STTR Phase I: Overcoming the Flat View - Teaching Climate with an Interactive Spherical Display

这个STTR项目的更广泛的商业影响是，它将使研究人员更多地了解环境条件和随时间变化的影响之间的复杂关系。以直观和令人信服的方式将这些知识传达给全球学生和公众的能力，可以激励他们影响商业和政治领导人制定政策，以减少对地球的破坏。除了中学和大学，还有600个专门研究科学的博物馆，以及水族馆和其他关注环境问题的公共场所；本质上，这些都是为了教育人们，它们都在寻找有效的手段来描绘关于地球的信息。虽然球体/平板显示器提供了最令人信服的观点，但将该项目开发的方法应用于笔记本电脑和平板电脑(拥有数亿人)可以帮助全世界的学生和成年人了解气候。该STTR项目利用商业/大学合作伙伴关系，开发了一种关于气候和气候变化的教育和公共宣传工具。随着人们对气候变化和预测影响的严重性的认识和困惑日益加深，我们教育各级学生让他们真正了解气候数据和气候模型变得至关重要。同样，为了让学生有兴趣学习更多关于气候科学的知识，也为了让公众参与进来，外展工作是至关重要的。这个项目将为教育工作者和他们的学生提供令人信服的方法，让他们深入探索数据和最先进的模型告诉我们关于自然和人为气候变化的信息，并用简单的模型说明气候过程，这些模型可以用于假设情景。我们的目标不是一系列固定的课程，而是一种开放式的教学手段，能够更深入地挖掘信息，回应学生的问题。

This STTR project's broader/commercial impact is that it will allow researchers to learn more about the complex relationships between environmental conditions and the impact of changes over time. The ability to convey that knowledge in an intuitive and compelling manner to students and the public globally could motivate them to influence business and political leaders to craft policies that would reduce damage to the planet. In addition to schools and universities, there are 600 museums dedicated to science, as well as aquariums and other public venues concerned with environmental issues; in essence, these all are involved in educating people, and they all look for effective means of portraying information about the Earth. While the sphere/flat-screen displays provide the most compelling views, adapting the methods developed in this project to laptops and tablets (owned by several hundred million people) can contribute to learning about climate for students and adults worldwide.This STTR project leverages a commercial/university partnership to develop a vehicle for education and public outreach on climate and climate change. With the increasing awareness and confusion about climate change and the severity of predicted impacts, it has become critical that we educate students at all levels to give them a real understanding of climate data and climate models. Likewise, outreach efforts are vitally needed, both to interest students in learning more about climate science and to engage the general public. This project will provide compelling methods for educators and their students to explore deeply what the data and state of the art models tell us about climate changes, both natural and anthropogenic, as well as to illustrate climate processes with simple models that can be used for "what if" scenarios. The goal is not a series of canned lessons, but rather an open-ended means for teaching the material with the ability to dig deeper into the information in response to student questions.