U.S. EPA Global Warming Kids Site
Among the other topics on the Environmental Protection Agency's main website such as acid rain, human health, asbestos, recycling, mercury and mold, global warming is a topic that the EPA addresses to the public for the U.S. government. Linking to the global warming website, there is detailed information explaining the issue for the general public. However a section of the global warming web page is designed for specialized viewers called the Visitors Center. The challenge of this part of the EPA's website is to reach out to specialized audiences such as educators, health professionals, and meteorologists to name a few. Outreach to educators requires content that is interesting, accurate, and accessible to young children. In addition, content for educators is preferred in modular format so that instructors can deliver information to students in small pieces.
PPC worked with the EPA to enhance the Educator's Visitor Center web site making it more user-friendly, interactive, interesting, engaging and perhaps most importantly accessible to 5-9th graders. PPC recommended a modular, interactive animation designed to address the challenging topics of (1) the enhanced greenhouse effect, (2) the enhanced water cycle, and (3) the enhanced carbon cycle for the EPA's website. Modular, Internet-based learning such as what PPC provided to the EPA are termed e-Learning Tools.
On the interactive website, each of the three modules (i.e. greenhouse effect, water cycle, and carbon cycle) is further broken down into 5 sub-modules so students and teachers can tackle small pieces of the topics at a time. The animations are highly user-friendly with clear instructions so that even without instructor guidance, students can navigate the animations on their own.
PPC developed the lesson plans used in the animation following EPA guidance. Two animated cartoon characters, Evelyn and Tyler, dictate the lessons through pop-up captions. All text dictated by a pop-up caption is also portrayed as a picture at the center of the animation, providing visual and textual explanations that reach out to student of different learning styles.
Each animation module concludes with a 5-question interactive quiz to reinforce key concepts. There is the capability for students to get a hint from the animation characters, Evelyn and Tyler, if they need help during the quiz. Finally at the end of the quiz, a student can ask to have their score displayed.
The animation artwork was designed by PPC and the animations frames were brought to life using the Internet-Explorer-compatible Macromedia Flash software.
PPC deployed a successful e-learning website tool, exploiting the latest advances in website animation technology. Not only did the animations help to increase visits to the website, school teachers in the US and as far away as New Zealand emailed EPA to applaud the modules and their usefulness in classrooms. In addition, the Italian National Research Council requested the modules from EPA, so they may be converted into Italian.
PPC's solution can be viewed at: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/kids/animations.html