Climate change

Project Location

Country: 
Macedonia
City: 
Skopje

Organization

Organization Name: 
FON University
Organization Type: 
University
Specify: 
Incredible Green Contest organised by Acer Foundation

Website

http://fon.edu.mk/content.aspx?cid=420&ln=mk

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Project Type

ICT for environmental sustainability

Project Description

Description Frase (max. 500 characters): 

Climate for Children represents multiple-awarded set of multimedia interactive presentations and games that are used on interactive boards in classrooms.

Project Summary (max. 2000 characters): 

Climate for Children represents a concept which combines 3 strategies: 1) Bringing the new technology in the educational system; 2) organizing the wave of lot of new information offered by the world organizations – Open Data Initiatives; 3) involving the children in the climate change awareness process. It is a project that aims to mobilize children from early ages to social responsibility and enables teachers to enrich their lessons using the latest technology. The solution is a set of multimedia interactive presentations and games for interactive boards in classrooms. Interactive boards provide rich learning environment that integrates with traditional classroom layouts and collective activities. They boost creativity, encourage collaboration, and allow moving away from teacher-centric to a more personalized constructive learning.
The initial idea about the project was born as part of an assignment in the course Educational software. The presentations in Climate for Children use different sets of open data from the World Bank (http://goo.gl/Kx8cc6) and the Human Development Reports’ (http://goo.gl/dWPBeb) databases making the learning process more interesting. World Organizations around the world provide free access to a variety of raw data that give important information related to the UNDP Millennium Development Goals. Using the embedded codes, the students can interact with the presentations, finding data for a specific country and using these presentations to discover how they can contribute to solve a particular problem. This concept brings students closer to the problems that the world is facing nowadays, raise the awareness of the children about the problems defined in Millennium Development Goals and encourage the teachers to use the opened data from different sets of the World Organizations to stimulate the children. The implementation of this project is supported by specific grants and by the facilities that the university provides.

How long has your project been running?

2012-03-30 22:00:00

Objectives and Innovative Aspects

In this project the main objectives are: creating a huge range of interactive presentations and games which address the problems defined in Millennium Development Goals, raising the necessary awareness of the children from the early ages and encouraging the teachers to combine the opened data with the latest technology in the educational process.

To achieve these objectives, the project Climate for Children was tested on pilot elementary and high schools where a group of students was chosen to participate in the testing process. The testing process gave very promising results. In the surveys we’ve made, we noticed that the students were really excited about this new way of learning offering us a full support.

After the first positive results at our university where for a period of less than a month more than 1000 students were tested and the results were really satisfactory, we was awarded with a research grant from the COST Action IC0904. The student Darko Bozhinoski went to Cyprus University of Technology for a Short Term Scientific Mission to work under the supervision of Dr. Panayotis Zaphiris on further development of the prototype in the direction of its usability and further testing of the current solution.

The government in our country in this moment does the supply of interactive boards for the elementary and high schools. This means that the need for an educational material for interactive boards is increasing a lot. Even if all the of the interactive presentations and games address different problems, they follow the same template, which is based on a standardized heuristic used in the schools around our country, which means that they can be implemented as a study material for all the students in our country. In a meeting with the minister of education in Macedonia, we discussed about the different directions how this project could be implemented in the educational system in Macedonia. He assessed the idea with a positive assessment.

Results

Describe the results achieved by your project How do you measure (parameters) these. (max. 2000 characters): 
Climate for Children have been awarded multiple times by really prestigious world organizations and companies as one of the best projects for addressing and promoting environmental sustainability. We will briefly describe the awards with which this project was awarded. First, at the World Bank competition called “Apps for climate change”, “Climate for Children” was selected as one of the winners of this contest (http://goo.gl/s8j6f ). Afterwards, Climate for Children won the highest recognition on two very prestigious contests for young people under the age of 30 - the World Youth Summit Award (http://goo.gl/RC1Wc) and the European Youth Award (http://goo.gl/VMZoh) in the category GO GREEN – two very important competitions which select and promote the best solutions that have important social impact. Another important event worth mentioning was the invitation of the project for the final stage at Innovact - Forum for Innovative Start-Ups (http://goo.gl/me10f). Still, the biggest recognition for this project came before one year. Among 2100 projects, the project was awarded with the Bronze Medal Award and a grant for further development at the “Incredible Green Contest” organised by Acer (http://goo.gl/cQdPc5).
How many users interact with your project monthly and what are the preferred forms of interaction? (max. 500 characters): 

As a part of an UNESCO project our university was involved in making a portal for free sharing of materials that was really popular among the students and the teachers in Macedonia. We put our interactive presentations on this portal and the professors following our concept gave us an acknowledgment that the students that used our additional materials had better understanding of the consequences of the climate change. Now, around 40 professors and around 1000 students are using this concept.

Sustainability

What is the full duration of your project (from beginning to end)?: 
From 1 to 3 years
What is the approximate total budget for your project (in Euro)?: 
Less than 10.000 Euro
What is the source of funding for your project?: 
Grants
Specify: 
Faculty for Information and Communication Technology
Is your project economically self sufficient now?: 
No
When is it expected to become self-sufficient?: 
2014-12-30 23:00:00

Transferability

Has your project been replicated/adapted elsewhere?: 
No
What lessons can others learn from your project? (max. 1500 characters): 

Combining the opened data with the new technologies like Interactive boards, teachers can really improve the students’ experience. This can be done by creating a big number of multimedia interactive presentations that will be available for a broad range of people. Interactive boards provide rich learning environment that integrates with traditional classroom layouts and collective activities. They boost creativity, encourage collaboration, and allow moving away from teacher-centric to a more personalized constructive learning. This technology had shown great results in increasing teaching productivity by combining the power of traditional multimedia with the ability to navigate the content more flexibly. We had tested this project on pilot schools and we encountered a positive response from them. Our interactive presentations and games follow the same template, which is based on a standardized heuristic used in the schools around our country. All presentations are divided in three parts: 1) displaying the problem and the effects it has nowadays; 2) showing videos and discussions about it; and 3) working exercises and games that the students need to solve. After the class, the students have a homework they need to make and a diary to write for their ecological activities that are needed in order to successfully deliver the homework. This way, students learn about the problems and the possible solutions of the problems defined in Millennium Development Goals.

Are you available to help others to start or work on similar projects?: 
Yes

Background Information

Future plans and wish list (max. 750 characters): 
Our future work will include: - Expanding the scope of the interactive multimedia presentations and games for every indicator from the opened data from the World Organisations - Expanding the interactivity including different kinds of games and exercises in the presentations - Expanding the project across different platforms and gadgets (currently used only interactive boards) - Translating the presentations in other languages: German, Italian etc. - Promoting the presentations in the elementary and high schools in our country and on other sites for sharing materials
presentations and games interactive learning interactive boards environmental sustainability education Climate change
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