Rivers Introduce Valuable Environmental Reaction and Sustainability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Rivers Introduce Valuable Environmental Reaction and 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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Environment and climate change; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Two of the key issues of concern to the global educational community in recent years are climate change, and lack of innovation in educational systems which are not able to prepare our students for the rapidly changing technological environment.This project attempts to address those two subjects.

With different multicultural project activities we want to stimulate students’ curiosity and motivate them to explore innovative approaches to solving problems and tackle with environmental issues.

The main idea of our project will be “Twinning our rivers” which is our “cover” theme, easy to convey to local communities and other administrative factors. However in reality, the project will be implemented on two educational axes as follows:

* Students axis:
Environment, Sustainability, Energy, Water Cycle (All these will be based on the “RIVERS” main idea as described above)

* Teachers axis (triple):
A) Tackling with minority integration in local school systems.
B) Discussing the PISA results for each country and ways of improving each country’s position. Lithuania and Portugal are doing well while other participating countries underscore. Valuable conclusions regarding the local educational systems are expected.
C) Familiarizing with “Designathon”, a state-of-the art, innovative teaching method, based on constructivism model and Informatics. It comes from Netherlands and its mission is to unleash the creativity children, teaching them to learn to design, prototype with electronics and present their solutions to create a better world. Teaching with this techinique will also give students the opportunity to improve performance in key subjects such as Math, Science and Literacy in which our schools underscore according to PISA metrics.

During the two year program, students will implement six 3-month sub-projects, dealing with environmental issues. The results of their work will be presented during the LTT activities and travels abroad.

1. Bulgaria: Local Environment Home, school, community.
2. Lithuania: Natural Resources Management / Intensive forms of exploitation of natural resources
3. Greece: Energy issue – Eco / Energy footprint at school and at home
4. Portugal: The concept of Conservation of the Natural Environment Ecosystems
5. Slovakia: The Environment as a Source of Inspiration and Dialogue
6. Croatia: Anthropogenic Environment – Parameters & Degradation Environment and Communication

All activities are addressing both the needs of teachers and pupils. For example, the projects, which will be implemented using the Designathlon method, will give teachers the opportunity to try out the new teaching style, but at the same time will also give students the opportunity to improve their performance and gain new and necessary knowledge on environmental issues.

Several international seminars are planned, to elaborate simultaneously on the new innovative teaching method (Designathlon), the results of the PISA tests as well as environmental subjects. One of the seminars will be conducted by the experts on Designathlon method at the beginning of the project, with funding from the project management budget. The seminars will be addressed to broader educational community and the participants will receive official documents as motivation to enrich their portfolios.

Etwinning platform will be essential for the implementation of our RIVERS project, aiming mainly to combine physical mobility with virtual exchanges, making also each LTT mobility integral part of our parallel eTwinning project. Therefore, almost 25% from all activities planned for the overall duration of our project, are going to be implemented through the eTwinning platform.

Through the “Twinning our rivers” approach, we plan to employ the local municipalities, by inviting their representatives in events to every country, so that the whole project becomes a major cultural event for the whole population in our regions, maximizing the media coverage to promote the European aspect of the project and the ideals of the Erasmus+ initiative.

The project is also addressed to other organizations, institutions and the local communities that are going to be heavily involved by local press, tv and radio programs and get an open mind on different subjects.

Also, higher educational authorities will receive the results of our discussions on the reasons why our countries underscore in PISA measurements.

The experience and the outcome of the seminars will be published in concise e-books, which will be distributed in every possible way and in as many educational sites as possible in the countries involved.

Project Website

https://parouden.sites.sch.gr/rivers/index.html

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 137200 Eur

Project Coordinator

Primary school Eng. Georgy Ivanov Valkov & Country: BG

Project Partners

• Kedainiu “Ryto” progimnazija
• Základná škola s materskou školou, Horná Ždaňa 107
• Osnovna skola Molve
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Pedrouços
• 1o Dimotiko Sxoleio Karpenisiou