Big advances in technology -such as the open source and open data movements, low-cost hardware, crowdsourcing and internet of things – provide news ways of delivering social impact in fields as diverse as healthcare, education, democracy, environment, transport and housing. They are particularly well-suited to empowering citizens, involving them in their communities and enabling them to take concrete actions. We believe some of the biggest environmental issues such as energy consumption and air pollution can also be tackled via digital technologies. Youth has the potential to employ latest technologies to achieve that purposes ; and our aim consist in educating them as to ways to achieve that. Currently, the field interfacing technology and environmental education is an area rather unexplored. We believe that by bridging the gap between these two backgrounds, a greater proportion of youth is likely to engage with educational activities on topics such as sustainable development, waste management, energy saving. Additionally, by presenting environmental education under this novel perspective, we believe youth are more likely to develop a positive attitude towards technology in general, approach it more confidently and develop a series of 21st century skills such as digital literacy and computational thinking. In sum, by integrating two seemingly opposed areas of nature and technology, we can create an opportunity for youth to become both environmentally and technologically literate. STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES - innovate youth work , in particular youth work on environmental educational - combine the benefits and relevance of environmental education with the strengths of digital technologies - boost youth's maker mindset and trigger related outcomes - provide youth with concrete tools to engage in citizen science OPERATIONAL OBJECTIVES The consortium aims at prototyping an educational kit that allows young users to act upon their own environment in view of tackling environmental issues, by, for example, reducing energy consumption and monitoring environmental parameters. The kit will involve open source electronic prototyping boards (plus corresponding open source softwares), electronic sensors and actuators. The kit will introduce users to : - home automation in view of encouraging and fostering energy saving behaviors - monitoring environmental parameters (quality of the air, atmospheric variables, etc.) in view of collecting data about one’s local environment and subsequently uploading them on a platform for participative citizen science - automated gardening systems, to trigger curiosity and interest for DIY gardening IMPACT The project is expected to impact, first and foremost, youth. Notably by: - shifting their attitude away from consumerism, and towards environmental awareness - empowering youth vis a vis civic engagement, notably via participation to citizen science projects - boosting computer science-related learning outcomes, and contribute to triggering youth's interest for IT, environmental and sustainability science DISSEMINATION The project is expected to last for about two years. Throughout its implementation, partner organizations will disseminate the results of the cooperation to organizations outside the project consortium. Representatives of participating organizations will meet at regular intervals to discuss the progress of the work on the project deliverables; to share, confront and exchange on their experiences on the project’s topic; to design jointly a follow-up strategy. The strategic partnership foresees conferences at local and national level to ensure sustainability and dissemination of project results. The consortium has identified dissemination opportunities relating to the following dissemination channels: on-line and off-line press, websites and on-line communities, social networks, public events, other consortia operating at EU and international level. Some examples of the dissemination activities we will undertake are: - publication of the intellectual outputs on on-line platforms for digital DIY (Thinkercad.com, Thinvigerse.com) - publication of the project deliverables on platforms for sharing of educational resources (wikidebrouillards.org, movilab.org) - presentation of the project outputs and its results on the occasion of public events on non formal education, sustainable development, environmentalism and conservation, youth work, digital DIY, among which maker faires, Mini maker faires.
Digital Environmental Education (Deedu) is an international cooperation which run for 21 months, across 2018, 2019 and 2020. It involved 4 organizations based respectively in France, Poland, Italy and the Czech Republic. The objective of the project was to combine environmental education with digital DIY, so as to inject a new approach into environmental and sustainability education. Another objective was to sensitize young participants as well as youth workers and educators on ways to actively participate in activities on and around citizen science. Overall, the project has been an opportunity to develop cutting-edge pedagogical material, initiate educators to a learning by doing approach to scientific, technical and environmental education, to exchange with other agents of the youth sector on these topics. We believe that young people involved in this venture also developed key 21st century skills such as creativity, problem-solving and communication skills. The youth practitioners affiliated to the participating organizations who were involved in this project came from a breadth of areas, some of them were familiar with digital DIY and maker education, others discovered these practices during the implementation of the project, especially in the Czech Republic. The young people who were involved in learning activites in the framework of Deedu were affiliated to local partners in France, Czech republic, Italy and Poland, for example youth centres, primary schools, community centres, makerspaces and fablabs. Their age range: 9 to 16 years old. The main learning activities that were implemented as part of Deedu were pilot tests of the intellectual outputs, public events including hands-on workshops on and around the project deliverables. The educational kit produced in the framwork of Deedu includes 3 modules: the first on monitoring environmental parameters, the second on home automation and energy saving, the third one on automated gardening. All educational ressources include physical items and written guides/tutorials, some of them rely on ad-hoc online platforms embedding IoT technology; they are available on several online platforms and can be downloaded for free by any user. IMPACT Deedu produced an impact on the following targets: young people, staff of the participating organizations, NGOs, youth practitioners in the participating organizations countries, educational institutions, instructional environments, on-line communities, and public events organizing committees. With regards young people, Deedu produced a shift in their attitude, away from consumerism and towards environmental awareness. It also empowered them vis a vis civic engagement, notably through participating in citizen science projects. As far as participating organizations and their staff are concerned our project had a positive impact in terms of visibility (visibility at local, regional level), motivation to get involved in initaitives around sustainability and ecology, enabling staff (paid staff as well as volunteers and members) to get involved in further opprotunities for training and professional growth, and launch local intiatives at the interface between digital tech and sustainability education (ex. plastic waste management initiative). Concerning third parties and stakeholders (instructional environments, online communities etc.), the main impact of our project has been an increased awareness about maker education, digital DIY, problem-based and project-based approach to learning, an increased capacity to offer non formal activities relating to environmental and sustainability education. At National, EU and international level, the project influenced gatherings of youths and youth organiztions (ex. forum français de la jeunesse), funding bodies and other programmes (ex. WearSustain), other consortia operating on EU projects (ex. Vulca project).