Educação ambiental em um clube de ciências, utilizando geotecnologias

Abstract

The present research was conducted with students from the 6th and 7th grades of elementary school, belonging to the Project Science Club (Bio Clube), in a private school in the city of Porto Alegre, RS. The aim of the research was to understand how the construction of knowledge related with the topic environment occurs, using geotechnology. Firstly, the prior knowledge of the students was diagnosed by a questionnaire. Subsequently, the developed activities consisted of viewing and interpreting orbital images obtained from Google Earth TM software, workshop with GPS devices, posters preparation, and interview, among others. For different data collection instruments such as questionnaires, class diaries, student’s textual productions, as well as observations made over the activities in Bio Clube were used. All data were subjected to Textual Discourse Analysis, based on Galiazzi and Moraes (2007). After analyzing the data emerged three main categories: The environment as an object of study; Building knowledge on a Science Club; Application of new technologies in the education.The investigation has concluded that the use of different strategies during a Learning Unit (LU) encouraged and motivated students in the knowledge construction process, also revealing that geotechnologies are a great choice of tools for the construction and reconstruction of new knowledge indicating that the present approach can be used in different areas. During the development of the LU was evidenced students' motivation, concern about the environment, the impulse that geotechnologies can give to nature studies, besides the contributions a Science Club can provide for students.