Project SMILE

Project SMILE: Science, Math, Innovation, Learning, and Exploration

This project at the interface of Mathematics and Science involves three schools in three different European countries, with a total of four classes and 66 pupils: two classes from Italy; one from Spain; one from Greece. The age range is from 12 to 14.

The partner schools are

S.M. G.Negri – Istituto Comprensivo San Giuseppe Calasanzio – Italia. Prof Alessandro Guffanti (AG), Maths and Sciences.
Classes 3D (Musical Specialization); 3B (Final year Middle School).

1st Experimental Junior High school of N. Ionia of Magnesia - Greece. Prof. Kalliopi Tasiou (KT), Math.
Class 2B (Middle School)

IES Pedro Álvarez Sotomayor – Spain. Prof. Ignacio Jiménez Calero (IJC). Math.
Class 2AB ESO (Middle School).

This project is focused on the application of Data Exploration and Analysis methods to the science of Climate Change and on the discussion of results by the students: which is the situation at the world and national level ? what could we do now and in the future, as citizen scientists, to ameliorate the situation ?

The idea was to create interest and passion for applied mathematics for students which will begin next year high school, while exploring in depth a problem of vital importance for their future of citizens of the world. An important share of our students are girls and they worked with strong interest and passion on this project

The project consisted of the following different steps, the teachers’ intervention may be present in the steps marked with (*):

(1) literature analysis: what is the status of knowledge for the topic we are interested in (*)

(2) identification of the appropriate questions: what we want to investigate? why does it matter?
how can we identify both problems and solutions? which would be our original contribution? (*)

(3) dataset source identification, retrieval and classification (*)

(4) graphical dataset exploratory analysis

(5) group discussion on the analysis results (*)

(6) preparation of the analysis presentations (eg with Canva, Book Creator..) and establishment of a platform for the diffusion of the results

(7) condivision to all the project partners through a shared project platform

(8) brainstorming and idea proposal

The activities included the study and documentation about a range of data science problems on the following topics:

1) Study of climate change using web-based information from reliable sources and databases: how the climate has changed in each region of each country, study also with AI. This is drawing a picture of the current situation

2) What future awaits us if we continue like this – ie the possible evolution of the climate - using AI for instance to obtain predictions (without any human intervention) on what will happen: temperature rise, rise of rainfall, desertification, sea level rise..

3) What we can do to prevent dramatic consequences – e.g. conducting a study of our carbon footprint and how to reduce our emissions by changing our lifestyle. Technological tools already available to mitigate climate change. The architecture of resilient cities and “sponge” cities. Genetic engineering of plants to produce drought-resistant plants.

4) New scientific professions of the future linked to climate change: from architect of resilient cities to plant genetic engineer to climate data scientist. Girls and new scientific professions.

(1) As a first step, we opened a competition for the project logo..The winner was Spain and the loogo is on the background of the project page ! All the participating logos are shown in the carousel below