Last week we briefly discussed how well Population Education resources align with the 21st Century curriculum. Today we are going to focus on one of the themes of 21st Century Skills, Global Awareness. Specifically, “using 21st century skills to understand and address global issues,” as the framework states. While this seems a little vague, this theme isn’t so difficult to include in your classroom. Keep things relevant by connecting your lessons to current events that will open your classroom to what is going on in the world. Utilize technology and programs that students will find useful in furthering their own education, but also to help prepare them for use in a 21st-century work environment. Population Education resources can help you accomplish both!

The Pop Ed activity, Generating Heat, is a great lesson that incorporates technology while exploring global emissions and population growth trends. The high school level lesson has students observe and graph population trends and carbon emissions using a computer simulation and Excel graphing. Then, students analyze their findings. This lesson can be connected to current events while talking about climate change or pollution, or follow it up with something more individual like the discussion of personal emissions.

Check back next week as we explore the core subject of Health Literacy!