“Learning is an active process. We learn by doing…” –author Dale Carnegie

For ten days this fall the people behind the scientific amusement park - Danfoss Universe turned school children from 15 countries into scientists. Children from 50 schools measured rainfall across the globe as part of Danfoss’s The Global Classroom Project (TGCP). 

Students from Denmark (home to Danfoss Universe), the United States, China, Brazil, etc. were able to log onto the project’s website, receive instructions on how to build a “Rain Gauge” from household items, and then were taught how to make accurate rainfall calculations.  Final tabulations could be entered on TGCP’s webpage for all the students across the world to compare. 

The Global Classroom Project hopes to make the participating students more aware of the water cycle, engage their curiosity about the sciences, increase their understanding of environmental issues linked to the water cycle and rainfall, and finally have them participate in a study that requires discipline.  Payoff for the kids comes when their results are combined with schools from across the globe, and they can see and more easily understand different climates from around the world.

This experiment isn’t just child’s play - results from TGCP have been passed onto the Meteorological Institute of Denmark for further analysis.

Danfoss Universe has also recently established a Foundation, which will work on more effective teaching methods (are more world wide experiments possible?).  Their first project entitled “Teaching Facilities of the Future” will be applying research to build classrooms of the future.

Whether this means teaching methods or physical buildings I cannot tell from the translations on their website, but I’m sure we can all look forward to more inventive learning experiments like The Global Classroom Project in the coming years from Danfoss.

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