Skill up your game!
What is the Carbon Academy?
The Carbon Academy is our online ‘bananas’ learning platform. It is exclusively for our How Bad Are Bananas – Carbon Footprint Games facilitators. Here we will give you all the background information on how to play your Carbon Footprint Game with others.
We will skill you up to become a GREAT facilitator of the game. Becoming a trained facilitator of the game then enables you to educate others, using a fun game, created using serious science-backed data.
Education changes the world. You can change the world.
The Carbon Academy and the Small Carbon Footprint Game
The two go hand-in-hand, you can’t have one without the other. You can’t find the content of the Carbon Academy Course anywhere else. Unique, exciting, educational and world-changing. Check out ‘Play everywhere you want!’ in the table of contents, below.
Table of Contents
The modules in the Carbon Academy
The Bananas Story
Chapter 1 enables you to learn a bit about us and how and why we developed the Carbon Footprint Game
What's in the training?
In chapter 2, we will give you a short overview of what you will get in the Carbon Academy
View chapter 2 as a sample for an overview of what's included
Embracing the Climate Emergency
Moving on to Chapter 3: Embracing the Climate Emergency, gives you the basic background on the latest climate science and the current situation we find ourselves in. We will give you some facts and figures but this section is more about terminology and getting you acquainted with the most important pieces of the science and societal picture. It’s not ALL doom and gloom although this is the most ‘academic’ part of the learning
Getting acquainted with your game
Then to Chapter 4, where you will learn all about your new game: rules of the game, what the different colours of the cards mean, how and why the games work. We do a run through of playing the game in a video
Growing facilitation skills
In Chapter 5, you learn how to grow your facilitation skills, we explain what your job as facilitator is and we show you what makes good and bad facilitation of the games. We help you to prepare to play with others
What's next?
In the final part of the Carbon Academy, ‘Chapter 6: What next?’ you will be tested on what you have learnt, given further resources to access and the opportunity to download a completion certificate. You can also opt into taking part in some research into how effective using the game is at helping people to learn and change their behaviours. We’d also LOVE you to give us some feedback on the Academy itself – this is our first but by no means our last version – we will use any of your critique to make the Carbon Academy give you and others exactly what you need before you start to play. You can also access critique sheets for testing your play and our cheat sheet (facilitation notes) that can help you to quickly learn the key messages you can deliver with each playing card or comparison
Play everywhere you want!
Everything you need to know about our small Carbon Footprint Game
small game
Further questions (FAQs)?
We’re not currently selling access to The Carbon Academy separately from buying games. The Academy has been set up specifically to support those who are using the Carbon Footprint games to educate others.
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The Carbon Academy is our online ‘bananas’ learning platform. This gives you all the background info on how to play your carbon footprint game with others – i.e. it gives you ALL the relevant training to become a GREAT facilitator of the game.
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You get free access (1 license) to the Academy when you buy any of our small or big games. You currently can’t buy access to the Academy without buying a game although talk to us if you have games already and would like to have more logins to access the Academy.
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There are 6 chapters in the Academy (although Chapters 1 and 2 set the scene by telling you a bit about us and a bit about the Academy).
There are then 4 core learning chapters in the Academy:
- Chapter 3: Embracing the Climate Emergency
- Chapter 4: Getting acquainted with your game
- Chapter 5: Growing facilitation skills
- Chapter 6: What’s next? (further resources, evaluation and certificate)
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You will be tested in the final Chapter of the Academy to check you have retained sufficient knowledge of how to play the game.
If you’ve never facilitated before, we find that playing the game helps you to develop more facilitation skills. Playing the game becomes easier to do and better quality (in terms of learning) the more you do it. Back at Bananas HQ, we find even now that we have completely different conversations with our players and we’ve facilitated for over 6 years and have played with thousands of different people.
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Yes – you will be able to download a certificate once you’ve finished working your way through the Carbon Academy.
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To maintain some quality control around learning, we obviously recommend you work your way quickly through the basic Carbon Academy material – a lot of it is in video format so it is a bit easier to get through quickly.
You should then choose a number of cards you’d like to compare well and read the relevant sections of the ‘How Bad are Bananas?’ (2020 version) book (copies available with all versions of the game sold and more available to buy in sets of 5 if you need them).
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Once you’ve bought a game, the Academy will be open for you to use from that point on, so you can return to the Academy if you’d like to brush up on your skills or help others to learn how to facilitate too.
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The Carbon Academy will explain everything you need to know in order to facilitate the game!
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It is possible to share your login details with others in your organisation who wish to learn how to facilitate the game. If they would prefer their own login then please contact us to arrange this.
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Nope. We think anyone can learn how to become a great facilitator of the game. You don’t have to be a teacher. Having teaching skills or experience may give you a bit more confidence but everyone needs to read the book and learn the shortcuts and tips to playing a great game and delivering the right messages.
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You need to use generic facilitation skills to play the game well with players. These include but are not limited to: listening skills, setting the scene, defining the carbon footprints, asking questions, giving players space to learn for themselves, not dominating the conversation but also providing key facts and useful tips as players go through the game.
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Unfortunately, yes it is possible to play the game badly and that’s why we put the Carbon Academy together to help you learn the best techniques for playing the game with others. We do find that there is no other learning like having a go at playing with others.
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No. The Carbon Literacy course must be delivered over 8 hours before you can be certified as Carbon Literate.
Our Carbon Academy focuses on teaching you specifically how to use your new games and play in a way that should be most impactful with your stakeholders or learners as well as giving you a bit of background on the climate science.
The Carbon Literacy course, will use the carbon footprint games as part of your learning and will give you an overview of how playing the game is an effective way of delivering carbon literacy. The Carbon Literacy courses are longer pieces of learning – you also get the background on climate science delivered through a group exercise, as well as giving you space to reflect on your own climate action plans. Find out more about the Carbon Literacy courses here.
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