Torrevieja’s councillor for Education, Ricardo Recuero, together with representatives from AGAMED and local weather group Proyecto Mastral, have presented a new schedule of activities to promote weather learning and the environment in the schools within the town.
“El tiempo en el cole” is a program that is born as a result of the collaboration agreement signed between the Department of Education, AGAMED and Proyecto Mastral for the fulfilment of the sustainable development objectives of the 2030 Agenda in educational centres, in which the Faunatura association also collaborates for the development of activities related to nature, the environment and recycling.
There are a total of 26 activities proposed to the educational centres in Torrevieja, consisting of 3 contests, 1 seismology activity, 3 astronomy activities, 10 related to nature and 9 to meteorology.
A total of 16 activities related to meteorology, nature or astronomy are those that will be carried out in the educational centres: Cuba, Virgen del Carmen, Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Ciudad del Mar, Habaneras, IES Mediterráneo, IES Torrevigía, IES Mare Nostrum, and at the Alpe special education centre.
The workshops, which have been chosen by the different centres, are meteorological data and instruments, astronomical observations, talks about the climate of the Natural Park, orientation games and biodiversity, seeding, insect hotels, and rubbish cleaning.
In addition, a drawing contest will be held for early childhood, primary and special education levels. A story contest for primary and secondary levels, which may be presented in any language that is officially offered in schools, and a photo contest for secondary school students.
The theme of the three contests will be climate, weather, nature and meteorology. The objective is for the participants to find out and investigate the chosen topic and how it affects the environment around them.
The bases of the contest will be available in the educational centres, where the works that are presented to each of the contests must be delivered. The submission period begins on Monday, 10 January and will continue until 31 May. It will be in June when the awards ceremony will be held, which will consist of school supplies and material related to meteorology.
Rubén Torregrosa from Proyecto Mastral explained that because of the program “3 automatic meteorological stations will be installed where schoolchildren will be able to collect data for analysis, which will also be available on the Proyecto Mastral website.”
During this course, a pilot project is being developed with the installation of a manual weather station for data collection, with the aim that each centre has a station so that different groups of students can collect the data which will be shared with the rest of the centres.
A web page will also be created in which the collected data will be available, thus promoting citizen science.
