Climate Inquiries
Background information about the project
The Climate Change and Me 2.0 App Project is a collaboration between Southern Cross University researchers and children and young people from around Australia. The project is funded by the Australian Association for Environmental Education and Southern Cross University.
Over the past 6 months SCU researchers have supported children and young people in both face-to-face and online workshops to plan and design the focus and features of a Climate Change App (currently untitled). Their ideas and app designs were then shared with an app developer. We are engaged in an iterative process of sharing app designs and features with the children and young people to seek feedback, and modifying the development of the app in response to their suggestions.
In an effort to generate rich app content ourselves, we have collaboratively devised these climate inquiries. The climate inquiries enable children, young people and adults from around the world to share impacts of climate change in their local areas and/ or further afield.
Purpose of the climate inquiries
We invite children, young people and adults from around the world to contribute their own climate inquiry to feature in an innovative climate change app developed for and by children and young people. The broad intention of these climate inquiries is to inform app users about how climate change affects places, animals, people, water, soil, land, air and so on, all around the world.
We are particularly interested in how climate change might be affecting you in your local area, although you are also welcome to submit a climate inquiry about a topic beyond your local area if you wish.
The following environments will be featured within the app:
- Oceans and waterways
- Arctic and Antarctic
- Forests and bushland
- Deserts
- Cities
Instructions for crafting your climate inquiry:
1. Choose the focus of your climate inquiry:
Choose a place (e.g. a beach, national park, river, city, neighbourhood etc.) or animal (e.g. a turtle, coral, kangaroo, polar bear, fire fly etc.), or issue in your local area or further afield (e.g. drought, proposed giant coal mine, deforestation, bushfires etc.), that you’re interested in or passionate about.
2. Answer the following questions:
- What is happening?
- Who/ what is affected?
- How do you feel about it?
- What is being done to address the issue?
Please try to keep your responses to each question to 50 words or less. This will ensure that the climate inquiries are succinct and engaging. Please try to write responses in your own words, and list any articles, books or websites you accessed to inform your inquiry.
3. Add an image of your climate inquiry (these must be your own):
We invite you to upload an image related to your climate inquiry. This is not essential, but an optional extra. Please ensure you upload an original image. For example, a photograph you’ve taken personally, or a drawing or painting you’ve created. Please note, images will be included in the app at the discretion of the web developer depending upon their clarity and image quality.
The following file formats are supported: PNG, JPG, JPEG. File size limit is 16 MB.