"Noise and listening" - materials for teachers
The project
Especially children and young people are endangered to encounter aural damaging sound levels - firecrackers, toy guns, rock concerts, discoteques. Current studies prove that even 25% of all young people suffer from aural losses. This material is to initiate projects dealimg with the topic "Noise and Listening" especially in basic and junior levels. There are two boxes with Books, concepts for lessons, CDs, measure instruments and videos to make pupils aware of the topic "Noise". These boxes can be used by teachers for free.
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In addition, teachers can get more information and further education on the topic and exchange of experience with other teachers.
Background
Our children are born into a world full of noises. They grow up with radio, television, computers, household- and craftsmen machines and technical toys. Later on, they use CD- or MP3- Players, and some even take part of techno events or rock concerts still sitting in their pushchair. Finally, discoteques and loud rock concerts crown this aural burden. Usual volume levels of 90 -110 dB are comparable to a jet plane taking off.
These burdens can finally cause an aural damage. Especially children are sensitive to noise. National as well as international studies have shown an alarming number of aural detractions among young people (up to 25%!) even before entering work environment.
Children of pre- and primaryschool age encounter loud noises of toys like toy guns and cracking or clicking toys.
Project objectives
The main objectives of the project are to rise awareness for the topic and sensitise children and young people.
In practice, most schools don't address this problems as much as necessary. Topics like "listening", "acoustics" and "aural health" sometimes are not even discussed.
On one hand, this is because of the syllabus, on the other hand, the teachers are responsible for this. For instance, the syllabus gives teachers in physics free choice either to deal with the topic "Acoustics" or with "Optics" in their lessons. Most of them choose "Optics", as well as teachers in biology prefer the eye and seeing instead of the ear and hearing. Enquiries showed, that reasons for this are better clearness and demonstration options of the "eye/optics" topic in form of experiments
The material collection “Schall und Knall“ (sound and bang) is to find a remedy for this problem. The collection is based on a special concept: to become acquainted with a new topic, the teacher has to secure himself with appropriate, actual literature. After this, he will work out a concept for his lessons and prepare work sheets and experiments for the pupils to make his lessons interesting and effective. To do so, he will prepare material for experiments by himself or buy it. Measure instruments have to be provided as well. This takes a great amount of efforts and expenses for the teacher, and that's why he might hesitate to put a new topic into school practice.
So this project offers all materials the teacher needs, including lierature, work sheets, experiment materials and measure instruments.
Contact:
Unabhängiges Institut für Umweltfragen UfU e.V.
Greifswalderstraße 4
D - 10405 Berlin
Tel. 030/428 49 93-0 Fax: 030/428 00 48-5
Dipl. Ing. Susanne Neyen
mail@ufu.de Internet: www.ufu.de
