Forest 3.0 – our natural heritage Erasmus Project

Project Title

Forest 3.0 – our natural heritage

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Energy and resources; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Context / Project background:
The forest as our common natural heritage has an outstanding importance for human history. Especially as an energy and raw material supplier, it has significantly influenced and shaped economic development and thus made industrialization possible. In particular due to a foreseeable shortage of wood at the beginning of the 18th century, forestry developed as a concept for the sustainable use of forests. This has contributed, among other things, to a changed view of the forest as a common good to be protected. In addition, its social function is of great importance for recreation and tourism, but also for the arts and culture of the respective nation and for the development of regional identities. Globalisation, but in particular digitalisation, offers new opportunities for capturing and disseminating knowledge about forests and can contribute to a more responsible use of our natural heritage.

Project goals:
As part of the project, the students expanded their knowledge of the biological, historical, economic and cultural principles of the forest and increased their awareness of the common natural heritage. In doing so, the students were able to experience the emotional approach of each nation to the topic of forests in accordance with a European approach and thus developed an understanding of national sensitivities and perspectives. Through the implementation of innovative teaching and learning methods in an intercultural context, the subject lessons (e.g. biology, German and computer science) in the schools involved were enriched and further students were motivated for international projects. At the same time, the project offered the opportunity to get to know new professional fields and to tap into the European job market.
The participating schools used this global topic to expand their international project work and their intercultural teaching skills. The focus was on the wish, in cooperation with the project partner schools, to promote the quality development of the foreign language and MINT focus areas as well as the IT and media competence of our schools. At the same time, with the opening up and internationalization, a further development of the organization of teaching and methods was achieved. These are essential for the Europeanization of our schools, for our multicultural student body, as well as for the integration work with migrants.

Number and profile of the participants:
The participating students were willing to spend an entire project week abroad and used the knowledge and skills they gained in specialist lessons and made them available for lesson development. They both had sufficient foreign language skills and were open to the European idea. Around 25 to 30 pupils were involved in the project in each school, and 14 pupil mobilities were planned for each exchange. While the first two project weeks could largely be carried out as planned, it became necessary to modify our plans due to the corona pandemic.

Description of the activities:
During the student exchanges, biological experiments and the creation of herbaria and a forest encyclopedia were carried out. The students presented their respective forests as well as regional and forest-related customs and traditions, fairy tales and poems. They developed a cookbook with regional specialties and visited a number of institutions (wood processing companies, research institutions and projects on resource efficiency). As a synthesis, there was a pre-version of a forest app for the three home regions, in which the project results available up to the corona-lockdown were still processed afterwards in a modified procedure.

Methodology in implementing the project:
As part of the project, innovative teaching and learning methods were used (project-like forms of work, experiential methods, exploratory and self-organized learning, world café, interviews, experimentation) as well as the special skills of the schools involved. Evaluations were carried out both during and after the (early) completion of the project.

Description of the expected results as well as the potential sustainable benefit in the long run:
The newly acquired skills and knowledge were intended to prepare the students even better for the international job market in terms of their intercultural, linguistic and social skills, to motivate other students to participate in international projects and thus contribute to conveying the European idea in schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 75660,03 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hohenstaufen-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Tadeusza Kosciuszki w Sycowie
• Sukromna spojena skola Zeleziarne Podbrezova