Science Communication: The Water Education Toolkit

Australia's first water-education resource website for school students and teachers has been developed by researchers from The University of Queensland (UQ) to increase water and sustainability awareness. The toolkit provides linked access to a wide range of materials, including more than 700 online resources, which were provided by private and public Australian organisations. This collection now offers a single point of access for teachers and students from pre-school through to secondary school.

According to project leader Will Kershaw from UQ's Science Faculty:

Our brief was to make it easy for all Australian pre-school, primary and secondary teachers to access online water education resources from across Australia and incorporate these into their lesson plans. We created a website on which the materials can be linked by key themes and concepts to the learning objectives for any curriculum, school level and subject. This has given teachers the freedom and flexibility to adapt a growing body of water-education resources to meet their specific needs.

Explore the Water Education Toolkit here.

Although the materials contained within the Water Education Toolkit are designed for primarily for students and teachers, they do offer a wealth of inspiration and ideas for improving science communication between planners, policy-makers and the community. The information in the Water Education Toolkit is coherently structured around audience, key concept, resource type and can also be searched on the basis of keyword.