Learning from each other, for each other – Cross-educational realization of a fully automated greenhouse with contrasting climatic conditions compared to Spain and Germany. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning from each other, for each other – Cross-educational realization of a fully automated greenhouse with contrasting climatic conditions compared to Spain and Germany.

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: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Rural development and urbanisation

Project Summary

The aim of the project was to motivate the students to work together internally on the subject of “urban gardening”. The interdisciplinary approach promoted interdisciplinary skills, social interaction and mutual appreciation in the spirit of the European idea. For this purpose, various educational programs with profile-building subjects in the areas of nutrition and supply, biology, technology and economics worked on the planning and conception of a self-sufficient greenhouse. The greenhouse was no longer realized due to the school being closed due to the corona pandemic.
Our project should extend over 12 months and involve around 150 students. In the end, however, project work only took place for 4 months, until the beginning of March, as the school then closed. 30 students should have the opportunity to optimize their work at two project meetings in international teams. However, as already mentioned, this no longer took place. The students involved in the project were between 16 and 20 years old.
The students of various educational programs at BK Hilden coordinated with the corresponding educational program from Vic via eTwinning in Spanish or English, presented and documented their results and explained their approach.
The students of the nutrition and housekeeping course in Hilden and the students of the nursery in Vic first selected a plant that they often need in the production of food. The biological technical assistants in Hilden and the students from the nursery now dealt with the structure of the selected plant, the ideal time of sowing and the ideal conditions for cultivation and keeping. The students of the technical high school in Hilden and the mechanization in Vic then took over the programming of a microcontroller, through which all processes in the greenhouse should be controlled fully automatically. The students of the vocational high school economics at the BK Hilden and the department of trade and marketing in Vic drew up a marketing concept based on the properties of the product. After completing the last work steps, a first transnational meeting should take place in Hilden at the end of March in order to present the project results and, building on the students’ different levels of experience, to implement optimizations in international groups. However, this was omitted due to the shortened project work phase. Two transnational encounters were planned, as both greenhouses would have differences due to the different conditions in terms of temperature and humidity in Spain and Germany, so that a comparison of the working methods and the results would have been useful for understanding the influence of different climatic conditions.
The resulting greenhouse could have been used sustainably in both schools, so this project should definitely be restarted in a new attempt. While the BK Hilden would like to use the greenhouse to cultivate plants that are used in the preparation of meals in the education program nutrition and housekeeping, the plant in Vic is to be used in the school’s own cafeteria.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 5000 Eur

Project Coordinator

Berufskolleg Hilden des Kreises Mettmann & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Institut de Vic