Last meeting of the SPACIT project was held at CESIE offices in Palermo, Italy, from the 7th to the 10th of October 2014. Nearly three years in the project lifecycle, partners from Austria (Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg), Belgium (EUROGEO), Turkey (Fatih University of Istanbul) and Germany (Goethe University of Frankfurt), met the Italian partner (CESIE) to discuss about the final activities and to design strategies for the sustainability of the project outputs.
Decisions were made as to which should be the main products to be supported beyond the lifespan of the project. Partners agreed that the following should be prioritized: the concept of Spatial Citizenship, the publications, the SPACIT competence model, the curriculum plan, the website and of course the main output, the SPACIT course for pre-service and in-service teachers and teacher trainers.
What is Spatial Citizenship then?
The approach that this term suggests is that we are all able to contribute more to society, by being active citizens, who engage and commit to participate in social communities and networks. Recently, with the massive use of technology, new perspectives have opened up for us, and specifically for individuals who can acquire the skills, knowledge and attitude to be able to take responsibility and initiative in areas of public concern. Geo-media[1] especially offer the opportunity to share location-based information, that are able to save lives (the use of the Ushahidi platform to rescue people after the 2010 Haiti earthquake is a valuable example of this) and to negotiate changes in urban environments, for instance. The SPACIT infographics explores all notions related to Spatial Citizenship that the project partnership has developed.
When will the SPACIT course be available?
The course on education for Spatial Citizenship was piloted in July 2014 in Romania, at the premises of a partner school, Colegiul National of Iasi. SPACIT partners have since then readjusted the course according to the pilot course evaluation, and will make the materials available as an online course on Moodle and as a downloadable course on the SPACIT website by November 30th, 2014. All the materials will be produced in all partners’ languages, including English, German, Italian, Romanian and Turkish.
The SPACIT partnership decided that all SPACIT products should be made available on the project website, under the specific “deliverables” section, which can be accessed by clicking here.
The project is co-funded by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) – Comenius.
For further information about the project or the course, you can visit the project website at spatialcitizenship.org, visit the Facebook page “Spatial Citizenship”, or you can contact to school@cesie.org.
[1] Geomedia are media that use the spatial localisation of information i.e. that use GI [geoinformation]. Thus, the category ‘geo-media’ includes all representations of space, covering a wide range of outputs from verbal description to visualisation. (Source: Gryl & Jekel 2012, p. 22)
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
