Effects of Global Heat on the European Environment: how to shape a better future Erasmus Project

Project Title

Effects of Global Heat on the European Environment: how to shape a better future

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Environment and climate change; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project ‘Global Heat’ is aimed at bringing together teachers and students to study the consequences of global warming from a scientific point of view. It is a project involving 4 different secondary schools, situated in Italy, Austria, Sweden and Belgium and they will all involve study programs with a clear focus on sciences (e.g. STEM, Technique Sciences or Chemistry and Physics). Students will all attend the final years of their study program and are already trained in laboratory work and scientific experiments at their home institutions.
In recent years, more and more problems related to global warming become apparent in our societies and the need for correct, scientific information has been noticed at different levels, European and national alike.
All the partners involved in this project wanted to strengthen the current and future generations to deal with these problems by showing them hands on the effects of global warming in different environments. Therefore, we will study the glacier, volcanic, water and urban environments present at the different partner schools and perform some experiments and scientific tests which we can then compare to already existing research.
The project ‘Global Heat’ takes the locations of the different schools as a starting point to look at the different issues global warming brings along in each of them. For instance, how does the rising temperature influence water levels or melting of glaciers, which role do volcanoes play in natural disasters, how are densely populated areas confronted with mobility and ecological problems, what are the effects of climate migration, what is the role of Europe in this debate,…
In the first year of this project, teachers of all four partners will work together on composing teaching materials and exchange weeks that help their students understand the complexity of this matter. They will increase their own knowledge and skills and the competences of their pupils to conduct small scale scientific research in this matter and compare it in time and place. In this year, only groups of student from Belgium and Italy are exchanged to attend excursions. This will allow us to test this innovative approach on outdoor learning already on a smaller scale.
In the second year, student groups from all four partners will go to all four destination so a complete comparison between the different environments can be made by the students.
The exchanges will be organized in such a way that different groups of students will be involved in the different exchange weeks and so varying mixed working groups are composed. They will be connected by their motivation to study a certain area or phenomenon and will focus their scientific research on it.
Because, as Barack Obama said it: “ Climate change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening here, it is happening now.”

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 119295 Eur

Project Coordinator

Heilig-Hartinstituut Technisch Onderwijs & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Birger Sjöberggymnasiet
• Liceo Cannizzaro
• Realgymnasium Schwaz