Winter sports and active life style Erasmus Project

Project Title

Winter sports and active life style

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

The project is built after the successfully completed Comenius Regio and Erasmus+ events dedicated to non-traditional sports in the warm season of the year, or in the gym, where most of the current partners were working together. A new participant, the Finnish school, will be involved in addition to schools and sports clubs from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania. As summer non-traditional sports met with a positive response from pupils, as well as cooperation with school management, teachers and members of sports clubs from Slovakia and Lithuania, we decided to continue with another project that would bring young people to moving in the winter.

The statistics show that nowadays a normal human being spends 90% of the time all year round indoors (http://www.earch.cz/cs/revue/indoor-generation-travi-uvnitr-budov-az-90-casu-kvalita-vnitrniho-prostredi-se-vsak-prehlizi, https://www.admd.cz/cechum-hrozi-zdravotni-rizika-travi-prilis-casu-zavreni-v-budovach-aniz-by-si-to-uvedomovali, …). In the winter months, the number is logically significantly higher. With our project, we decided to improve this situation and get people to move outside. This time the theme of the cooperation is based on unusual winter sports, as well as the common amateur ones available in partner school regions, and a healthy lifestyle. The aim of the project is to exchange experiences with non/traditional winter sports, their possible incorporation into teaching practice, a system of lectures and workshops, and the effort to include winter moving into the life of the participants. We will also be very interested in introducing the principles of a healthy lifestyle to them. The project will also use modern technologies (such as smart watches, mobile phones and other wearable gadgets) to measure and analyse outdoor sports activity, which will make it more attractive for the younger generation.

The project will involve pupils from participating schools in short-term exchanges – mobility (altogether 24 pupils from each school will be accompanied by 2 teachers in each country). The mobility will always be prepared by schools in cooperation with sports clubs, only a Finnish school will do everything on its own. Two representatives of sports clubs and one other person from each school (coordinator) will participate in a short-term joint staff training that will run in parallel with the mobility. An important part of the work of adult project participants is, for example, the gradual development of a methodology for organizing pupils’ activities, advantageously helped with wearable technological tools and thus it can attract computer enthusiasts to being active in the open air in winter. Some adults probably do not have much experience with this. Thanks to the project they can get them (and then pass them on to young people). In addition to those who attend the trip, other school teachers and members of sports clubs will work in the project. These people will be involved in the preparation of project meetings, the presentation of the project in public, and will help in all directions that the project implementation requires.

Workshop activities will take place during the winter, but the project is not just mobility and education. A number of other activities will take place between each two meetings – a competition for a project logo, preparation of PowerPoint presentations, searching for lecturers and coaches for planned lectures. There will be work to create a brochure about the possibilities of amateur winter sports, to prepare and evaluate questionnaires and to analyse the involving of non-traditional winter sports into school lessons of physical education. There will also be a commented guide on how to organize outdoor winter activities for youngsters in conjunction with the technical achievements of modern society. Video blocks mapping unusual winter sports activities, and placing them on social networks, will be processed, too.

The impact of the project will not only be on the project participants, of course, but on whole schools and sports clubs. The general public will also be informed about the project through Facebook, local periodicals, school websites, etc. Language skills will be promoted, as the language of the meetings will be English. The handling of modern technology will be developed for a good reason. A different culture and family life in a foreign country will be observed by the participants, and long-term friendships with peers from other countries established. They will also improve their insight into unconventional winter sports and hopefully begin to consciously exercise in their daily life, having the healthy lifestyle in mind.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 180780 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnazium Rajec-Jestrebi, o. p. s. & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• Birzu “Atzalyno” pagrindine mokykla
• Volejbalovy Klub Tvrdosin
• Triangl, zapsany spolek pro vzdelavani, kulturu a sport pri Gymnaziu Rajec-Jestrebi
• Raahen lukio
• Klubas “Birzu topsas”
• Gymnázium