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Assessing conserving and protecting European biodiversity : A citizen science project
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The project will be based on participatory science to study biodiversity in our cities. It will link biology, mathematics (statistics), geography (urban development) and history (history of natural sciences). Four highschools will take part in the project, one in France, Italy, Lithuania and Poland and will work closely with local science museums. For instance in France we have a partnership with our Museum of Natural Sciences and together with our partner our students will study the wild flora (urban and wild plants) of their neighbourhood to learn more about nature in urban areas.
 Their results and findings will be sent to the museum for further use by professional scientists.
They will also study in class the history of botanical research and how citizen science helped create strong bonds between European scientists and resulted in successful scientific European partnerships beyond state borders. 
The project will be in English though our Italian partners will sometimes contact our students in their own language and in French. A class of each highschool will take part in the mobilities, 5 to 6 students from each country will take part to each meeting in each partners' country. In the French highschool a class of "secondes" (freshmen) who will have taken MPS (Scientific Methods and Practices) as an minor will be the focus of the project. But the language teachers will also include the other classes in the different tasks with each partner school. At the end of the project, students with a major in dancing will take part in the conference, trained by their dance teacher. To get to know more about citizen science students will study : How to get to know more about biodiversity through visits of the Museums of Natural History, interviews of scientists, research on the subject, film projections, and practical work in class; Why and how to measure biodiversity by visiting museums, interviews of scientists and film projections . Urban vegetal biodiversity and citizen science through field work with MNHs. How to work in small groups : - preparing field work - learning about botanical macro-scale photography - selecting fields/places of exploration - observing and identifying plants Traveling through plant history through virtual or actual visit of the historical greenhouses of the "Jardin des Plantes" in Paris Naturalist expeditions and the constitution of a European scientific heritage. Biodiversity, feeding human beings and sustainable development A blog will be created to allow all partners to publish their findings and work on common virtual projects. As a final project we will stage a danced conference to report on our students' findings that would link science and the Arts. All partners will provide the content of the conference (and speakers) while our dancers will perform the dancing part. Comparing their findings with their European counterparts and working together towards a common end will make students aware of the role they can play in the development of scientific research (especially for women who are still underrepresented in this field, the majority of our French students being females), the protection of flora and its role in urban areas as European citizens. It will show them how each private citizen of Europe has an essential role to play for the future of science and the general European well-being. IMpact: They will acquire precise and adequate scientific methodology together with related language skills specific to their fields. Their results will help scientists with their research, it will also be a great asset and experience for our students' future professional lives as scientists will work together with their European peers on shared projects, European conferences or publications, understanding the benefits of team work for intellectual and scientific develoment.
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