Primary school children now have access to an educational resource known as a “lapbook”: a folder with 3D content that can be used in a flexible way, and that helps them become responsible citizens of the Dolomites.
The UNESCO Dolomites come to primary schools
The Education and Scientific Research Network of the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation has set up many different educational projects. It was important to find an effective way to engage the interest of primary school children, which also supported the work of teachers in the class. This led to the creation of a lapbook, entitled “Educating with the Dolomites – Nature and Culture”, presented to fourth and fifth year teachers on 1 December, via a webinar organised by IPRASE.
The project was organised by the Autonomous Province of Trento, as part of the coordinated activities of the Education and Scientific Research Network of the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation, and jointly developed by the MUSE-Science Museum and IPRASE (the Provincial Institute of Educational Research and Experimentation).
Educating for responsibility
Mario Tonina, the President of the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation, made the following point in his speech: “In the complex and difficult context of this pandemic, we are made more acutely aware of the way that the local and the global interact. Living in an area recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site is a privilege that also involves great responsibility: a responsibility that concerns not only those communities that are currently engaged in managing our Common Heritage, but also future generations.
It is therefore vitally important to teach responsibility, in order to ensure that our environmental heritage – including the landscape in which we live – can be safely handed down to future generations; and this means encouraging the development of the sort of critical thinking our children need to adapt to the complexities of the modern world, and ensuring they become active and informed citizens.”