Citizen Observatories as Advanced Learning Environments

Abstract

Citizen Observatories are the technological platforms where a diverse range of tools are developed, such as web portals, smartphone apps, electronic devices, that allow the development of citizen science projects, particularly those with the principal objective of large scale participation of the people, covering large geographical areas and long periods of time. These new observatories integrate the latest Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to connect the citizens digitally, improve their observational capabilities and provide information flows. The concept of Citizen Observatories offers great possibilities as an educational experience, precisely due to the opportunities offered by the participation of the people, with different levels and roles and therefore, it is assumed in terms of active collaboration of the citizens, in shared processes of knowledge creation. This is especially clear when we pay attention to the complexity of the challenges education must face today, within the framework of a society of knowledge like ours