Eurisy at the GEO-Academy Summer School 2025

Between 13 and 18 July 2025, as a GEO-Academy project partner, Eurisy attended the GEO-Academy Summer School 2025 in Sesimbra, Portugal, entitled “Innovative digital GEO-Tools for enhancing teachers’ digital, green and spatial skills towards an effective STEAM Education for Sustainable Development”. The summer school focused on exchanging knowledge and enriching the participating teachers from elementary and high schools from all over Europe with practical skills, tools, and collaborative strategies to effectively teach geospatial phenomena through innovative, research-informed, and student-centred approaches.

Through a range of lectures and collaborative workshops, the summer school focused on helping teachers integrate geospatial technologies, digital tools and climate science into their teaching in practice. To this end, different geospatial tools were presented, such as QGIS, Tracker App, OpenStreetMap, ICOS and many more. Learn more about the tools here.  The different classes can be found on the GEOBSERVE platform, which was also presented to the participants. This platform, developed by GEO-Academy, hosts trainings and materials, as well as resources and guides to support teaching sustainable development in the classroom, available free and accessible everywhere.  The GEO-Academy consortium developed a guided tour of GEOBSERVE, available here. 

The Summer School also aimed at fostering partnerships between teachers, students, innovators, researchers, and stakeholders in science-related fields, encouraging multidisciplinary collaboration on real-life challenges such as climate change, and innovations.One of the most distinctive features of the summer school was its commitment to bridging science, education, and innovation. Participants did not just learn about advanced tools like GIS, satellite imagery, or coding platforms, they explored how to apply them in meaningful, classroom-ready ways. This approach allowed to translate complex scientific concepts into accessible, student-friendly learning experiences. Teachers explored how to harness digital platforms like LearningApps, CODAP, PhET, and Tracker to support diagnostics, simulations, and interactive storytelling.

Beyond digital skills, the summer school emphasised collaborative, cross-curricular learning, and building a community of practice. Teachers engaged in hands-on experiments that integrated geography, maths, history, physics, and environmental science.

The Summer School was also about building a community of practice.  Throughout the week, participants collaborated on the development of original “learning scenarios” that incorporated the tools and strategies they had explored during the workshops. Those projects, ranging from escape games to urban design simulations, were shared and peer-reviewed the last day, showcasing the power of collaboration in innovation. Those classroom-ready sequences can be found on the platform GEOBSERVE here.

This week aimed to bridge the gap between space and education, resonating with the values of Eurisy. In addition, Eurisy had the opportunity to talk with the teachers and space users, to discuss transmission and how space is essential for the future, and thus should be included in education. The participants coming from different countries, it also allowed Eurisy to grasp the different national contexts and knowledge of space capabilities.

GEO-Academy is an Erasmus+ Teacher Academy aiming to transform climate change and sustainability education throughout Europe by establishing a network of educators and providing a suite of cross-curricula resources and training to enhance their green, digital, and spatial skills. Learn more about GEO-Academy and the upcoming training events here.