Green Deal Awareness through Augmented Reality in Primary School Education 2022-1-BG01-KA220-HED-000087414
As it is known, environmental problems threaten our world more and more day by day. It is considered important to establish a conscious society structure in order to prevent the effects that may occur as a result of these threats and to combat environmental problems. This will only be possible with an environmental education that will be given at an early age. Environmental education is of critical importance in order to prevent environmental problems and to raise conscious individuals. The main motivation of this project is sustainable environment, green skills and digital tools that can be used to raise awareness of young people on these issues. Therefore, the starting point of this project is how to increase environmental awareness. This starting point reveals the importance of environmental education in raising sustainable environmental awareness. As stated before, it is an important need to curriculum should be enriched with an innovative approach in order for existing environmental education to be more effective. Enriching the curriculum with the use of augmented reality (AR) applications, one of the innovative digital technologies, is one of the ideal ways to adress the need to raise environmental awareness at an early age. AR technology supports innovative learning opportunities that can integrate virtual and real world objects in a multidimensional digital learning environment, meaning students can achieve a better sense of realism available in the visual virtual environment. In addition, the learning aids of this technology offer interaction tools suitable for a constructivist, exploration-based learning approach, especially for early childhood. Very limited studies have been done on the use of AR to support early childhood. Therefore, it would be useful to evaluate the potential possibilities of new digital learning technologies and applications based on AR technologies, the possibilities mentioned above, in environmental education. AR technology does not require a high level of technical skills and can be easily used by all age groups, starting from preschool, due to its easy accessibility. In addition, it is seen that the courses taught at the undergraduate level in higher education institutions to create environmental awareness and to transfer this to different individuals are insufficient. For this reason, it can be stated that the environmental awareness of pre-service teachers, who are the teachers of the future, is not at a sufficient level. It is an important point of need for pre-service teacher to gain environmental awareness skills and to transfer this to their students.
