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Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN)

A collection of 900+ free, peer-reviewed climate and energy educational resources and support for educators

Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN)

The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) is a nationally renowned, award-winning, online clearinghouse that features; i) 700+ high-quality resources around climate and energy topics that are peer-reviewed for scientific accuracy, ii) pedagogic effectiveness and classroom readiness guidance for educators (“Toolkit”) and iii) is home to the vibrant CLEAN Network. The CLEAN Collection is syndicated to NOAA’s Teaching Climate portal. CLEANet.org and Climate.gov are the premier resource portals for climate education resources in the country with over 55,000 combined monthly sessions.

The CLEAN STEM Flash e-newsletters connect selected resources from the CLEAN collection with current climate and energy events in the news.

This series supports formal and informal educators in using highlighted CLEAN resources for teaching about current events related to climate and energy issues.

Sign up now to subscribe to the CLEAN STEM Flash!

View the CLEAN STEM Flash issues

Take your teaching about climate and energy to the next level and watch the free CLEAN webinar series. We run this series every semester - sign up and watch recordings on the CLEAN Webinar page. We also sometimes host special webinars on teaching about climate and energy - sign up for special webinars here and watch special webinar recordings here.

CLEAN Webinar Series:

Webinar 1: Intro to CLEAN
Join us for a guided tour of the CLEAN portal. Learn about the CLEAN collection of almost 700 climate and energy educational resources and the range of other supporting materials to help you effectively and accurately teach about climate and energy topics.

Webinar 2: Teaching About Climate and Energy
Learn about the Climate and Energy Literacy Principles and how they are integrated with the CLEAN collection of climate and energy resources. These principles provide the foundation for understanding the science behind climate and energy concepts.

Webinar 3: It's Us: Humans as Agents of Change within Earth's Climate System
Human impacts on the climate system are becoming increasingly evident, moving climate change from a topic that is abstract and far away to one that is right before our eyes. It's our job to help students learn about our role in altering the climate, but it's important to do so in a way that's constructive and solutions-oriented. Educational materials from the CLEAN collection can help you navigate this essential topic.

Webinar 4: Teaching Climate Consequences with CLEAN: Motivate and Inspire, Don't Despair
The consequences of climate change are all around us, unfortunately. How can we teach these topics without overwhelming our students or causing anxiety? In this webinar, we share strategies for building connections between cause and effect, showcasing solutions, and using local approaches to make science relevant and inspiring. All the teaching tools highlighted in this webinar are appropriate for online teaching.

Webinar 5: Strategies for Integrating Climate Science into the Elementary Classroom
This webinar provides strategies for elementary teachers to integrate climate science into their classrooms. Teachers will explore how to break down this complex and controversial topic, teach it across disciplines, make it culturally relevant, use it to inspire curiosity, and motivate students to develop climate change solutions.

Webinar 6: The UC Berkeley Understanding Global Change Project and CLEAN
The Understanding Global Change (UGC) Project at the University of California Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley developed a suite of online and interactive learning materials that support educators and students to explore the Earth as an interconnected, dynamic system. The UGC resources, co-designed with classroom teachers and leaders in climate education, are integrated with research-based teaching practices that utilize modeling of phenomena to make learning visible, and support the investigation of local and global actions that reduce human impacts on global environments. In this webinar, you will learn about the UGC Project tools for teaching about climate and energy using CLEAN resources.

Past Webinar: Creating Climate and Energy Units (no longer active, but recording still available)
Want to know how to build your own climate and energy units using CLEAN resources? Join in for an introduction to the lesson planning materials and ready-to-use classroom units to get you started.

Past Webinar: CLEAN, NGSS, and 3-D Learning for Climate and Energy Education (no longer active, but recording still available)
Get insight into how the CLEAN collection of educational resources is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and how CLEAN supports 3-dimensional learning. Learn how to search the CLEAN collection by NGSS climate and energy topics and at-a-glance standards tables.

The CLEAN teacher ambassador program supports teachers to help market CLEAN. We can provide funding to teachers who present about CLEAN at teacher conferences and in professional development workshops. We are also working to develop more ways to support educators in their climate teaching through this program.

You can find more information and apply for the program on the CLEAN Teacher Ambassador website.

If you are an expert in climate science or energy-related research or technology, please consider volunteering to serve as an external reviewer for CLEAN. We periodically ask external experts to provide reviews to help us vet online educational resources to ensure they are accurate and current, using a simple review form.

Sign up using the CLEAN Science Reviewer Form.

Publications

Cover: Special Issue: Energy Education

Gold, A.U., Ledley, T.S., Sullivan, S.B., Kirk, K.B., Grogan, M. (2015): Supporting Energy Education Online: Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Journal of Sustainability Education.

Cover: Journal of Geoscience Education

Ledley, T. S., Gold, A.U., Niepold, F., McCaffrey, M. (2014): Moving Toward Collective Impact in Climate Change Literacy – The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Journal of Geoscience Education, Vol. 62, No. 3, pp. 307-318. 

JGE Cover

Gold, A.U., Ledley, T.S., Buhr, S.M., Fox, S., McCaffrey, M., Niepold, F., Manduca, C. & Lynds, S. 2012. Peer-review of digital educational resources—A rigorous review process developed by the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Journal of Geoscience Education. 60: 295-308.

Cover: Journal of Geoscience Education

Gold, A.U., Ledley, T.S., Buhr, S.M., Fox, S., McCaffrey, M., Niepold, F., Manduca, C. & Lynds, S. 2012. Peer-review of digital educational resources—A rigorous review process developed by the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Journal of Geoscience Education. 60: 295-308. 

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