Chemistry World Blog

I finished my time in Anaheim with a session on education, but instead of how to teach students we learnt how students were the ones sharing knowlege.Over in Washington, our colleagues at Chemistry and Engineering News often host guest bloggers. Earlier this year they hosted two students from York College of Pennsylvania who attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Anthony Tomaine and Leah Block went to Cancun as NGO representatives of the ACS, but they didn’t just blog about what they saw. They found out everything they could, talked to everyone they could and tried to understand and then report back to their classmates back in Pennsylvania and around the US. Using social media and skyping with classes of college and high school students this was, in the words of Tomaine ‘students engaging students.’

Both Tomaine and Block gave talks this afternoon, about their experiences, what they did and what they learnt. I think the pair were overwhelmed by the slow pace of politics at the global scale but they’re passionate about combating climate change and believe peer to peer outreach really works.

And for this year (COP17)? The plan is to expand the program, 4 students for week 1 and 4 for week 2. It’s enough to make me want to go back to school!