Computer Science Teacher Michael P. Jones talks to Georgia Smith MBCS about his prize-winning ocean plastics project, the importance of applying technology to sustainability, and teaching young people agency.
Awarded Silver at the Climate Change Challenge 2024 at COP29, Computer Science Teacher Michael P. Jones talks to Georgia Smith MBCS about his winning ten lesson ocean plastics pollution module, computer science and sustainability, and the importance of teaching young people agency.
How did you become interested in combining sustainability and computer science?
My focus for computer science has always been that it needs to have a purpose — otherwise why bother? The climate aspect of it started seriously about three or four years ago. I thought ‘how can I get my students to understand what carbon is?’ as a start — we talk about carbon a lot but few people know what it actually is. I taught them to use trigonometry to estimate the amount of carbon in a tree. That was the ‘scales from the eyes’ moment for lots of them. They could see that the maths had a purpose.
Tell me more about the earlier projects you did with your students.
I got the students thinking about what lived on the school’s two acres of land. They collected data, and calculated averages. Being a computer science group, once we had the data, the question was then how to compile it into some sort of software solution and do something useful with it. We decided on improving biodiversity. We planted 2,000 trees, including about six apple trees.
About a year later, we had a very heavy apple harvest which we distributed around the school and donated to local food banks. It brought in that humanitarian aspect, the idea of community responsibility, and we wanted to do more. We planted 100 apple trees, all carefully researched to fruit at different times of the year to ensure a rolling harvest of fresh, organic fruit into the school and the community. Then we had to work out how to keep the trees pollinated — so we installed an apiary. It was great fun, I got to train as a beekeeper.
That project led to the school winning the Zayed Sustainability Prize, which is $150,000 to develop the ideas further.
What role did computer science play?
Computer science came in because we needed to monitor the bees. We researched what data we needed to collect: heat, humidity and sound frequency. Humans can’t differentiate between the sound frequencies, and we don't want to constantly open the hive to check on the heat and humidity, so we decided on using sensors. Working out how to get power and WiFi out to the site to collect the data involved setting up a mini solar power plant and a GSM device. In terms of computer science it was a really good learning experience because it's stuff on the ground — how do you get a signal from here to over there, and how do you power it?
Why are you so passionate about the practical applications of computer science?
Another project I got the students started on, sparked by that first one, was investigating solar panels. In summer 2022, when it was blisteringly hot, we were scratching our heads because our solar batteries weren’t charging. A little bit of research later, we found out that solar panel efficiency drops at temperatures above 25/26°, and above about 30° they stop working. They also become less efficient over the course of a day because the sun moves and they don’t. I tasked Year 12 with working out how to improve their efficiency. They brought in aspects of physics and geometry to work out how a solar panel that moved with the sun by detecting light could work. Projects like that show the students how this kind of knowledge could be a real job, engineering solutions and analysing data. It makes them see why it’s valuable.
Your 10 lesson ocean plastics pollution module plan was awarded Silver at the Climate Change Challenge 2024 at COP29. Tell us about it.
When it comes to climate issues, what’s happening in the oceans is the elephant in the room. The oceans are a huge heat sink, and one of — not the only — issues contributing to that is plastic [because they affect the natural balance of carbon sequestration]. It’s the micro and nano particles that are the real issue, and it’s hard to do anything about.
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The 10 lesson plan I created is freely available and has been downloaded from the CAS website and other portals several hundred times. It really breaks down into three distinct, but linked, parts. The first part is three lessons of exploration and investigation of the problem — just how do ocean plastics contribute to the climate emergency?. Lessons four to six focus on advocacy; given that there is a problem, what would you do to mitigate this? The third part can be used as a stand-alone project, or a conclusion to the earlier sections, where the students create a teachable AI machine to identify plastics. Students train their system using approximately 30,000 images. They are then encouraged to train their system to recognise the difference between surface and water column plastics and marine life or clear water. This provides agency for the students. They develop the system into a working AI model capable of carrying out climate emergency actions.
Your lesson plan has an emphasis on individual agency — tell us more about that.
Young people care immensely about climate change and they understand the concept of holding others to account. They understand, for example, that large multinational corporations are responsible. But they can be less good at pointing the finger at themselves and recognising their own power. It’s important for them to understand now that they are agents of change, or they won't be agents of change – they will never realise that they can take charge. A project like this where they can actively create something that could have a meaningful impact helps them connect with that individual agency. It puts AI into their hands, something they can use and understand — not something that's done to them. It's also a great way to get them to really think about data bias, how to collect it ethically, and what the ideas of liability and responsibility mean within computer science, data collection and data analysis.
It's a cross curricular approach. Why is that important?
Schools are great, but they do silo topics, and that's not the real world. The idea behind the ocean plastics lesson plan is that it involves physics, geography, social science — and much more. That ability to connect the dots between areas and apply knowledge enables us to problem solve and put things into perspective, and that’s a vital skill.
About the author
Michael has been involved with BCS’ scholarship scheme since its inception and is hoping to help shape its development as the technological world changes. He is also a TEALs Ambassador and has been involved with BCS in a handful of ways over the years, helping to develop the earlier strategies used to build the NCCE and promote teaching computer science at national events. Keen to help drive computer science forward, Michael has presented at CAS national conferences on topics as diverse as computer science teaching in the USA (in his capacity as Churchill Fellow), building computer circuits and measuring carbon capture in trees.
