The Challenges of the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education for Risk and Disaster Reduction

Abstract

In recent decades, new information and communication technologies have generated the most diverse expectations and possibilities in the context of formal, non-formal and informal education. In relation to Education for Risk and Disaster Reduction and Environmental Education, the use of these new technologies has contributed not only to disseminate knowledge and understanding of local and global risks and vulnerabilities, as well as to achieve the perception of risk in relation to socio-environmental problems. Thus, one analyzes the potential of the use of new technologies in the process of building knowledge and understanding of risks at the local level, and to what extent the Community Centers for Civil Protection and Defense, through the school, have developed actions and activities focused on Education for Risk and Disaster Reduction and its interfaces with Environmental Education. Through an action research, an analysis was carried out on the pedagogical practices related to the formation of the community center of Jaboatão dos Guararapes, in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, to education for risk and disaster reduction and to its integration with environmental education in a Reference High School, verifying how participants use the learning acquired in their daily lives and how new technologies strengthen knowledge and understanding of risks and disasters. It was found that the methodology used allowed the construction of a critical vision and a collective process of analysis and sharing of knowledge and ideas, linked to an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary action that involved students, teachers and school management.