BMU Educational Service

The educational service of the BMU ( www.bmu.de/bildungsservice) offers materials, up-to-date information, activities and user- and service-oriented ideas and tips for schools and educational institutions. An award-winning official measure of the national action plan for the UN "decade of education for sustainable development", the service offers schools and educational institutes numerous options for addressing issues relating to the environment.

Educational materials

The topics and materials on environmental and nature conservation provide excellent starting points for promoting technical and scientific literacy. The BMU educational materials are free of charge and deal with environmental issues such as renewable energies, climate protection and climate policy, water and biological diversity. The high-quality, up-to-date and service-oriented materials are aimed at primary and secondary level pupils. As well as presenting examples, they offer impetus and ideas on how to use the topics of sustainable development, environmental protection and nature conservation in an educational context. Further materials are being planned, in particular geared towards vocational training.

To ensure that pupils have a lively and multi-media access to environmental topics, the educational service has already made 4 suitable cinema films, including the license to show them, available for schools: "Earth", Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", "Arctic Tale" and Austrian film on water "Über Wasser". The educational service web pages also have online quizzes at different levels on the subjects of water and climate.

Action Programme "climate protection in schools and educational institutes"

This programme, to date the most comprehensive educational programme to promote climate protection, was launched by the BMU at the beginning of 2008. Under the heading "climate protection school" (Klimaschutzschule) the Federal Environment Ministry has earmarked over 3.4 million euro to support ideas and projects in schools which contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions. In addition to receiving support for project days with material such as a "climate box" and funding in the framework of the "Aktion Klima!" initiative run by BildungsCent e.V., schools can also obtain equipment from the independent environmental institute Unabhgängiges Institut für Umweltfragen (UfU) that gives them visual data from their solar power systems that can be incorporated into lessons. Cooperation partner "co2online" gives schools a specially developed energy saving account to support their energy saving schemes. The BMU web site www.klimaschutzschule.de is compiling an atlas for climate protection, providing an overview of CO2 savings in schools, on school activities and networking opportunities in the field of climate protection.

Newsletter

You can keep up to date on the BMU educational service with the monthly Newsletter Bildung (in German only).