[G-04] Geoscience education for 1st-12th graders and bachelor course

[G04-P04] The Sharing of Information and Data using Cloud Computing Services in Field Research in School Club Activity

*Haruka Matsuoka¹, Takeshi Uemura² (1.Department of Business and Informatics, Tsukuba Gakuin University, 2.Kaijo Junior and Senior High school)

Keywords:earth science education, field research, cloud computing services

In recent years, there has been increasing strong public interest in natural disasters and global environmental issues. The promotion of science education using field research has become more and more important. In secondary schools, field research generally takes half a day or several days and has to be carried out as a school club activity out of the customary class schedule. For preparation of field research, communication between teachers and students is necessary especially in arranging of schedules and sharing data. It usually takes much time and labor, and thus tends to prevent teachers from engaging students in field research.

In this study, common cloud computing services were adopted so that communicating information, the arrangement of schedules, and the sharing of data for field research in an earth science club activity at Kaijo Junior & Senior High School could be facilitated. Membership of the club has been 45 (2012), 47 (2013), 45 (2014) and 42 (2015), respectively. They successfully reduced teachers’ time and labor for preparation, whereas a few students had certain problems in using the cloud.

The project have been partially supported by grants-in-aid from Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).