Exploring the Vineyard Cycle: mobile technology in non-formal environmental education settings

Abstract

Mobile and ubiquitous technologies offer unique potentialities to develop environmental education activities. This paper presents the preliminary results of a project developed with children aged between 6 and 12, which explored the vine cycle over one year, visiting farms in the Dão vineyard area. Mobilizing a framework that integrates authentic and meaningful learning with situated cognition, it drew on a set of activities in which children were invited to take the roles of farmer, reporter and researcher. These activities were developed with the help of computers, electronic sensors, action cameras and audio recorders to explore the environment and farm activities.