Mission Blue brings marine sciences closer to schools

0
Mission Blue brings marine sciences closer to schools

“Climate reality makes it necessary to promote outreach activities to raise awareness about ocean conservation.” This is how Daniel Ray, Director of the Marinha Research Center (CIM) at the University of Vigo, explained the birth of the Misión Azul Project, a marine scientific literacy and teacher training initiative launched by CIM in collaboration with atlanTTic, the Faculty of Social Sciences and Communications at the Pontevedra Campus and UECoE. “After a year of working with an amazing multidisciplinary team,” Ray said, the results of the project were presented yesterday at a ceremony at the Miralles Building. Misión Azul’s main goals were to create a video game and catalog of educational modules that “are now a reality that allows us to continue our special mission of contributing to the dissemination and development of marine knowledge, awakening and evaluating scientific careers and the role of women researchers”, explained Ray, who is also responsible for the project.

In these two tools “it is possible to integrate ICT, marine science, communication and educational to make products adapted to the interests of primary and secondary school students so that they can learn in a playful way and stimulate careers,” emphasized the Vice-Chancellor of Communications and Institutional Relations at UVigo, Mónica Valderrama.

For her part, the Director of FECYT, Inmaculada Aguilar, highlighted in an online speech the “importance of initiatives such as Misión Azul to bring science closer to a younger audience, especially in the current reality, where there is an increasing number of a greater need to integrate scientific knowledge into our daily lives”. The Blue Mission project was funded in the amount of €27,500 by the Spanish Science and Technology Foundation of the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

The modules created under the project are now available on the website and can be downloaded for free. There are six volumes divided into a guide for teachers, topical content and notebooks with laboratory, group and self-assessment activities. A beta version of the video game “Mission Azul: Pleamar” will also be available on the web next week, a tool that will allow players to “live stories through the protagonist, Blu, an all-encompassing character without a specific gender,” educator Beatrice Legrain noted.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *