Ambassadors in Rubberboots – they think globally and act locally: Environment without boundaries – The consequences of climate change Restoration of nature – biodiversity – sustainability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Ambassadors in Rubberboots – they think globally and act locally: Environment without boundaries – The consequences of climate change

Restoration of nature – biodiversity – sustainability

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: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Natural sciences; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

.Context:

“The environment knows no borders!” – This is the motto of our project work and is at the same time an appeal to work together on an international level. The topic of environmental protection is becoming more and more important in current political debates with a view to the effects of climate change on our domestic ecosystems, insects and ultimately also for us humans. The borders between countries are a human construct that nature does not use as a guide. This is especially true in Europe, where many people from different countries live closely together. Sustainable solutions to environmental issues cannot therefore be implemented by individual countries or governments; rather, constructive cooperation on an international level is required. For this reason, we have seen our environmental education project as a driving force to give young people a chance to overcome borders and to bring them closer to the importance of global thinking and local action as an answer to the challenges of climate change.

Objectives:

In our project, we want to bring together young people from Europe to jointly analyze the effects of climate change and environmental pollution across national borders.
Above all, the improvement of high-quality skills and competences of the participating students with regard to scientific work as well as in the field of language acquisition and communication is in the foreground. By testing modern, practical learning methods, developmental impulses are also to be set for the teaching of science at the schools. On the content level, there is also the objective of providing development impulses for shaping a sustainable future based on the analysis and evaluation of different water and environmental protection measures, in particular with regard to climate change.

Participants:

The project partnership consists of 3 public schools from Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. From each school 2 teachers and 8 students of the grade 9 or 10 take part in the project. The teachers come partly from the natural sciences and partly from the foreign language sector and thus provide a good framework for the implementation of the project. In addition, depending on the country, there are cooperations with higher education institutions and experts in the field of environmental protection and nature conservation.

Activities and methodology:

In order to achieve the project objectives, the participating students and teachers in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland carry out cross-border activities. These are characterized by a high degree of practical orientation in each partner country due to the field trips and examinations. Through the joint implementation of water surveys on lakes and rivers as well as the identification and counting of key species in the study areas of the partner countries, the students cooperatively learn essential scientific skills and competencies. They examine concrete measures to prevent floods, thereby highlighting the need for cross-border cooperation. Moreover they learn in all three regions different causes, consequences and avoidance strategies of pollution and climatic impacts and can analyze and evaluate these comparatively. Due to the practical orientation, experiences in real space are also made possible, which can be internalized much more because of the associated emotions. In this way, a stronger motivation for dealing with environmental issues can be achieved.
The originally planned 3rd short-term exchange with school groups in the Netherlands could only take place virtually to a limited extent due to the massive restrictions caused by the corona pandemic. All 3 partner schools were connected to one another by a video link. With the help of virtual tours, expert lectures and discussions, a practical learning experience should be made possible

Expected results and longer-term benefits:

In the course of the project, a detailed summary of the project results in the form of a reader is created, in which the students actively participate.
The reader includes all work results in the form of collected test results of water surveys, created images, own maps and analysis results of renaturation measures. In particular, by publishing the results from the local to the international level, the reader should be used in the longer term to provide impetus for the development and implementation of concrete environmental protection measures, or to initiate the extension of the analysis to other regions. In addition, the intensive contact with partners outside of school resulted in cooperation for other local and international projects.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 51066,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Conrad-von-Soest-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Liceum Ogólnokształcące z Oddziałami Dwujęzycznymi im. Władysława Broniewskiego
• Almere College