The Cos4Cloud research team based at the Environmental Education Lab of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EEL/NKUA) participated in the 8th Annual Conference of the Greek Teachers Association for Environmental Education. The Conference, organized by the Greek Teachers Association for Environmental Education, took place from 11th to 13th September 2020, was run online. This year’s conference central theme was “Environmental Education for Sustainability in the Age of Climate Change”. More than 180 teachers, researchers, NGO educators and local authorities involved in environmental education practice all over Greece attended the Conference, which comprised of 20 sessions, 4 invited lectures two roundtables and more than 130 oral presentations, posters and workshops.
Citizen science as a powerful tool in education
In her presentation titled “Citizen Science, European Open Science Cloud and Environmental Education in the Cos4Cloud project”, Dr. Maria Daskolia, Associate Professor at the NKUA and leader of the integration of citizen science in shoool in the Cos4Cloud project, delineated the project’s rationale, scope, goals and key services to be developed by Cos4Cloud. She introduced the consortium members and the participating citizen observatories and tools. Her presentation went on with a short overview of citizen science as an idea and a practice in Europe and over the world and discussed the appropriateness and mutual benefits from the aspired synergies between citizen science and environmental and sustainability education.
“In the Cos4Cloud project, we view school-based citizen science as one the key routes for accomplishing many of the goals of mainstream citizen science practice”, Dr. Maria Daskolia.
She concluded with the Cos4Coud tasks to be organized by EEL/NKUA aiming to the integration of citizen science in the Greek school practice. Special reference was made to one of the first tasks, the online Cos4Cloud training course for Greek educational stakeholders, which has been organized and run by the EEL/NKUA.
