Department of Geology

Dear teacher!

You and your students are welcome to take part in various workshops at GreenRockLab in Mektory, if the situation regarding the spread of the Covid-19 virus allows it. Address your questions or express your wish to participate to karin.kaar@taltech.ee.

GreenRockLab gives an overview of our future mineral resources and the use of georesources in our everyday lives, and offers teachers new opportunities to bring earth sciences to students in Estonian schools. An educational programme with various workshops has been created for class visits, mainly intended for students from 9th to 12th grade, but younger students are also welcome. GreenRockLab has no windows, which creates a feeling of being underground. The elegantly arched, mine-like space can also serve as a small meeting room, where the light can be adjusted according to the needs of a user. The sturdy glass table in the middle of the room displays a drill-core section of the earth beneath our feet and an ore mine, where the minerals and raw materials needed to make batteries are mined, can be virtually visited using tablets on the wall. "Green" in the name of the laboratory, refers to Estonian green rock - glauconite, but also denotes responsible mining of minerals, sustainable processing of georesources and their use for the development of society. The construction of the lab was supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Raw Materials Innovation Network, which includes 315 European universities, research institutes and companies.

RM@Schools 4.0 is a pan-European project aimed at school students, promoting active learning about raw materials, their production, processing and their everyday importance. The abbreviation RM stands for Raw Materials. The project offers active learning experiences for schools through RM ambassadors who involve students in practical experiments with RM-related learning kits, industrial excursions and science outreach activities. Students also have the opportunity to become young RM ambassadors or science communicators by creating materials, workshops and informational tools on various topics related to mineral resources in collaboration with experts, which they can present at public events.

Every year, local and public events are organised in partner countries to introduce the theme, and once a year, a pan-European youth science conference is held to showcase and reward the best materials developed by students. These events provide opportunities for exchanging ideas and experiences in an atmosphere of inclusion and collaboration. In addition, teachers are trained to become RM ambassadors in schools in the future, and digital tools are being developed. All produced materials are open and accessible to everyone on the Virtual Centre, on the project's dedicated online platform, as well as being uploaded to the website https://rmschools.isof.cnr.it/.

For more information, contact Karin Käär at karin.kaar@taltech.ee.

Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world, designed to collect a variety of materials and resources. BetterGeo is an extension of Minecraft that changes the course of the game by adding new features. BetterGeo adds realistic geology to Minecraft - new rocks, minerals and metals, as well as real ways to search for them. This extension also introduces environmental effects, new tools and items to help you discover it all in the game.

In addition to the expansion of the game, there are also teaching materials to be used in classrooms. The duration of the tasks and the preparation time are different. There are short exercises that do not require much preparation time and also activities that can be done for several hours or even as a longer project. To get started with BetterGeoEdu, installation instructions and tutorials have been created.

The BetterGeoEdu extension and materials are free, but require a pre-installed original version of Minecraft. If you are interested, please contact karin.kaar@taltech.ee.

Created in international collaboration, the EcoCEO is a strategic board game for schoolchildren, which involves running a business and creating a sustainable circular economy. Today's resources, such as fossil fuels, rare earths and metals, are limited raw materials and will soon be depleted if global production and consumption patterns do not change. EcoCEO aims to build and run a profitable business that is able to withstand sudden political, social, ecological and economic changes, and to create a production process and business model that can withstand the challenges of resource scarcity and production waste. At the end of the game, the winner will be announced who will earn the title of ecoCEO - the most successful and responsible manager as a resource manager.

Let's play together! The game can be played at TalTech Department of Geology or the organisers could come to the class. The length of the game or workshop is about 90 minutes, which is preceded by an introductory lecture on the circular economy based on the raw materials sector. The workshop is free. The game is intended for use in natural sciences, economics and business studies or a project. The themes of the game are resources, sustainability and sustainable development, consumption patterns, scarcity of resources, reuse, entrepreneurship and the circular economy. Read more about the game.

We welcome everyone interested but ask to express your interest to karin.kaar@taltech.ee.