Wat.Edu – Water Education for Innovative Environmental Learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Wat.Edu – Water Education for Innovative Environmental Learning

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 : Strategic Partnerships for school education

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; Natural sciences

Project Summary

The Wat.Edu project was created within the framework of the Erasmus KA2 application. Our main goal was the elaboration of an innovative supplementary learning material that helps the teachers with the improvement of students aged 12-14 concerning their water-related knowledge. The Wat.Edu Handbook and the Methodological Guide together with the E-learning toolkit based on gamification are the results of great cooperation. Four schools and NGOs of four countries – Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary- worked together to create a flexible, modern learning material.
The elaboration of the theoretical part was the responsibility of professional institutions dealing with environmental education and sustainability, while the methodology was based on the experiences of the participating schools. With this Handbook, our aim was to provide the teachers dealing with 12-14-year-old students with easy-to-use, inspiring methodological material, which can also enhance the creative thinking of students.
We speak about a cross-curricular topic, yet we felt it needed to relate in some way to the subject frameworks used in educational structures. Therefore, we separated the tasks and activities according to the following subjects: Biology, Geography, Chemistry-Physics, and Arts. The separation is only of a technical nature, the development of a complex approach has been an important aspect for us all along, we wanted to present this important element of our environment from the aspect of several subjects.
The three years of the project process was greatly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, especially concerning digital education. To react to this, our partnership elaborated O3, an extra supplementary material besides the Handbook, which can be used effectively in online education.
During the period of testing the innovative professional material, we actively operated Water Club groups consisting of a community of children, where the goal was to test the curriculum in practice. In addition, we presented the developed professional material to interested teachers and heads of institutions in the framework of continuous teacher workshop sessions. At the national dissemination events, in addition to teachers, representatives of universities, colleges and other interested parties involved in teacher training were also given information about the work done. The feedback from the educators and the experience of the Water Club sessions helped a lot in shaping the final form of the Handbook and e-learning.
We permanently informed the public on the Wat.Edu website, on our official Facebook site, via newsletters, and the various channels of media.
Very important milestones of the project process were the three-day-long online international teacher training and the student camp. The latter was also organized as a virtual event. These programs provided opportunities to test the project outputs in real situations. Compared to the planned format. we had to redesign these project elements due to the Covid. Despite the aggravating factors, we were able to provide useful experiences and spent memorable time together.
Educational institutions are showing great interest in the completed project products, which is a positive result in itself, but it is not enough. After the end of the epidemic situation, it will hopefully be possible to implement demonstration sessions for interested schools, counseling for mentoring, and support for the adaptation process. The goal is to use the developed professional material as widely as possible in order to educate students about the environment and protect water.

Project Website

http://www.watedu.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 242102,1 Eur

Project Coordinator

Egyházasrádóci Kossuth Lajos Általános Iskola & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Peiramatiko Scholeio Panepistimiou Thessalonikis
• Zakladni skola B. Dvorskeho
• JVIZ I. OS Rogaska Slatina
• ANAPTIKSIAKI ANONYMOS ETERIA O.T.AANATOLIKIS THESSALONIKIS K ANAPTIKSIS ANTHROPINOU DINAMIKOU KAI ENISCHISIS TOPIKIS OIKONOM ANATOLIKI AE
• IREAS, INSTITUT PRO STRUKTURALNI POLITIKU OPS
• The Water agency Association
• IMRO-DDKK KORNYEZETVEDELMI NONPROFIT KFT