Monitoring Local Climate Pollution Erasmus Project

Project Title

Monitoring Local Climate Pollution

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Background and context:
There is currently a huge disconnect between scientific research, and the public. This can be readily addressed by putting scientific research into the hands of the public, through equipping the citizens of tomorrow with the ability to design, create, apply, and analyse a local issue in their community.
Many people are concerned with local pollution; air quality, water quality, noise pollution. Information on local pollution is sparse and presented in a difficult to digest manner for the average citizen. (https://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/air-pollution-still-too-high)
We are now in an age where sophisticated electronic devices and sensors are cheaply and readily available, an age where these devices can be connected to the internet of things, and an age where communities can efficiently communicate information through local channels, social media, and the web.
This project seeks to design a scheme of work around encouraging students to measure their local pollution levels and communicate these to their communities and politicians.

Objectives:
The main objectives of this project are threefold:
(1) Equip learners with the necessary skills to aid the realisation of Actions 5 and 6 of the Digital Education Action Plan (https://ec.europa.eu/education/education-in-the-eu/digital-education-action-plan_en), through equipping future citizens with skills to thrive in the digital economy of tomorrow.
(2) Promote social harmony across Europe by partnering students together with the goal to improve the scientific knowledge of all citizens in the face of drastic climate change. The focus being on a local level in order to engage the public.
(3) Deliver a Scheme of Work which would allow other educational establishments to carry out similar projects to this transnational project, promoting scientific harmony and awareness of local climate pollution across Europe and the world. This also seeks to professional develop the teaching participants in this project by pushing their pedagogical boundaries to include new technologies.

Profile of Participants and Activities:
There will be approximately 100 participants through the transnational project meetings and the short-term exchanges. These participants will be from a range of socio-economic backgrounds through Europe and selected based on passion, interest, and merit. Each partner organisation has a broad range of professionals who exhibit exceptional skills in the following areas: computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, communication, and pedagogy.

The vision of this project will be realised through (a) continued activities carried out in parallel by each partner organisation in the development of a scheme of work to teach students how to measure local levels of pollution (b) teaching professionals from each partnership meeting for five transnational project meetings in London, Madrid, Copenhagen, Mo i Rana, and Brussels, in order to plan, evaluate, and disseminate the project (c) short-term partnerships in the four participant countries of one week in length each in order to (i) test the proposed schemes of work and methodologies (ii) educate the participants more widely about local pollution through trips/experiences with local partner organisations (iii) develop entrepreneurial and digital skills for tomorrow (iv) develop cultural respect and harmony amongst European citizens through social experiences and pursuit of an end to climate change. The product created will then be tested and presented in Brussels.

Methodology:
The partner organisations will work in tandem in order to generate a scheme of work which can be published for use globally. The lead organisation (UK), will take responsibility for the overall scope and development of the lessons. The scheme of work will be split into four distinct phases with each country taking a lead in the development of each phase according to their expertise and interests. Each phase will be developed prior to the short-term exchange in each country, they will be implemented on the exchange and evaluated through parallel activities by teachers.

The four phases of the scheme of work will approximately be (1) UK – (a) learning to program and gather/store data (b) sensors and implementation (2) Denmark – (a) engineering of device (b) making science cool through creativity (3) Norway – (a) linking the physical world to the cloud (b) presenting data (4) Spain – (a) communicating the chemical and biological results (b) citizen science and geography.

Envisaged results and benefits:
(1) A high-quality scheme of work which can guide schools through low cost methods to encourage their students and communities to engage in citizen science
(2) An increase in digital skills in all participants and a promotion of entrepreneurial spirit
(3) Cooperation across Europe by highlighting the importance if citizen science and open-source data as methodologies to combat local climate pollution

Project Website

http://erasmusmap.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 154029 Eur

Project Coordinator

New river trust & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Polarsirkelen videregående skole
• NEXT UDDANNELSE KØBENHAVN
• Cognita Hastings Holdings, S.L.