[G-05] Understanding of geology and interaction between the earth, nature and culture through the Geoparks(Poster)

[G05-P07] Geopark Exhibition at Kanagawa Prefectural High School Library

*Naoto Kozasa¹, Tomohiro Kasama¹ (1.Hakone Geopark Promotion Council )

Keywords:Geopark, Library, High School, Exhibition

The spread of Covid-19 has reduced opportunities for school education on Geoparks. Hakone Geopark has worked on an exhibition at the school libraries, which is possible even under this circumstance. There are five reasons as follows. 1. Direct contact with outsiders can be avoided. 2. School libraries cover a wide variety of fields and can accept any educational materials not limited to school subjects. 3. Libraries always have books on Geoparks, Hakone area, volcanoes, topography and geology of Kanagawa Prefecture. Therefore, students can deepen their learning by themselves. 4. Librarians can support students, even if there is no teacher specializing in Geoparks. 5. Students can see and study the exhibits repeatedly at recesses, after school and during school holidays. Moreover, we provided the guidebook published by Hakone Geopark and other publications of the base facilities to reinforce the book collection. Also, when the number of infections was relatively low, we held an exhibition commentary by the curator and an observation session around the schools. At first, the exhibition was conducted at Kanagawa Prefectural “A High School”, which Hakone Geopark secretariat had connection with. (From Jan 19th to June 17th, 2021) After that, at the request of the teachers' network, we started the exhibition at Kanagawa Prefectural “B High School”(From June 17th, 2021 to present) and “C High School”(From Oct 30th , 2021 to present). These high schools are not located in Hakone Geopark area, but in populated area of central eastern part of Kanagawa Prefecture. The relay of this exhibition is still in progress and the results will be announced another time. Through this project, we try not only to provide education on Geopark, but also to publicize Hakone Geopark area and to popularize geology. The contents of the exhibition consist of three components: to convey Hakone Geopark itself, to convey the relation between Hakone Geopark and the area around the school and to introduce the vicinity of high school from the perspective of Geopark. As exhibits, we arranged panels, actual specimens of rocks and minerals and related books. By conducting a questionnaire (collection rate was about 5% of all students), we surveyed the interests of the students and the awareness of Hakone Geopark. Students were most interested in the actual specimens (58-76%) at each school. Surveys related to Hakone Geopark was conducted at school B and C and we found out only 33-35% of Students have known Hakone Geopark. We also asked students which cities and towns they have visited in Hakone Geopark including Hakone Town, Odawara City, Manazuru Town, Yugawara Town and Minamiashigara City. The result shows that there were gaps between each city and town. (Odawara City 78-83% , Hakone Town 74-91% , Manazuru Town 43-44% , Yugawara Town 46-55% , Minamiashigara City 41-47%) The result shows that there are still challenges in excursion tourism within this area, which is one of the purposes of Hakone Geopark. Furthermore, 52 to 61% of the students answered that they would like to participate in topography and geology learning sessions around the school and this result indicates that it will be effective to incorporate Geopark education into coursework.