Creating School Seismology Labs For the Development of Students’

Creating School Seismology Labs For the Development of Students’

Cristina Simionescu^1,2, Dragos Tataru¹, Eduard Nastase¹, Bogdan Cerbu¹, Adina Vanciu-Rau¹ & SEISMOLAB project team

 

¹National Institute for Earth Physics, Romania

²University of Bucharest, Faculty of Geology and Geophysics

 

Using the topic of seismology in school education allows teachers and students to dive into scientific topics and concepts while practicing and improving intellectual and soft skills (i.e. science understanding and knowledge, scientific reasoning, computational thinking and skills, geospatial understanding, collaborative problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, communication, etc.). 

Throughout the Erasmus Plus project, SEISMOLAB - Creating School Seismology Labs For the Development of Students’, over 2000 students and 100 teachers in 5 countries benefited from activities that reinforced their interest in science and were offered access to content tools and services for personalized science learning and citizen science.

One of the aims of this project is to bring together seismologists, pedagogues, curriculum developers, local authorities, advanced educational developers, and schools to join forces during the implementation and co-design, develop and validate an innovative professional development program for supporting the in-service training of teachers on topics related, but not limited to seismology education. 

In 2023 students had the opportunity to work with scientific concepts, handle and study specific seismological equipment and participate in meaningful and motivating science inquiry activities on earthquake disaster mitigation. They were guided to use concepts such as energy transfer, wave properties, and resonance to understand elementary models of earthquakes' causes and effects.

Teachers participated in a specially designed training program that supported them in the establishment and implementation of the SEISMO-Labs, including training on innovative methods such as inquiry-based and experiential learning and were given the specially created material - Seismo-Lab Demonstrators (educational scenarios for seismology). They were then able to develop “bottom-up” STEAM curricula, related to seismology, for their schools. 

In Romania, we organized 5 regional multiplier events in order to achieve a greater impact by accessing a more significant number of beneficiaries, national coverage, and the chance for teachers from rural areas to travel to participate in the workshops. From the 152 participants from over 60 school units, we selected 20 schools that were further engaged in the SEISMO-Lab network. The chosen schools also joined the Romanian Educational Seismic Network and responsible teachers participated in workshops and online support meetings that offered them the knowledge to implement seismology innovative activities with their students. Also, 20 semi-professional Raspberry seismometers were installed in the selected school units, allowing teachers to use data from the international Raspberry Shake network, in their lessons. 

Teachers received training on the approach and the pedagogical methodologies and they participated in an evaluation activity for mapping and monitoring the impact and effectiveness, both quantitatively and qualitatively, at the student, teacher, and school/institution level of the SEISMO-Labs.

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was done in the framework of the project “Seismo-Lab” which has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Erasmus+ programme (Grant agreement number 2021-1-EL01-KA220-SCH-000032578).