“DAYLIGHTING RIVERS is a European project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme, which engages secondary school students in STEM disciplines with hands-on, interdisciplinary investigations of their local rivers which have been threatened by human activities and urbanization.
“Daylighting rivers” is the process by which the culverted or covered rivers in favor of urban infrastructures and new neighborhoods are uncovered and re-exposed to the environment. Moreover, DAYLIGHTING RIVERS also refers to ‘daylighting’ in terms of youth consciousness – raising awareness and inspiring global action for sustainability among those who will determine our collective future.
DAYLIGHTING RIVERS offer teachers and students training materials and learning units that foster outdoors activities, laboratory experiments, digital tools for mapping geographic information to increase their interest and understanding of phenomena and associated risks, and also to achieve competencies and skills that are valuable in the labor market and environmental awareness.
This was proved and emphasized through the International Competition “Schools in Action for Daylighting Rivers” launched in 2019 to Award the best “Daylighting Rivers Design Projects” whose ceremony of the Prize Award took place as the closure event “International Conference “Daylighting Rivers: Inquiry Based Learning for Civic Ecology”. The conference gathered about 400 people and speakers presented interesting scientific and professional case studies in the fields of innovative education methodologies, gamification and the use of digital technologies, citizen science and river management and restoration, available from the conference proceedings.
The project developed following main steps
Development
1) Development of the Learning Methodology, Evaluation tools and Learning Units
Teacher training
2) Teachers' training on the Learning Methodology, Technologies (Geographic Information System and Location Based Games)
Implementation with the class
3) Preliminary evaluation of the skills and attitudes 4) Implementation of the Learning Units 5) Development of Location Based Games
Final results
6) Final evaluation of the skills and attitudes 7) Presentation of the projects by the students to stakeholders
SCHOOLS IN
EDUCATIONAL CONCEPTS
Daylighting Rivers. Due to urbanization, many of the rivers that once flowed naturally through European cities have been covered over, or culverted. In response, there has been a growing interest in the restoration of natural water flows in urban areas by re-exposing such hidden rivers to the environment.
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Since the Rocard report in 2007 many efforts have been made by EC for increasing the number students in science and technology studies, but there are still evidences of the unevenness in basic science literacy across countries and within countries, disparities in participation in science education, in formal, non-formal and informal settings, but also a scarce interest and motivation in science studies and careers.
KNOWLEDGE & COMPETENCES
Students often perceive a gap between what is learned at school and what is relevant in the workplace or to understand the world around. Therefore the acquisition of knowledge and competencies linked to the reality is crucial, to increase their interest and fascination but also to help them to make a choice of educational pathways or facilitate their entrance into the labour market.
