EARTH OBSERVATION FROM SPACE: A SCHOOL WORK PATH WAY EXPERIENCE

The sixty percent of Italian students ignore the link between what they study and the work opportunities. To fill this gap the Italians Educational ministry is promoting the “Alternanza scuola- lavoro" (school-work interchange) program which aims to provide students with real work experience aligned with the principle of open school. The program starts in 2015 and involve students of the last three years of High schools. The idea is to anticipate the contact of students with working world providing them new skills and directions for future work choices within a sort of internship project with a private or public body. In this context Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) offers a list of projects within geophysical application.

In this work we show the two years (2017 and 2018) experience with the High school students who have been challenged with Remote Sensing from space project to test their response and potential receptivity. The project is titled "Earth Observation with satellite: the case of burn areas". The school-work path way experience has been hold at INGV in Rome and for a total of 40 hours each year (contact and not contact) during which the two group of students, 6 the first year and 5 in the second year have been guided to how to:
• Identify a problem
• Create an initial research questions
• Establish basic understanding of satellite remote sensing and its applications
• Identify the algorithms suitable for solving the problem
• Select the satellite data from Sentinel Application Platform (Copernicus program)
• Use open source software for the analysis (from European Space Agency)
• Understand what the data "have to say"
• Offer an “open ended “ path with the production of a media content including obtained results.

The module has been designed to be as much interactive as possible by focusing on teaching through data.

The reduction of slides content for the theoretical part in favor of videos and a range of media resources has showed better engagement and knowledge retaining in the second year group. Both groups worked on "cooperative base groups" in non -contact hours by demonstrating skills in team working, leadership and holding each other accountable for their contributions. Time keeping has been challenging for few of them.

Fulfillment questionnaire and consistent short Quizzing administered to the students resulted in very positive feedback. We analyze and discuss the results of the tests and the questionnaires to evaluate both learning and appreciation outcome.

Both students and researchers and professor as well considered the experience very positive and perhaps we have initiated the concept that "Junior Remote Sensing specialist" can be potentially extended to High students.