"On the right way" is a radio programme produced by students in Santo Tomas School, The programme focuses on road safety, lasts 30 minutes and is on twice a month. Besides listening to it live, it can be listened to in podcasts.
The ideas
The Santo Tomás Foundation and its main institution, Santo Tomás School are socially committed to the local community. Road safety is totally integrated in their educational project and they also explore new initiatives in order to improve road safety for all members of the community. “Your ideas, your initiatives” was implemented in 4th year ESO ( Compulsory Secondary Education): students were informed of what the project was about and they where advised on several interesting topics to choose from. Soon afterwards, they freely decided to work on a specific topic: “ The effects of alcohol and drugs on driving”. They identified the problem, did some research on the current statistics and they took out their own conclusions.
The students have been working about too many different aspects of road safety education, but they focus their attention on using alcohol and drugs, on drink-driving problem .Spread the message of alcohol's potential risks to young people. They have used official data and studies about these subjects, as well as interviews with young person and adults, compiling answers after view discussions and videos. Taking part in Road safety Conference. Drugs and acohol are incompatible with driving and the students want to tell it to everyone. This is their commitment.
The initiatives
The second goal was that their work was shared by the rest of their community. The students involved made wide use of the school radio station “cSTRadio”, they produced and broadcast radio programmes about the chosen topic, collaborating with DGT and Guardia Civil de Tráfico. They had also collected information from the DGT Magazine in the previous research work. The students watched audiovisual materials, had debates in which they expressed their opinions while they received feedback from the listeners of the radio programmes by email. That's why they felt increasingly motivated and encouraged the teachers involved in the programme “Por buen camino” to take part in Primeras Jornadas Interinstitucionales de Educación Vial and to broadcast them live. This regional conference, organized by Dirección Provincial de Tráfico, the University of Oviedo and Consejería de Educación y Cultura de Asturias took place in Paraninfo de Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura on April 26th, 27th and 28th. It included lectures, round tables and presentation of experiences in driver education with the objective of developing innovative projects in this area. The highlights of the conference were the interview with María Seguí Gómez (Directora General de Tráfico del Ministerio del Interior, del Gobierno de España) and the lecture by Javier Bueno Arce, principal of Santo Tomas School, in which he explained the project “Por Buen Camino” of our school radio station “cSTRadio”. Finally, in May 2016, DGT and Guardia Civil de Tráfico organized an event in our school where they warned students of the risks of alcohol and drugs when driving, insisting on the aims of “Your ideas, your initiatives”.
PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT “On the right way, the safest programme on the air" (Por buen camino, el programa más seguro de las ondas)
“On the right way" is a radio programme produced by students in Santo Tomas School in Avilés that collaborate with their teachers and experts from Dirección General de Tráfico de Asturias (DGT). The programme focuses on road safety, lasts 30 minutes and is on twice a month. Besides listening to it live, it can be listened to in podcasts, on other days and its contents are on the radio station webpage (www.cstradio.org). Each programme deals with a specific topic concerning road safety.
Aims of the “Por buen camino” action:
Dissemination and promotion of attitudes to avoid road accidents.
Create attitudes for prevention, learn and use defensive techniques regarding traffic.
- Produce creative materials for dissemination of the road safety contents.
- Promote responsible attitudes concerning road safety within the community.
- Learn about driving rules, have a proper behaviour as a pedestrian when using roads and encourage citizen coexistence attitudes.
- Promote respect towards driving rules an adequate use of roads, vehicles and resources in general.
- Inform of road risks with a positive attitude, showing sympathy for risk saving behaviour.
- Create a road safety resource bank including sound and graphic files.
- Insist on responsible attitudes towards road safety among students.
- Form a community of technicians, educators and professionals committed to road safety and its dissemination.
The radio programmme “ Por buen camino” has been on for the last four school years.Radio has become a powerful source of motivation for the students that take part in it, but also for the local community who listens to it: other students, families, citizens. The programme, which has been broadcast since 2012, has had a significant impact on the local community. One of the most relevant characteristics of the programme has been the presence of guests who are experts in different aspects of road safety: technicians, policemen, insurance agents, doctors and nurses, driving school teachers, traffic authorities, accident victims and so on. In a school year 18 ”Por buen camino” programmes are produced. While the programmes are on and also between programmes, listeners are encouraged to participate through email and surveys on the webpage. The DGT experts prepare an information pack which covers all the contents of each programme and which students and teachers work on previous to the broadcast. This material and some related links are available in the advertisement for that week’s programme. Every week the programme is on, it is advertised on the webpage, on Facebook and sometimes on posters or other advertising resources. Besides collaboration with DGT, with the expert guests and the extensive work carried out in the school radio station cSTRadio, (www.cstradio.org) the programme has incorporated other specific actions concerning road safety: road circuits, talks on spinal cord injuries, safe routes, graphic communication campaign, awareness ads… All of them available through the webpage.
Throughout the school year at least three actions complementary to the radio programme are held. All members of the local community, professionals, authorities and other educational institutions are committed to the project. Sometimes cSTRadio collaborates with other institutions, disseminating their experiences or advising them how to manage their own actions. In addition to these actions, students, particularly those more committed to “On the right way”, have produced two more campaigns: creating posters and awareness ads.
In addition to the school activities, pupil´s work, other main factor is the mass media, that is a fundamental way to transmit these contents; the pupils manage all information, and put them to use in public service, in an entertaining, serious and amusement manner thought. Furthermore the information is afforded to the people.
