Interactive, Immersive and Accessible Storytelling
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Session 260
Raising Environmental Awareness in the Classroom
Education plays a vital role in preparing children and young people for the future, equipping them with important skills, knowledge, and values. However, complex subjects such as diversity, sustainability can be difficult to teach. Storytelling helps students understand these challenging subjects by conveying complex information in an engaging and easy to understand format. When students participate in the process of storytelling, they can share their perspectives and find solutions to complex challenges. By incorporating technology into the storytelling process, students can create their own stories in an immersive, multisensory and interactive environment, developing their digital and creative skills, while also building empathy for their subject matter.
In this session, we will examine the use of Extended Reality (XR) technology developed in the EU funded projects GreenSCENT (Grant no. 101036480) and MediaVerse (Grant No 957252) to raise awareness on environmental and diversity issues in the classroom, taking the example of a workshop carried out with 20 secondary school students between the ages of 15-16, in Barcelona, Spain as part of the ITACA campus initiative. Using both the GreenVerse and the MediaVerse platforms. These platform share the same functions as interactive and immersive storytelling set of tools. Students were asked to identify and propose solutions to an environmental issue. Divided into groups of five, students created their own interactive story, drawing on a mixture of 360 and 2D videos and photographs. In this session, we will describe the methodology and results of the workshop, drawing on group discussions and students’ stories as our main research data. We will end this workshop by reflecting on the results of this initiative and suggest possible ways in which to integrate interactive and immersive storytelling digital tools into mainstream teaching as a way to raise environmental awareness and foster empathy for people with disabilities.
PhD (UMIST, UK) works at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) in the TransMedia Catalonia Lab. She has written and edited many books, near 100 academic papers and almost the same number of book chapters --all on Media Accessibility. Leader and participant on numerous EU funded research projects focusing on media accessibility. She works in standardisation and participates in the UN ITU IRG-AVA - Intersector Rapporteur Group Audiovisual Media Accessibility, ISO, SAGA, and ANEC. She has been working on Immersive Accessibility for the past 4 years first in a project called ImAc, which results are now further developed in TRACTION, MEDIAVERSE, MILE, and has just started to work on green accessibility in GREENSCENT. She led until December 2022 the EU network LEADME on Media Accessibility.
For more info please go to: https://webs.uab.cat/pilarorero/
Alessandro Caforio is the Director of Research and Innovation at International Telematic University UNINETTUNO in Rome (Italy), where he coordinates the design and the management of research projects focused on innovation in programs and curricula, ICT technologies applied to teaching and learning processes, on social innovation and inclusive design. He is furthermore Professor for the "Digital Technologies and Cognitive Processes" and the “Psychotechnologies for learning processes” courses in UNINETTUNO University. He is a member of the “Innovation Expert Register” of the Italian Minister of Economic Development, and member of EMPOWER expert pools in “AI in Education”, “Course and Curriculm Design” and “Continuous Professional Development and SLPs” (https://empower.eadtu.eu/fields-of-expertise). He has been involved and managed European projects in the Lifelong Learning, Tempus, Creative Europe, Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+ programmes; currenlty is Project Director of "GreenSCENT - Smart Citizen Education for a Green Future" project, funded by European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme.
Chiara Gunella holds a Bachelor in Anthropology, Religions, and Oriental Civilizations, a Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations (EMMIR), and she is a PhD candidate at the University of Barcelona, in the research group Gènere, Identitat i Diversitat (Gender, identity and diversity). Her research interests include migration, sex-trafficking, media accessibility for migrants, social media accessibility, and participatory methodologies. Chiara is currently a research technician for Transmedia Catalonia where she is involved in the AMIF project MILE, aiming to create a sustainable ecosystem and replicable cooperation between municipalities and local migrant-led associations, and she is working as head of communication in the H2020 GreenSCENT project, which goal is to engage people with environmental issues in their local area through the development of accessible applications and digital platforms. Chiara is part of the Hello Europe network, aiming to support migrant entrepreneurs around the world.
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C4. Capacity building
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C5. Building confidence and security in use of ICTs
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C6. Enabling environment
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C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-learning
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C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-environment
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C8. Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content
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C9. Media
The session will link to C4, C5, C6, C7, C8 and C9 because deals with education in general using technologies, and media content, always taking int consideration all people and in particular people with disabilities. Education is realated to sustainability, climate change and the environment.
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Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
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Goal 8: Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all
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Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
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Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
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Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
The session links with sustainable goals 4, 8, 12, 13 and 16 because education is seen as a Human Right which should be available for al. This concept is behind media accessibility which is one of the features of our session approach. We believe that equitable education and a sustainable promotion will lead to a more just and peaceful society.
https://twitter.com/GreenSCENT_eu
https://www.facebook.com/Greenscent.eu
https://twitter.com/TransmediaCat
@mediaverse_eu
https://www.linkedin.com/company/greenscent-project
https://twitter.com/project_MILE
https://www.facebook.com/MILEprojectEU
https://www.instagram.com/mile_projecteu/
https://www.youtube.com/@greenscentproject_eu9594
https://www.youtube.com/@transmediacatalonia555