International, CEE, Earth Day Network, Earth Challenge 2020, Environment Online (ENO), GeSI, International Olympic Committee, IUCN, Institute for Planetary Security, Junior Achievement, Learning in Nature, Littlescribe, Minecraft, National Geographic Society, Ocean Wise, Only One, Royal Geographic Society, SciStarter, Sitra, TAT, TED-Ed, The Nature Conservancy, UN Convention on Biodiversity, UN SDSN / TRENDS, UN Technology Innovation Lab, UNCCD, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, UNFCCC, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, University of Pennsylvania, Vult Labs, World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), Wild Immersion and WWF.