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Video games are the largest sector of the entertainment industry and often contain ancient animals (e.g. dinosaurs) and/or fossils. This may be the first or only exposure gamers have to palaeontology, and it provides a useful starting point for science outreach. However, video games are not typically designed to be educational. We investigate the use of palaeontology in video games and highlight common tropes that may skew the public perception of palaeontological science.

Climate change is increasing the risk of weather hazards (i.e. storms and heatwaves). Using open science methods, it is shown that there is a bias in weather hazard reporting in English-language news media. Storms are the weather hazard with the most articles written over the last 5 years. In comparison, wildfires are mentioned most per individual hazard occurrence with climate change. Science and media collaborations could address the bias and improve reporting.

In this manifesto, we offer six points of reflection that higher education geoscience educators can act upon to recognise and unlearn their biases and diversify the geosciences in higher education, complementing current calls for institutional and organisational change. This serves as a starting point to gather momentum to establish community-built opportunities for implementing and strengthening diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice holistically in geoscience education.

The aim of this paper is to communicate results of our survey giving a first overview and reflects how teaching of hydrology and water-related sciences changed due to COVID-19. Next to many negative aspects for teachers and students, a spirit of optimism, time of change and community initiatives could also be noticed. COVID-19 made it possible to explore novel teaching methods useful for modernizing education and making practical teaching formats accessible to all hydrology and water students.

We designed interactive, open-ended video games to simulate field geology to address the learning goals of traditional, in-person exercises for geology students. When these simulations were implemented in college courses, students used virtual versions of standard geology measuring tools to collect data but could also visualize and collect data in new ways (i.e., a jetpack and instantaneous graphing tools). The games were for remote learning, but the tools can also enhance in-person instruction.

Virtual field trips have become a crucial resource during the COVID-19 pandemic within geoscience education. This study presents a critical evaluation of their use, using real-world examples delivered to a masters-level class at the University of Aberdeen. Our work highlights several key findings which can be used to help plan virtual field trips and how associated disadvantages of their use can be mitigated through a blend of physical and virtual field trips.

Participants answered four questions concerning their experience writing a haiku based on a geoscience extract. Data were categorised as being part of the Task Process or Task Meaning. The themes involved in the Task Process were Identification of significant information, Distillation of information and Metamorphosis of text, while the themes related to Task Meaning were made up of Enjoyable, Challenging (which has sub-themes Frustrating and Restricted) and Valuable.

How do kids imagine the onset and outcome of a volcanic eruption? A workshop proposed for schools tries to answer this question by collecting stories and drawings done by kids (aged 6–13). The eruption they have in mind is an excellent starting point for building classroom conversations about volcanic risk and its mitigation. Concurrently, the workshop provided us with valuable hints to improve educational materials and lesson plans to account for kids’ knowledge and beliefs.

Geology is not apolitical. Here, we explore what decolonising the curriculum means, both in a wider sense and specifically for the discipline of geology. We outline some of the colonial past of the discipline and also point to its colonial present in the hope that we can do better in the future. We explain some of the discipline-specific jargon, theory, and practice associated with decolonising. Some suggestions are included to help geology teams begin their decolonising the curriculum journey.

In this paper, we discuss the instrumental role of the press in informing and educating the public on the subject of climate science and climate change. We illustrate this using an example of a dissemination format called Weather Stories, published daily in one of the most read newspapers in Spain. The particularities of this journalistic format are described using a practical example of a relatively complex physical concept: the jet stream.