From SwissExperiment
Outreach activities
An important part of the SwissEx project will concern the transfer of scientific knowledge to the public. This will be achieved within the Swiss Experiment through forecasting and prediction tools, an environmental education program and data dissemination through the WIKI.
Environmental Education (EE) program
Environmental education (EE) is as an appropriate tool to sensitize stakeholders to a sustainable use of natural resources and then to initiate and promote environmentally-conscious behavior on the part of students and citizens. In the context of SwissEx, climAtscope, an EE program, has been developed. It is focused on environmental monitoring based on Sensorscope stations. An educational notebook has been designed in conjunction with our partners (Pedagogical school, HES-SO, Swiss Globe project and the Valais administration). There is an intimate connection between knowledge and action, which explains why experiential education (e. g. practical experiments such as building a rain gauge) and public participation methods will be used. The first implementation of climAtscope will be done in March, April and June 2008 within the Dranse catchment in Valais. Teachers and students are highly motivated by this project.
Information and contact : vincent.luyet@epfl.ch , 021 693 27 04
WIKI
SwissEx has set up and further develops a WIKI. The WIKI platform is not only a web-based tool for external and internal project communication (e.g. workplan, calendar, address book), but also serves as a permanently updated documentation platform keeping track of/including a controlled vocabulary, workflow, maintenance, and field protocols in a free accessible and collaborative way. The WIKI serves several purposes: a public visibility of the project, a collaborative editing by contributors and a description of their contributions in a language understandable to the public, and a science-specific part, where detailed descriptions of experiments and results are provided. In addition to the purely documentary aspect, data access will be provided to private persons, organizations and fellow researchers in accordance with a license agreement. Finally, the WIKI will enable data and knowledge sharing for project partners and the schools involved in the EE program.
Information and contact : sebastian.michel@epfl.ch , 021 693 67 91
