VR@Geoparks is a 24 months Strategic Partnership in the field of school education. VR@Geoparks focuses on promoting high-quality school education aiming to provide teachers all the necessary knowledge and VR tools to prove the benefits of e-learning and depict the situation of the awareness and usage of different methodologies and tools in school education. The project aims to create innovative resources for teachers and equip teachers with the necessary skills to include geoparks as educational points. In the consortium, there are 7 different institutions from 6 countries (IT,HU,PL,HR,TR,PT) that 2 geoparks (PL,IT), 3 schools(HU,TR,HR) that are located in geopark areas, 1 SME that will develop the VR@Geoparks App and a university(UNIRC, IT) that will work on creating 3D datasets from the geopark areas via Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems(RPAS) Education today is in crisis. Even before the pandemic struck, in many parts of the world,pupils who should be in school aren’t; for those who are, their schools often lack the resources to provide adequate instruction. Investing in education is the most cost-effective way to drive economic development, improve skills and opportunities for young women and men, and unlock progress on all sustainable European goals(17 goals). With over 63 million teachers impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school. To protect the well-being of children and ensure they have access to continued learning, UNESCO launched a coalition to provide education remotely and seek equitable solutions and universal access. Our goals in line with this UNESCO initiative: 1-to enhance student learning and engagement in geography, history, or literature by offering a deeply immersive sense of place and time 2-to create VR and AR resources, teaching materials for teachers as open educational resources(OER) 3-to get teachers/students awareness on geoparks in the sustainability of life in nature 4-to promote inclusive education. There are many helpful distance learning resources used in geography but the sources not offering a deeply immersive sense of place and time. Geography lessons where you can visit any place on the globe is much more enriching than just reading about it or seeing the picture. VR creates an infinite set of possibilities that people can experience. But to create on launching virtual visits need to consider the expenses for these surveys that certainly significantly improve the interest of geoparks.So,organizations must think seriously about what works best and what works less well. VR@Geoparks project will provide the frame to meet the needed work by training the teachers and geopark staff on *Madonie Geopark(C1,10-2021)in Sicily *Holly Cross Geopark(C2,05-2022)in Poland *VR Activities(C3,12-2022)in Portugal The 3 TEs will provide the production of qualified IOs. Participants are 5 Science, History, and Geography teachers from schools, 1 representative from each geopark and 4 geopark trainers/paleontologist /ecologist/volcanologist/ geologists, 2 researchers/technicians from UNIRC. Additionally, we will pursue two lines of actions to respond to the lack of knowledge, skills, methods, techniques, and tools used to plan and manage geography, science lessons in schools for school education. In the first line, we will design and realize a VR@Geoparks app(IO3 by Portugal) to help teachers bring geoparks in class/home. Through the virtual visits in geoparks, the essential aspects of flora, fauna, fossils, rocks, water resources, minerals, geological creations will be covered that will be saved under the database(IO1 by UNIRC) collected with RPAS systems. The VR application will be specifically designed to provide teachers a practical application of geographical, geological concepts so that their lesson starts and complete successfully. In the 2nd line, we will develop “VR @Geoparks guide” (IO2 by Turkey) which will include the parts of the IO1, a description for organizations on the approach to follow using this app in school curriculum to teachers/geopark staff in an activity-based way in chronological order and the e-learning methodology for teachers created during the project. In the project,4 project meetings are foreseen with 1 technical staff of each partner and 1 institution official : M1- Project Kick-off meeting (APRIL 2021, ITALY) M2-1st Intermediate Meeting (SEPTEMBER 2021, CROATIA) M3-2nd Intermediate Meeting (AUGUST 2022,TURKEY) M4-Final Meeting(MARCH 2023, HUNGARY The project is directly aimed to educators and geopark staff in the field of Virtual Reality and Geography.They will benefit from educational content to improve their digital skills regarding to school education. The VR@geoparks application will be a material/source for the teachers to bring geoparks in class/home, esp. for special needs pupils and home bonded pupils.In the future, our project will inspire other geoparks/shools to create their virtual geo-apps
We wanted to involve as many colleagues, students and staff as possible in the project, so that we can achieve a global approach to our resources, a wider co-working network. We also aimed at *improve student learning and engagement in geography, science, history, or literature by offering a deeply immersive sense of place and time; * create VR and AR resources, teaching materials for teachers as Open Educational Resources (OER); * sensitize teachers/students about geoparks in the sustainability of life in nature; *promote inclusive education. Although virtual reality has been implemented in European schools for a long time, in some of the partner schools it was still little applied. Therefore, during the duration of the project, during the mobility, we gained experience and learned how to use virtual reality tools. With this, we wanted to enrich the daily teaching in our schools with something that we consider very important for the modern and future life of the students. Besides the students, the experience of the teachers has allowed them to be modern teachers in line with the modern achievements of Europe.
VR@Geoparks focuses on promoting high-quality school education with the aim of providing teachers with all the knowledge and VR tools needed to demonstrate the benefits of e-learning and represent the situation of awareness and use of different methodologies and tools in school education. The project aimed to create innovative resources for teachers by providing them with the necessary skills to include geoparks as educational hotspots in the school curriculum, as well as acquire an international perspective, practice remote working methods, develop digital skills, create resources based on immersive experiences . The partnership involved three schools located in areas where there are Geoparks and two Geopark management bodies belonging to the Unesco Global Geopark network. The activities and intellectual outputs of this project provide the opportunity for students and teachers to explore the Geoparks, from different perspectives, giving students endless options for navigating the GeoPark. It also allows teachers to create educational resources using the App as the starting point of their pedagogical planning and dynamics.