Stars and STEM Stories
Israel -- Student Research Benefiting the Environment
The GLOBE team at Albatof JH School Arraba, Israel includes teachers of different subjects: Rafaa Yasin (Director), Amal Nassar (Geography teacher), Buthaina Yasin (English teacher), and Mamoun Naamneh (Science teacher).
They have recently joined The GLOBE Program through a course organized by the Israeli Ministry of Education that lasted from Sep 2022 to June 2023. It was an opportunity for the team to enrich themselves with information related to climate change, so the teachers started working together with their students throughout the year towards a common goal: to spread and raise environmental awareness in order to increase open spaces. The idea of the course is to develop the capacity of GLOBE volunteers and to facilitate activities and projects that address local environmental issues through applied environmental education.
First -- through science, geography and English lessons -- the students used activities that align to GLOBE and their own mission, including student research benefiting the environment or community awareness that impacts their local environment (such as scientific research texts, presentations, drawing activities, simulations and lectures) that were organized by environmental associations like the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI).
In addition, lectures were given to teachers in order to enrich their knowledge and raise their awareness of how serious and important these environmental issues are.
In The GLOBE Program at their school, the students and teachers have been focusing on conducting research on a specific environmental issue: Urban Heat Islands. The students investigated the effect of surface color and the material it is made from, and the amount of infrared radiation reflected. Within this project, a group of 8th grade students went outdoors around the school twice a week to measure the temperature of four different surfaces that differ in material and color, ranging from darkest to lightest, three of which are synthetic.
- asphalt -- totally black
- concrete -- dark grey
- a football field coated with red and green polyurethane -- bright colors
- a natural space/open space planted with flowers and different types of plants
The students used a surface temperature measuring device called an “infrared thermometer."
After comparing temperatures, the results suggested that the asphalt surface had the highest temperature, followed by concrete, then the football field coated with polyurethane. The area of natural space had the lowest temperature and has been proved to have a cooling effect on the surrounding area of about 1.4 km. Plants reduce the air temperature through evaporation of water from the leaves; they have the ability to cool the heat. Open spaces can counteract urban heat and cool the air by evapotranspiration by five degrees Celsius.
Consequently, the students have already started changing the school's surface colors into lighter ones and have increased the open spaces by planting them as a first step to reduce the high temperature at school. Later on, the students collaborated to present and introduce the final data and results for both students and teachers in order to raise their awareness to the significance of the school's surface colors and its impact on the temperature of the surrounding area: the darker the surface color, the higher the temperature of the surrounding area.
In the second practical step, the students started presenting their project to other schools in the city to attract more volunteers who mainly aim to spread environmental awareness locally and to focus on the importance of increasing open natural spaces in the city. Indeed, the Albatof JH School succeeded in a joint project together with the sponsorship of the Agricultural School on behalf of the Ministry of Education called “Green Lungs ריאות ירוקות."
The students have successfully changed a neglected polluted midtown roundabout that was made of asphalt and concrete into a natural space, a huge number of flowers and plants were grown in it besides planting a large number of flowers in the town and the schools’ entrances.
"For us we consider The GLOBE Program as a part of our future. We have started it with a few students who brainstormed various creative ideas and created different mechanisms to find solutions and tried to adapt to the current climate," says teacher, Mamoun Naamneh. The students’ main goal is to increase environmental awareness locally among people and launch it globally. Ahmed, one of the participants, said "It’s amazing how positive the impact we are making for our planet; we are not only making a change, but rather hope for a brighter future."
GLOBE promises a future where students are able to help expand their message and make a change. "We want to make GLOBE more accessible by trying to eliminate all barriers and encourage people to get into the GLOBE Community.
Being able to introduce the project to other students at an early age using tools to investigate what is happening in their community and serve as advocates for change is so inspiring and impactful to students."
Overall, the students have started thinking about the future, realizing their role in it determining that future on their own.
Images courtesy Mamoun Naamneh.