The Green Micro:bit Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Green Micro:bit

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: Energy and resources; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The project Green Micro:bit was about raising awareness about the eco role of a school in education and encouraging critical thinking about environment issues among pupils, teachers and a wider community. Our project included different activities: decorating the school interior and exterior in order to follow the modern architecture of a school and contemporary teaching concepts which go together with a holistic approach to the students’ development. This included creating “a green wall” in the school, the educational path in the school yard, the e-book about the project, school eco souvenirs, making a windmill and more. Pupils should feel relaxed in the school in order to fully achieve their cognitive, psycho-motor and emotional capacities and to become responsible decision makers when it comes to nature and environment. Therefore, the project introduced the green architecture in the school, a “live“ architecture which grows and breathes together with the school and its community. This primarily referred to creating a school hanging garden on the wall in the school hallway, which is the busiest part of the school. The project included modern technological elements, micro:bits, because the plants in the garden were watered by a micro:bit system. The green wall consists of different plants that are sustainable on a school wall. After the workshop with the plant experts we decided on different types of plants as initially planned due to their suitability. The whole garden was made of the recycled material only. In the modern society, students tend to be more and more detached from nature, and eco awareness is very low and through he project we wanted to change the current state and we think we did a good job in this direction. Besides creating the hanging wall garden and educational paths around the school, pupils also took part in recycling activities and land art. Our initial plan was to make some installations in the school garden from the recycled materials such plastic bottles and bags but after participating in the workshop on this matter our students decided they’d rather make and install some bug hotels and bird houses from wood to actually compete the whole concept of the green outdoor classroom. By deciding that they showed that they had developed their eco awareness and critical thinking in the course of the project.
In the outer part, that is the school yard, educational paths were placed. These paths provide pupils with information about herbs and plants and also raise eco awareness among pupils and teachers. The project is sustainable on many levels: when dried, plants are used for making different decorations, school souvenirs in order to promote entrepreneurship pupils’ skills. The project offers new skills and competences regarding the ecopedagogy, ICT and critical thinking to schools and enables a unique European cooperation between schools, which encourages multicultural teaching environment.
We could actually test the sustainability of the project since it was prolonged due to the global pandemics. We finished all the major activities in the first two years of the project in wanted to wait for the conditions to be better so that we would be able to have a live final event as planned in the beginning. So we took advantage of the third year of the project to see if everything the students did during the first two years was manageable also in future as a part of their regular school activities. Everything proved to really be as we had foreseen since they could sustain all the project results and work with them during their regular classes (Biology, Arts and Crafts, optional subject Modern preparation of food and others).

Project Website

https://greenmicrobit.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 57442,52 Eur

Project Coordinator

OS Vizmarje Brod & Country: SI

Project Partners

• Osnovna skola Gracani
• OS “Djuro Pilar” Slavonski Brod