Throughout the spring or second semester for students, I was able to take an online course called GOA: Climate Change and Global Inequality. Many of my classmates lived around the world, so, when having to Zoom call each other, we had to compromise for a suitable time to meet. We worked on research papers, projects, presentations, and more, and through this, I was able to learn more about climate change that I did not know before. I was lucky enough to have my school offer me the chance to learn online, so I took advantage of my class and was able to discover climate change in different countries and not just in the US.

One of our projects was to research our given country (I was to study and research India). For one week, we had to research about India and the levels of greenhouse gasses, fossil fuels, etc., and how much and how well India is doing to prevent the increase of their levels of climate change. My previous knowledge of India was slim, only knowing the basics that my friends had told me about, so, when learning about India, I was able to research plenty more information than I ever knew about in my entire education.

One of the last research papers we had to do was by choosing a topic and doing research on it. I decided to learn about Quality Education. I was able to learn about education and how climate change has affected many kids in developing countries from being educated. As this was my spring break, I hit a bit of a dead-end, nearly missing the deadline to finish writing my paper, however, when I came to researching my topic, I dove into the world and how much climate change took a hit to many of these countries. I went from looking up how much climate change affected the education systems to researching how climate change should be a part of the curriculum in schools around the world.

Being able to learn about climate change has taught me a lot about the world that we live in and how much there is to do to change our living and help Mother Earth. Not only was I able to gain new knowledge, but I was also able to use different resources when taking this class that I would never have used in the past. By taking an online course, I was able to save more paper than I would if I had been taking a physical class. Although my use of energy and technology increased, especially in a time of COVID-19, I was able to save the money and paper for online copies of the things I needed.

As we dive deeper into COVID-19, everyone around the world is using more technology, and many – if not all – schools have gone online. While there are sources out there saying that climate change has gone down significantly since COVID-19 started, the online course I took was able to learn about how this is indeed not true (and, of course, it is evident as to why even without taking a class). The people who signed up for an online course – whether through high school or university – were able to get a sense of online courses much earlier.

Luckily there are many opportunities for you to take an online course, whether it’s for free or a paid class, I have been fortunate enough to be able to learn about climate change for free through my school. Many opportunities are arising as we move forward into COVID-19 to learn about climate change, so hopefully, we can all take this time online to learn more.

Loves,

Veronica Chen