NoiseCapture smartphone application as pedagogical support for education and public awareness

Teaching science subjects such as acoustics to youth or the general public can be facilitated by illustrating physical phenomena or scientific issues using fun experiences. A few years ago, our team developed a smartphone application named NoiseCapture with the aim of offering to anyone the opportunity to measure their sound environment and to share their geolocated measurements with the community in order to build a collective noise map. Since then, NoiseCapture team members have experimented with numerous interventions in schools or scientific events for the general public based on the app to explain not only societal and environmental issues related to noise but also to teach acoustic notions and to address technical and scientific topics associated with sound measurement. This paper describes some of the interventions implemented, in particular, in a school context through training courses given to middle school and university students, as well as teachers of secondary school, that focused on basic knowledge of buildings and environmental acoustics, on the practice of acoustic measurement, and on noise mapping. Some examples of interventions with the general public are also presented that were mostly integrated into scientific events.