Hosted by OSOS , contributed by amichail on 27 November 2020
Our school, 6o EPA.L Irakliou is an upper secondary vocational school located in Heraclion, Crete, Greece. We have 350 - 400 students each year in the fields of Mechanical and Automobile Engineering and Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
The vast majority of our students are boys. Teenagers are especially vulnerable to traffic accidents, since at this age they feel invincible and have a rebelious side thinking that rules do not apply to them. Also, the general status of the road network in Crete leaves a lot to be desired (long, narrow roads, full of turns, low visibility, rural and urban arctitecture with little regard for safety) and adds to this vulnerability factor.
As a school we have a policy for teaching road safety and spreading good practices to students and the whole school community. This includes frequent lectures, visits from local community holders, educational material from approved sources and cooperation with local authorities.
We were pleased to be a part of the KROS project.
KROS proposes the use of innovative resources provided from different stakeholders (open content) through a project-based multidisciplinary approach (open pedagogy) that requires extended collaboration and networking between schools and different stakeholders (open collaboration) who can bring significant expertise in the design and implementation of the proposed activities. In this framework a strategic partnership of Road Safety Experts, Pedagogues and Curriculum Developers, Local Authorities, Advanced Educational Applications Developers and schools are joining forces to design, develop and validate an innovative professional development program for teachers.
Training is best done in schools by teachers who have themselves been trained in the safety issues relevant to children and achieve effective integration of road safety principles into the school curriculum. KROS is based on the use engaging presentation forms to attract the whole community of teachers, students and parents within each school.
KROS will help strengthen the profile of the teaching profession by offering a multidisciplinary approach for the introduction of road safety in the school curriculum. The project wishes to support activities that implement best practices and tools for professionals working with and for children in communicating in a way adapted to their age and stages of development and thus improve the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom while endorsing innovative methods and digital integration in teaching technology and innovation. Students become familiar with Road Safety, mainly through hands-on experimentation. This educational approach promotes inquiry, creativity and collaborative learning.
One of the key aspects of OSOS is the inclusion of RRI - Responsible Research and Innovation principles in innovative pedagogical practices. R: In particular we focused on the following RRI principles in the KROS accelarator
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Gender equality |
A range of KROS activities address the issue of gender equity in science, especially in tackling the image of the “male driver” |
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Science Education |
The KROS accelerator supports students in developing their problem-solving skills and in participating in important science inquiry activities, as they are asked to place themselves in the shoes of adult drivers, engineers, physicists, road safety experts, etc. |
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Ethics |
The KROS approach address issues such as the role of science in society and strives to change the image and misconception by delivering school projects that bring Drive Safety in primary education and secondary education. A number of activities tackle major ethical issues through innovative hands-on experiments during standard curriculum STEM subjects in Physics, Mathematics and Technology. |
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Open Access |
This accelerator promotes the use of open online content, tools and software in an effort to reach as further as possible by spreading the message of safe driving. |
Teacher: Michailidi Afroditi
my OSOS username is amichail
Feel free to contact me via the platform for any further assistance.
Teachers involved:
Chatzipanagiotis Alexandros
Zaponakis Georgios
Kagialis Konstantinos
Zervakis Charalampos
Осетити
According to the World Health Organization, road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death in the 5–24 years age group in Europe and worldwide. All European governments are committed to the reduction in the number of road fatalities and casualties, however this presents major challenges for road accident prevention, including a need to improve road safe behaviours and attitudes of all citizens, such as through education programmes in school communities. In order to facilitate the process of introduction and implementation of road safety education in the school curricula KROS offers teachers a comprehensive training programme along with a platform with educational resources.
The goal is that effective road safety education in schools will influence all members of the school community, including students, families, school administration and teachers, to be responsible on the road. This holistic school approach is needed to be encompassed and promoted by a relevant pedagogical framework.
Our School joined the network of KROS and received access to the training materials and resources. The proposed activities address major road safety issues such as
- Speeding
- Seat belt use and protection devices
- Drink driving
- Distraction
- Cycling and motorcycling
- Fatigue & drowsiness
- Passenger safety
- Vulnerable Road Users
- Sustainable and active travel
- Peer pressure
We used the OSOS approach described below
Замислити
Teachers participating in the project studied the training material available at the KROS project platform and chose on which ones to focus based on the following KROS accelerator principles:
Empowering teachers as mentors and facilitators: One of the main objectives of KROS is to improve teachers’ awareness of Road Safety education and to strengthen their professional profile through a comprehensive pedagogical and training framework that will utilize a combination of traditional and technology based learning techniques.
Furthermore, KROS aims to improve teachers’ professional skills enabling them to integrate Road Safety principles and best practices into their lessons. The KROS training programme includes extended presentation of case studies and examples of good practice on how teachers could efficiently implement Road Safety content in their everyday teaching.
Empowering students as learners: Teachers who focus on the open schooling approach see their first responsibility as empowering students as learners. For this reason, they use pedagogical approaches (project-based and inquiry-based learning) that help students become self-directed and responsible learners rather than passive followers. The cornerstone of their main role is helping students develop an understanding of learning as a complex and ongoing process that entails seeking feedback, revising work and regularly reflecting on what one has learned, found and achieved, as well as on the choices and decisions made throughout the learning process.
Contextualize knowledge so it is coherent: Teachers are involving students in project that are relevant to them and to the local communities. Furthermore, teachers from different disciplines collaborate across multiple subjects to design integrated interdisciplinary learning activities to connect their otherwise separate subject-specific content.
Connect learning to real issues and settings: Teachers focus on connecting classroom learning to real-life issues and settings in order to make it more meaningful for students. Teachers explore, develop and exploit opportunities for students to experience workplace conditions, situations and expectations that address or exemplify real world challenges and problem solving.
Use technology in service of learning: Teachers selectively and purposefully incorporate technology and online educational resources and tools to enhance and complement teaching and learning, rather than automate or substitute it.
We brainstormed to find ways to actively engage in road safety awareness activities.
1. Learn road signals in class
2. Participate in Road Safety contests/competitions e.g. create a short film or a poster about Road Safety
3. Cooperation with LAHERS (the Laboratory for Health and Road Safety of the Hellenic Mediterrenean University) including educational visits to their Driving Simulator
4. Road Safety awareness meetings and lecture to the community with the aid of local Bikers Club
5. KROS Activity Sheets
Креирај
In this phase of the project teachers focused on the Activity sheets of the KROS project, described below. We adapted some of the Activity sheets to include student input and address students' needs.
KROS provides a series of 24 Training modules and relevant demonstrators in the form of Activity sheets aiming to provide ideas to the teachers for real world learning activities that develop problem solving, collaboration and effective communication. These can be found in the Resources of the KROS Community.
The training modules are addressing the following road safety topics:
- Speeding
- Seat belt use
- distraction
- drink driving
- vulnerable road users
- emotions in traffic
- sustainable & active travel
- motorcycling and
- passenger safety.
Below is a construction made by our students in Technology and Engineering Classes as a memorial to students invloved in fatal road accidents
As part of the KROS project, we implemented the following activities:
1. Sustainable and Active Travel: Activity 1
3. Speeding: Activity 5
Students were really surprised with the impact force at such low speed
7. Drink Driving: Activity 1
Students really thought they walked in a straight line
Објави
We shared the results with the local community through a series of meetings involving students, parents and local stakeholders and on the school Facebook page (https://el-gr.facebook.com/6epal.ira/)
We also shared the results online
- Erasmus+ Project Website: www.kros-project.eu
- Related OSOS Community: https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/community/knights-road-safety-851501
We also presented our project on the KROS Summer School in July 2020, the KROS meeting in September 2020 and in workshops for teachers in cooperation with the Laboratory of Health and Road Safety of the Hellenic Mediterreanean University
Involving the whole school
