Short Summary

The TWDK team was put together by a British rocket scientist who helped Europe to land on a comet, and includes scientists and writers with backgrounds in different branches of science. Their mission? To explain the questions scientists are trying to answer right now, how they're doing it, and why we haven't been able to do so already.

Now the team wants to help high school teachers to engage their pupils with the STEM*  curriculum, by showing how the lessons they're being taught relate to real scientific research happening today. For free.

Our first set of lesson plans are on a topic that we think it is vital for young people to understand - climate change. The decade from 2000-2010 was the warmest on record, and this warming is contributing to sea level rises, loss of ice in the arctic and antarctic, and changes in weather patterns all over the globe. Climate change is something that will affect all of us over our lifetimes, so it is important that young people understand not only what we do know about the subject, but also what our limitations are in understanding it.

*Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths

In February 2002, scientists watched 3,250 square kilometers of ice sheet disintegrate within the space of a month. We still don't understand exactly why or how it happened - you can read more about research into the collapse here. 

Image credit: MODIS, NASA's Earth Observatory (CC-BY 2.0) 

What We Need & What You Get

Unless you're a teacher, you probably won't want to download our lesson plans. But since we're giving them away for free, it wouldn't make much sense for us to ask you to pay for them as rewards! So instead, we have some unique offers for you.

No crowdfunding campaign is complete without a t-shirt.

Besides the obligatory campaign T-shirt featuring the poor bears in our campaign image, we've teamed up with some amazing people who wanted to support our campaign.

The TWDK team will be creating an hour-long audiobook about ongoing research into climate change, which will be available to download and as physical media (on CD). We've teamed up with UK CD printing company Direct CDs to ensure we can offer a quality product worthy of your shelf space, again featuring Frank's wonderful artwork.

Concept image of our CD perk, which will be sent in a clear clamshell case.

Frank Stark is the graphic artist responsible for creating those poor bears and spearing the Earth with a stick. He's awesome, and promises no bears were forced to learn differential equations for our project. He hasn’t apologised for freezing and stabbing our beautiful planet, though.

We’re also working with Agnes Becker from We Are Stardust to create a unique greetings card designed exclusively for this campaign. We are stardust is an online shop for the curious-minded, specialising in handmade cards inspired by scientific discovery and the mysteries of nature. All items are made from sustainable materials: The cards are Forestry Stewardship Council certified, so you can be sure you are not contributing to the destruction of the world’s forests, the envelopes are made from recycled paper and the cellos are biodegradable. Here's a preview of the artwork:

The card from We Are Stardust

Thomas Egense is a mathematician with an "evil fractal laboratory", in which he creates stunning artworks using mathematical (fractal) equations and prints them onto canvas or glass. He's given us permission to offer a number of his biology-themed Fractal Flames prints at a significant discount from their retail price. Each piece is visually stunning, and a powerful reminder of the link between mathematics and nature.

Be sure to tell us which image you want. Names from left to right (top row): seaweed, seahorse, jellyfish, (bottom row): turtle, trilobyte, octopus.

We're looking for 2,000 of your finest Sterling pounds, which we shall use to finance our evil volcano lair safe from the rising flood waters pay our team for the necessary research and writing expenses (everybody needs to eat, after all), plus the costs of the artwork.

The Impact

We believe that science should be taught the way it actually happens - as a set of questions and unknowns that people are working to understand. Science is a process, not a set of facts, and getting this across is vital when trying to inspire the next generation of scientists. The UK curriculum (key stage 4) even states that: 

"Pupils should be taught ... that there are some questions that science cannot currently answer, and some that science cannot address"

We want to give teachers a way of covering this element of the curriculum whilst still building on knowledge and understanding in other areas of their subject. To achieve this, we will create a set of interrelated but stand alone lesson plans, to help teachers to approach the topic of climate change in different subject areas. They will link into topics specified in the curriculum, and build on this knowledge. This gives teachers maximum flexibility to use a single lesson, or several as an interdisciplinary series spanning multiple subjects.

We believe that these lesson plans will allow students to think about both climate change and science in a new way. By covering the topic in several different subjects, they will realise that the different branches of science are interconnected, understand the importance of collaboration, and the practical applications of science. They will also begin to understand that scientists don’t always have all the answers to a problem, and that the point of science is to continue to ask questions and seek evidence. We hope that by humanising the process of science we will encourage young people to become more engaged in the subject, and inspire more of them to consider a career in science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM).

Risks & Challenges

At Things We Don’t Know, we don’t shy away from taking a risk. Climate change is a contentious topic in some circles, and one some teachers may find difficult to approach. We mitigate these risks as much as possible by taking a strictly neutral approach to the subject material, explaining the phenomena but placing no blame and pointing no fingers, and by working closely with teachers to ensure our materials are as useful as possible by matching the content of the syllabus that they need to teach.

It’s possible we won’t reach our goal, but the modular nature of our plan means we can cut down on the number of topics we cover without sacrificing quality of those we do. If we don't reach our goal, then we’ll have some tough decisions to make about which topics we can’t afford to cover, but it won’t stop us entirely.

It’s also possible we’ll smash our goal, and we have a list of extra topics for us to cover if this should happen. With the extra cash we’ll also be able to add more supplementary materials (like videos) to accompany the lesson plans.

Other Ways You Can Help