EDULEARN is one of the largest international education conferences for lecturers, researchers, technologists and professionals from the educational sector. This year from 30 June to 3 July it gathered 770 experts from 75 countries to present their projects and share their knowledge on teaching and learning methodologies, educational innovations and experiences in technology and development. We presented two publications at thic conference.

First publication entitled “CITIZEN SCIENCE INITIATIVE FOR SCHOOLS: EDU-ARCTIC MONITORING OF METEOROLOGICAL AND PHENOLOGICAL PARAMETERS” was prepared by A. Goździk, P.E. Aspholm, H.K. Wam, T. Wawrzyniak, and A. Wielgopolan. Citizen science is sometimes described as "public participation in scientific research," or participatory monitoring. Such initiatives help to bring research into, for example, the classroom and engage pupils in well-structured observations of nature in their vicinity. The learning and practising of observation may increase the understanding of complex conditions occurring in nature, related to biology, ecology, ecosystems functioning, physics, atmospheric chemistry etc. For school curricula and motivation of pupils, practical hands-on activities performed by school pupils themselves by using their own senses stimulate faster learning and cognition. For this, the EDU-ARCTIC project developed the monitoring system. All schools in Europe are invited to participate in a meteorological and phenological observation system in the schools’ surroundings, to report these observations on the web-portal and to have access to all the accumulated data. The schools and pupils become part of a larger citizen effort to gain a holistic understanding of global environmental issues. The paper presents general assumptions, results of evaluation of the monitoring system’s impact on students’ performance and interest as well as the mobile app developed in order to widen the group of users.

The full text is available here.

The second publication entitled “EDU-ARCTIC COMPETITIONS AS AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO INCREASE STUDENTS' INTEREST IN STEM” was written by A. Goździk, L. Mortensen and T. Juńczyk and dedicated to competitions and polar expeditions organised within the project. Competitions combined with field trips organised for students and teachers break the common format of teaching and learning in which knowledge is transferred in traditional way at the premises of schools. Science trips are innovative methods of making the learning processes more attractive and appealing. Moreover, competitions for students may stimulate students’ creativity and help to increase their inventiveness. In this paper we presented information on organisation of the EDU-ARCTIC Competitions, winning projects from three editions and evaluation studies on the contest’s impact on participating students. We also demonstrated how the EDU-ARCTIC contest and polar expeditions are related to one of empirically verified models of effective teaching (so-called PERMA).

The full text is available here.

Photos from the EDULEARN website