“GEO-Academy: Developing Teachers Spatial Skills for Climate Change and Sustainable Development Education”
On 14 October 2024, GEO-Academy’s project partner, Eurisy, attended the International Astronautical Congress 2024 in Milan, Italy, which welcomed more than 10.000 experts from the space industry, research and the institutions, and presented the GEO-Academy project, its objectives and achievements to a large space community.
GEO-Academy was presented during the “From Space to Safety: An Analysis of End-User Experiences with Satellite-based Services for Disaster Risk Management” session with an oral presentation entitled “Developing Teachers Spatial Skills for Climate Change and Sustainable Development Education”.
GEO-Academy’s presentation introduced the project and its objective to empower critical engagement with the complexity, contradictions, and uncertainty associated with sustainable development, as teachers should be supported in developing competencies that enable them to critically and constructively address the challenges associated with empowering our society to participate in sustainable development. It also included a presentation of the project’s core activities, including:
- GEO-Academy Unified Competence Framework : The development of environmental and climate change awareness activities such as ad hoc training to allow teachers to acquire new key competencies (digital, green, spatial).
- GEO-Concepts: The integration of digital skills related to the use of the current and future geo-technologies into the educational practices.
- Geospatial Technologies : The utilisation of digital technologies through the creation and use of innovative GIS, RS, and EO tools, applications and modelling schemes.
- GEO-Academy Pedagogical Framework : Access to new and innovative teaching tools, and problem-based educational approaches through teacher training and professional development programmes.
At last, the presentation consisted of a short overview of the GEOBSERVE platform, a virtual meeting space for teachers where they can exchange best practices, and where new materials and lessons are stored and distributed through the GEO-Academy Hubs. The aims of GEOBSERVE are twofold: collect learning materials, and create a peer-to-peer community, where good practices can be exchanged. As such, the GEOBSERVE Platform serves as the entry point for teachers and schools, who want to interact with the hubs, whilst the GEO-Academy website will remain the main information channel of the project.
The presentation of GEO-Academy at the IAC 2024 therefore represented a great opportunity to disseminate the project’s objectives and recent achievements such as the GEOBSERVE platform. Stay tuned for more GEO-Academy’s presentations and learn more about the ongoing project’s progress!
