The Walking School Bus of the 21st century

A smartphone app, a proximity tag and an online dashboard that simplify the daily walking bus routine, helping volunteer “drivers” and making the trip to school safe and fun for everyone.

City

Easy set up and access to walking bus stats

“Drivers”

No more paper means more time to watch and interact with the kids.

Families

Makes a traditional walking bus more manageable and safer.

Kids

More time for fun and social interactions with parents and other kids.

“The technology provides a faster way to register the children. In this way there’s more time for example … to talk to the children, ask “Where do you live?” and get to know each other”

Parent
San Vigilio Elementary School, Vela (TN)

“The main advantage of the app is that we no longer have the paper register in our hands that can get forgotten, dropped, etc.”

Parent
E. Decarli Elementary School, Meano (TN)

Using technology without focusing on technology

The traditional walking bus experience supports social interactions among parents and kids while they safely make their way to school. PedibusSmart supports this objective by using transparent technology to automatically handle the routine task of the daily attendance register, freeing the volunteers for personal interactions with the kids. Each child participating in the walking bus receives a BLE smart tag to drop into their backpack. The proximity of this device to the driver’s own smartphone triggers the registration of the child as on-board the walking bus, automatically compiling the daily presence register.

Administrative step

A Municipality, a school or a parents’ association establishes a collaboration agreement with FBK, authorizing FBK to personalize the Pedibus Smart components (app, tags and dashboard) for the specific walking bus or buses of that school or city.

Set-up and start-up

System configuration: define the schools, pedibus lines, stops
Use a provided web-based form to collect participant information and privacy permission (drivers and kids)
Walking bus “driver” training in the use of the app
Pairing and distribution of nodes to kids

A running PedibusSmart

Every day, using a driver’s own smartphone, the attendance register is automatically created, confirmed by drivers and securely shared with our back-end servers
A private web page provides monitoring and statistics for administrators
An optional connection to KidsGoGreen further encourages safe, social and fun sustainable mobility by all children at the school

OK where do I start?

If you are municipality or a school or a member of a parent’s organization and you are interested in establishing a a collaboration to activate PedibusSmart in your area, leave us your contact information.

560

Kids

56,351

Home-School Trips in 2019

Schools

What they say about us

The project [...] aims to render the mobility of children safe, social and fun, employing community resources (family, volunteers, school) and information technology.

Facilitate the movement of young students with a focus on the environment and technological innovation.

It is an initiative to add to the list of sustainable "best practice" linked to the Smart City concept.

Advanced technologies and IT solutions [...] at the service of the community for a more participatory, effective and dynamic management of children's mobility.

The project participated in the "Premio PA sostenibile, 100 progetti per raggiungere gli obiettivi dell'Agenda 2030" (Award for sustainable public administrations: 100 projects to achieve the objectives of the Agenda 2030), and was identified as "particularly worthy" from the almost 300 projects received.

What is PedibusSmart?

An overview of how PedibusSmart supports a traditional walking bus, as told by FBK researchers, parents, and parent volunteers from Trentino.

Volunteer perspective

A volunteer in Trento describes her local experience with PedibusSmart.

Climathon Junior - Ferrara

Climathon Junior – Ferrara, 25-26 October 2018

Premio Mobilità Modena 2019

Modena, 17 November 2019

"I'm the parent of a child using the walking bus in my city, can I use the PedibusSmart app?"

Dear parent or walking bus volunteer, if you found to this website and would like to adopt PedibusSmart, first you need to know that everything starts from an agreement between FBK and the institution (the school, the municipality or a parents association) that offers the traditional walking bus service. This agreement is intended to establish a framework within which we can offer our service in compliance with GDPR.

If you want to start a walking bus from scratch, where a traditional walking bus is not yet present, we are not the right starting point. Instead, your school, your Municipality or a walking bus / parent association can help!

Partners & Sponsors

PARTNER

Awards and Regocnition

The CLIMB project has received important recognition in the scientific, eduction, and innovation communities. We are particularly proud to have won the Wind-TRE Viabilità Evoluta dei Cresco Award (October 2018) and to have represented Italy, along with 6 other “best practice” projects, at the G7 Trasporti in Cagliari (June 2017).

PedibusSmart is part of the CLIMB project, which aims to render the mobility of children safe, social and fun, involving the entire community (family, volunteers, school) and information science as a technology to simply life. CLIMB uses and integrates technology and advanced solutions (Internet of Things, Internet of Services, Gameful Education) and puts them at the service of the community, rending the mobility management of children more participatory, more efficient, and more dynamic.