EDUSPACE – Experiences with Teacher Education in Austria

The European Space Agency realized several initiatives to provide remote sensing for general purposes. Among those is EDUSPACE, a multilingual website for Earth observation in secondary schools. In co-operation with partners from all over Europe the European Space Agency ESA coordinates the EDUSPACE website www.eduspace.esa.int. EDUSPACE aims at providing the youth of Europe with a portal to assess the widespread potential of space applications, and at contributing to give access to Earth Observation to a wider public.
With several products (printed school atlas, digital school atlas, teacher’s handbook, connection to EDUSPACE website and an educational image processing software LEOworks) it is possible to provide teachers and students with a modern and stimulating teaching and learning tool in Geography and related subjects.
At the Institute for Geography and Regional Science (University if Graz, Austria) these tools are used for teacher education. The lessons are embedded in the subject “Geographic Technologies”. This 3 hours/per week/semester lasting lesson includes the GIS and Remote Sensing techniques and should give an applied introduction into their capabilities for teaching in secondary schools. This presentation gives an overview about the content of teaching and lessons. Applied exercises, which are prepared by the students itself, their problems and the challenges for teaching will be documented and discussed.