WATERSCHOOL – strengthening open digital education and innovative practises through relevant, innovative teaching tools about water consumption in schools. Erasmus Project

Project Title

WATERSCHOOL – strengthening open digital education and innovative practises through relevant, innovative teaching tools about water consumption in schools.

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

“WATERSCHOOL – strengthening open digital education and innovative practises through relevant, innovative teaching tools about water consumption in schools”

More than 20 percent of children and young people in the EU are either overweight or obese. These rates have increased significantly over the past decades. The consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks is often associated with obesity in children and can also lead to dental decay and the resulting fillings. Almost 40 percent of the sugar consumed by young children comes from drinking sugar-sweetened drinks. Childhood obesity is known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, orthopedic problems, mental disorders, underachievement in school and lower self-esteem.
These health problems can be avoided by encouraging the consumption of drinks without sugar. Promotion and provision of drinking water in schools has shown to prevent overweight. The importance of drinking water in schools is well known by teachers. Besides improving health, proper hydration is an important prerequisite for concentration and performance in school. Even mild dehydration can cause cognitive impairment, tiredness and headaches, all of which will negatively impact academic attainment. Yet, about half of the children do not meet their minimum hydration requirements. These issues can and should be addressed by actively promoting tap water drinking in schools.
Every minute, a million plastic bottles are bought around the world, and this number will still rise during the next years. Schools that promote tap water drinking are free of single use plastic bottles and play an important role in helping to implement the EU Plastics Strategy.

The project “WATERSCHOOL strengthening open digital education and innovative practises through relevant, innovative teaching tools about water consumption in schools”, funded by the Erasmus+ program, started in September 2018 and ended in August 2020. It involved partners in Austria (lead partner), Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and the United Kingdom.

Aim of the project was to create and provide free accessible open education resources in the English, German, Bulgarian, Italian, Czech and Slovenian language, that encourage schools all over Europe to become Waterschools and enable pedagogues to acquire new skills and competences, innovative methods and pedagogies which will assist them in developing and implementing water drinking related activities in the school and the classroom. This will help improve children’s health as well as the health of the environment, but also increase personal development and employability of educators and students, and contribute to the achievement of the EU Sustainable Development Goals, the Drinking Water Directive and the European strategies to reduce obesity and tooth caries rates in children and the EU Plastic Strategy.

Target groups of the project were schools and kindergartens, teacher, pre-school pedagogues, school headmasters, local and school authorities, municipalities, parents and water supplying companies. In the development, testing and the implementation phase of the project, about 24.400 persons were involved in one or several of about 190 dissemination activities like workshops, meetings, public events, conferences, computer based trainings, personal meetings etc. Much more were reached via webpages and Facebook. Feedback concerning the implementation of the project, the tools created and results obtained was extremely positive. The involved target groups discovered a very important topic to deal with in schools, not only in the classroom but also in the overall school culture and developed a collection of valuable ideas and practises for teaching. Teachers especially appreciated the case studies, digital tools and the practical guidelines for a school to become a Waterschool. The importance of these tools and materials has been further highlighted by the need for online training programmes during the coronavirus restrictions.

Results in detail:
• A set of guidelines and didactic concepts for the Waterschool project (in 6 languages).
• A survey of drinking behavior, water quality and access to water in partner countries’ schools (in 6 languages).
• A Waterschool online portal with an e-learning course, various educational resources, good practise examples, a guide how to become a Waterschool, an interactive map of European schools that already became a member of the Waterschool-network, FAQs and a news section (in seven country versions – AT, DE, BG, CZ, SL, IT, UK – and in an European version).
• Multiplier events in all partner countries have been carried out.
• About 190 seminars, online-trainings, conferences and other dissemination activities have been carried out.

All results, the educational tools and guides on how to become a Waterschool are available for free on the portal www.waterschools.eu, also through the SchoolEducationGateway and eTwinning.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 254753,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kaiblinger & Zehetgruber OG & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Ökomarkt e.V.
• Skutecne zdrava skola, z.s.
• THE SOIL ASSOCIATION LIMITED
• VU PO AGROBIZNES I RAZVITIE NA REGIONITE – PLOVDIV
• Centro LIbero Analisi e Ricerca (CLAR)
• Celostno izobrazevanje o prehrani Tanja Bordon s.p.
• Equalita, Institut für Qualifizierung und Vernetzung in Europa e.V.