Pixel Company is a geographic innovations studio located in Sofia, Bulgaria. We work with various organizations — schools, media, representatives of national and local authorities, to promote geospatial technologies by providing educational content, workshops, training, and data. Since the summer of 2021, we are part of the Copernicus Relays network.
How does your organisation currently support the development of GI and EO skills?
For the last 3 years, we have performed numerous training with more than 500 participants — mainly geography teachers and their students from all over the country. We have developed a special educational program for geography teachers, where we use a holistic approach to show the participants how they can benefit from geospatial data. We focus on using Copernicus or other free and open data and software. In the spring of 2021, we started a free Digital Geo Club for the students of the teachers we have trained, which gathers participants from all over Bulgaria and abroad to discuss the importance of geographic innovations.
What do you think we need in order to improve GI and EO skills in Europe?
In order to achieve Europe’s green goals, serious attention needs to be paid to school geography and teacher training, respectively. In many countries, geographical knowledge is still associated mainly with knowledge of certain facts, but in reality, big data from satellites, GIS, and in-situ measurements need a real human geographical interpretation. Given that Europe currently has the best Earth Observation program, it is a matter of focused efforts by education authorities to include these innovative tools, data and resources in education, even for the youngest.
We have extensive experience in this and we are convinced that this invaluable data can be used successfully for teaching even in early childhood.
Why was it important for you to join EO4GEO?
Because we wanted to be part of a community of like-minded people with whom we believe we have a common goal. We are sure that we can share very useful experiences from our current activities, as well as get fresh ideas for new projects to make geospatial technologies even more fascinating for young people.
