Citizen Science for Education in Sustainable Development

CS4ESD was a three-year Erasmus+ project and a collaboration between high schools and universities in Greece, the Basque Country in Spain and Wales in the UK. We aimed to develop global citizens in our teaching, and students that understand what sustainable development means and how we all, as global citizens, can contribute; the project was founded on education around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).CS4ESD aimed to enable learning and develop appreciation around the importance of environmental data, how we collect it, how we share, what we can do with it and how we can re-use it to better understand our planet, to better manage our planet to leave it in a better state for the next generation of learners. A key component of CS4ESD will be the use of mobile devices as part of the learning experience – these can be smart phones or tablets for example and are great for engaging with young people, in the outdoors as they learn about the natural environment and the data needed to understand and manage the environment in way that reflects the SDGs.Through this Citizen Science for Education in Sustainable Development (CS4ESD) project we aimed to develop an innovative, interactive ICT-based tools that enabled teachers and young people to participate in citizen science effectively. The tools are designed to educate young people across Europe, and beyond, in sustainable development and issues surrounding the future of our planet. CS4ESD harnesses the KoboToolBox platform, developed by Harvard University, to create ‘Forms’ or questionnaires to provide tools that enable teachers to more easily engage their pupils in citizen science type activities tailored to their local environment. Throughout this project we have engaged pupils to use and understand the technology and become enthusiastic about investigating and contributing to citizen science projects. We have worked with schools and universities in 3 regions, each neighbouring a Biosphere Reserve.Prior to starting this project, we had identified a lack of easy-to-use tools suitable for digitally minded young people. We aimed to fill this gap by developing a citizen science tool which met a range of criteria set by participating organisations. This collaborative project enables us to work across countries to meet common goals. We wanted our tools to be: -innovative, for education purposes, and directly related to the range of SDG’s - flexible, an ICT tool that could be adapted to local conditions- easy to use and allowed educators to easily create citizen science surveys - supported by educational materials developed by educators and which could be adapted to meet lesson plans and curricular requirements in a wide range of different contexts -adaptable giving users the flexibilty to share results and other materials developed with other educational institutions