Raise your ICT skills in raised school gardens Erasmus Project

Project Title

Raise your ICT skills in raised school gardens

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: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

The project was focused mainly on the connection between science and digital technologies, between modern and traditional world with the direct message on the historical heritage of European countries. The main project aim was to build multifunctional school gardens using raised gardens and composting. The second main aim of the project was to create an open air classroom in the school garden of each partner’s school. The intention was to create a place at school where the pupils will develop their digital skills and ICT literacy in a modern way in a natural environment. The classroom will be used not only for science education, but due to modern mobile ICT devices which don’t need the classical computer labs, we want to use it also for ICT lessons directly connected with science lessons as we showed our partners during the 2nd LTTA in Slovakia. The gardens will be the place for education in science and environmental thinking, maths and digital competences (use of mobile ICT) with the focus on prosocial behavior of the pupils. The topics which were the base for the project aims and project timetable were environmental awareness, agricultural skills, healthy nutrition and food sovereignty. These topics were the main leading topics of realized LTTA’s. The priority goal was also the increasing of pupils’ digital skills through mobile ICT using and creating digital textbooks which will be used in further educational processes. The next intention of the project was the increasing national awareness of pupils, multiculturalism and natural respect of cultures from different European countries.
The workshops and open lessons were also included in each partner school. They were focused on acquiring new knowledge and skills with ICT and using created digital textbooks.
The acquired knowledge and digital or practice skills will be useful for easier inclusion into today’s European labour market. The aim was to support the development of ICT literacy and ICT competencies for the pupils who want to build their future career in agriculture, horticulture and food industry or do their own business in this segment. The project activities will develop ICT skills which pupils can use just in these areas where ICT were not used in the past and therefore there were no claims according to ICT education and skills as it is now.
The main educational methods used for project activities and aims achievement were progressive and active methods such as problem based learning, peer to peer, CLIL method, inquiry based learning etc. It was used mainly for project activities and education in a multilingual and multicultural environment. We achieved the development of the language competencies and presentation skills of involved pupils by the using of these methods.The pupils worked in international teams, so we supposed they had to show their self-activity, the ability to make their own decisions and to be responsible for their individual work but also for team work.
The project activities were focused on the national crops growing, digital documentation of the vegetation cycle and the effect of the climate conditions on the crops growth in the first project year. We planned to grow the national crops of partners schools during the second project year, but an unexpected pandemic situation crossed our plans and we had to face pandemic restrictions, canceled LTTAs in Germany and Spain as the consequence of closed countries, closed schools and impossibility to work together in school gardens. We were able to exchange our information and knowledge on growing technology and factors of chosen crops as well as seeds but realisation of this activity is still a big challenge for each partner school when the schools will be able to teach F2F directly at schools. Electronic magazines were the final outputs of each realized LTTA and they were published on dissemination project platforms.
The sustainable project outputs are almost completed school gardens with raised beds. There will be purchased tables and benches for an open air classroom located in school gardens in spring. The digital textbooks prepared by Spanish and Slovak schools are published for the wide public for free on project web site and schools web sites as well as on Twinspace. They include technology of cultivation and growing cycle of chosen crops together with their use in local gastronomy.

Project Website

http://gardens.zshu.sk

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 87524,77 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zakladna skola Dargovskych hrdinov 19 & Country: SK

Project Partners

• Fundación Institución Cultural Domus
• Istituto Comprensivo Statale Ignazio Buttitta
• Geschwister- Scholl- Gesamtschule Moers