Understanding Global Change

This interactive module allows students and educators to build models that explain how the Earth system works. The Click & Learn can be used to show how Earth is affected by human activities and natural phenomena.

Earth is a dynamic place with many components that interact and shape our habitats. Using this Click & Learn, students and teachers can create visualizations of the connections among different processes, activities, and measurable changes, each represented by a separate icon.

Depending on the lesson, students can swap out other images for the background image in the model. They draw arrows between icons to indicate cause-and-effect relationships, each of which can be annotated with relevant evidence or explanations. Students can save, edit, and share their models, and/or display the model’s components on an infographic, which provides a visual table of contents for the causes and consequences of global changes.

The "Educator Materials" document provides implementation suggestions, including an example instructional sequence. The “Icons” document contains printable tiles of the icons in the Click & Learn. The “Ocean Acidification Model” ZIP file contains an example model that can be used in the Click & Learn. The “UGC poster” file contains the framework and example system models that can be used as a resource or reference.

The “Google Digital Whiteboard” contains the Earth system modeling tools, including the icons, Earth scene, and simplified Understanding Global Change (UGC) framework. Google Jamboard is an interactive cloud-based workspace that allows students to collaboratively construct online models during distance learning or in one-to-one computing environments. Additional materials are available on the UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology website for Understanding Global Change.