On the 15th of July, as planned at the proposal stage of the “FOREST” project, Dr Milto Miltiadou arranged an educational, interactive workshop at the summer school of the Multimode Youth Centre of Ypsonas (ΠΟΚΕΝΥ). After a discussion with the teachers of the school the workshop was tailored according to the age of each class. The summer school has three class:
- 16 children of age 5-7 years old
- 15 children of age 7-9 years old
- 18 children of age 10-13 years old
Four short presentations were prepared for the children to allow flexibility during the workshop:
- The first presentation focused on what a Scientist does today, how scientists push the boundaries of knowledge to advance technology and other areas, what skills are required by a scientist and that research/science is a career direction they may choose to follow in the future.
- The second presentation focused on what Remote Sensing is and what technologies are used to acquire information for earth observation (e.g. satellites). It further included information about the importance of monitoring the earth with examples of satellite images showing how the earth changed over the years.
- The third presentation focused on Forest Monitoring: what forests offer to us, what forest threats exist, why it is important to monitor forests and what methods (e.g. Remote Sensing techniques) we use to observe the changes of forests globally.
- The forth and last presentation focused on LiDAR technologies: what type of information they collect, why they are important in forestry. It also included examples of various other LiDAR applications (e.g. biodiversity, archeology, automated driving and gaming)
Dr Milto Miltiadou spent around 45 mins with each class and tailored the workshop according to the age of each group. For example, during the workshop with the youngest children, she focused on the first and third presentation (scientist and importance forest monitoring respectively) and quickly went through the second presentation (Remote Sensing) because they were more interactive and the concepts explained were easier to understand. In contract, during the workshop with the older children she quickly went through the first presentation and focused more on the last / LiDAR related one, which is also the main datasets used in the “FOREST” project.
Overall children seemed interested and contributed to the workshop with many questions.
Photos of the workshop with the 1st class; children aged 5-7th years old:
Photos of the workshop with the 2nd class; children aged 7-9th years old:
Photos of the workshop with the 3rd class; children aged 10-13th years old:
The Project OPPORTUNITY/0916/MSCA/0005 (“FOREST”) is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the Research Promotion Foundation. The implementation of the project takes place at the Eratosthenes Research Lab of Cyprus University of Technology.
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