Guide Book

Connected with the Environment

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INTRODUCTION

The project “Connected with the Environment” is a 2-year project designed to develop and strengthen partnerships between 5 European Schools with different experiences and back-grounds. It aims at approaching different aspects of the theme of the environment via var-ious topics and levels which all together should result in achieving high quality skills and competences in areas such as interpersonal relationships, cultivating national heritage or being more friendly to the environment. Moreover, all levels will include highly intense and efficient use of digital learning tools and exchanging good practices so as to meet the needs of teachers and learners in all partner schools to make the technology a part of the learning process. The activities will be supported by the teachers from many different domains such as science, history, ICT, languages and psychology. All the partners will eagerly promote all the skills and competences acquired during the project to enable next groups of students and teachers to benefit from the achievements of this project.

The aim of this guidebook is to present and disseminate the results of our work. You will find here the description of the tasks as well as some of the students works. We hope some of the ideas will inspire other teachers and schools to run such a project, whether only partially or completely.

If you are interested in the latest news on the Project, please visit our blog:connectedwiththeenvironment.blogspot.com and our eTwinning page:twinspace.etwinning.net/50939/home

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THE PARTNERS

Międzynarodowa Szkoła Podstawowa Paderewski in Lublin was set up in 2009 so as to broaden the education-al offer of existing since 1998 Międzynarodowe Liceum Pad-

erewski. This system now offers one coherent teaching process starting from elementary ed-ucation all the way to International Baccalaureat. Since its beginnings, the school specialises in innovative approaches to learning in order to enable its students to discover the world and acquire the knowledge in a creative and individualised way. We strongly promote formative assessment and self-assessment so as our students know the direction of their learning pro-cess. The school constantly implements new technologies into the classrooms.

Danila Kumar in Ljubljana is a state owned school that has been offering an international programme since 1993. Originally responding to a request from the Slovenian Ministry of Education, Danila Kumar provides an interna-tional kindergarten, elementary and middle school programme for children of foreign nationals living in Slovenia. Our staff has a lot of experience in communicating and working with the children from various cultures, EAL

and SEN students and participating in various international projects with IB schools, interna-tional contests and competitions.

I.Osnovna škola Varaždin (First Elementary School Varaždin) is the old-est, leading elementary-level educational institution in Varaždin, Croatia. The school fosters a proactive atmosphere of openness to new ideas and challenges, coupled with strong responsibility towards the obligations that we take on. The school lays claim to some historical significance, having been founded on march 19, 1933. as a four –year school named in honor

of Queen Maria. It has been a hub of knowledge and culture in the city of Varaždin ever since, achieving exemplary results. The school places great value in ecology and is among the first 20 Eco Schools in Croatia. Our aim is to follow the European and world trends.

International School Carinthia (ISC) is a public-private partnership school located in southern Austria near the Italian and Slovenian bor-ders. ISC was founded in 2013 and in October 2016, ISC received Pri-mary Years Program authorization from the International Baccalaureate (IB) Organization and is now in the process of pursuing IB Middle Years Program authorization followed by IB Diploma Program authorization

as we grow. ISC is the only international school in Carinthia with English as the main language of instruction. ISC’s holistic academic program emphasizes inquiry-based learning, technolo-gy integration and international mindedness.

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Costeas Geitonas School (CGS) is one of the largest private schools in Greece. The school is open and accessible to children and their families from the wider area of Attica, which represents a population with diverse backgrounds. CGS is an IB international school and offers a robust educational programme to stu-dents of all ages. CGS is also known for its emphasis on technology, STEM education (CGS STEM Academy), sport (Elite Athlete Programme), Arts, and

its sensitivity for students with special needs at either side of the spectrum (differentiated teaching for students with dyslexia and CGS Academia for students with higher learning mo-tivation).

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Module I: History and Culture

Module I – History and culture was aimed at discovering student’s personal stories, getting to know their teachers, schools as well as broaden their knowledge about the city and the region. Students chose various forms of presenting their achievements in forms of posters, videos with interviews, multimedia presentations and video montages. The culmination of the module was a LTT meeting in Lublin, held in Lublin between 19th-23rd March 2018, where the students got a chance to mix their local legends and create brand-new ones. It was a refreshing experience as their creativity and innovative approach surprised all of us!

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Local project logo competitions and transnationalcompetition on eTwinning

As a start to the ERASMUS + Connected with the Environment 2017-19 project, the logo com-petition took place between all five schools in the cooperation. Each school ran their own internal logo competition. After the finalist from each school was determined, then voting “Eu-rovision style” took place. Each partner determined which logo would receive 10 points (top vote), 6 points, 4 points and 2 points. No school could vote for their own logo. The winner was the school with the most points after voting. Each partner school made a video of the voting and shared the video with all the schools. The winner was announced by the main coordinator and the results were given to students.

International School Carinthia produced a few different logos in groups of two and three within our Connected with the Environment group. From these logos, the team decided to take some of the best features of each and add them to the logo that they thought was the best. In the end, it was a combination of many ideas from each team and we were quite proud of our creation!

After all of the voting was complete, the winner of the contest was I.osnovna škola Varaždin school from Croatia! All members of the ERASMUS + partnership were quite happy to have this logo to represent our project. Congratulations again to Croatia!

I.osnovna škola Varaždin (Croatia)

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International School Carinthia (Austria) CGS (Greece)

Paderewski (Poland) OŠ Danile Kumar (Slovenia)Danila Kumar International School

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Analysis of how students have changed throughoutthe years

Before the students can dig into the stories of their regions and cities it is a good idea they could start with themselves. The main objectives of this task are to:

• allow students to analyse the changes in their lives• get to know each other• see whether the changes are the same or different

The original plan was to create posters with pictures or multimedia presentations. However, the idea of every project is to get the students creative and during the process some of them found different ways they would like to approach the subject. This way the work on the task was extremely creative and enabled the children to express in the most efficient way. Apart from posters with pictures we also had a blog entry, a video in the application ‘Draw my life’, timelines, posters with charts and mathematical analysis as well as a holistic approach to the student education throughout the years provided by students from CGS in Greece.

As in every project, students were monitored by their teachers and had to report on the prog-ress made. It could be summarised in the following steps:

1. choice of the form (poster, video etc)2. notes on the life and selection of pictures3. a draft and a consultation with the teacher4. work on a final version5. presentation and evaluation

A fragment of the presentation of students from CGS (Greece)

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This could be realised in the span of two or three meetings. The main point should be the pre-sentation of the work so that all the students could get to know each other. As a result they can also notice the similarities and differences their peers undergo and in the next step, compare their experience with students from other schools. The evaluation performed in Międzynaro-dowa Szkoła Podstawowa Paderewski in Lublin showed that the students enjoyed the task, got to know themselves and others as well as have become more aware of the changes going on in their lives. They also appreciated the freedom in the choice of the form, which allowed them to present their lives in the best possible way.

During the realisation of the task it turned out that it can be also used as a way to measure the improvement of students’ skills and achievements eg. on PE lessons, in relationships with other people, skills in particular subjects such as Maths, Science, languages etc. It has become visible to students that they are constantly changing and developing and even though those changes may seem in-significant at the time, they certainly influence their lives in the future.

A poster of Alicja from Paderewski (Poland)

Konrad from Paderewski (Poland)

Mathematical analysis of Vita from POS (Croatia)

A timeline of Tonka from POS (Croatia)

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Creating family trees and lap books with family stories

The starting point for this activity was the decision whose life will they investigate and what kind of information they would like to present.

As the focus of this module was history, the students were able to:

• investigate and explore it from different points of view• to get to know their own and their families’ history • form of a family tree. Some students choose to create a digital family tree thus using their computer skills and the tablets apps: miMind, while others used a more traditional approach and created a paper ver-sion which enabled them to utilize their drawing skills and show their artistic talent.

Below there are a few examples from different students:

Family tree in a digital form (made by Croatian student)

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Family tree (made by Slovenian student)

This way they learned what a family tree is, how to gather information and what kind of infor-mation can be presented in this way.

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Making video clips about school’s history

Students spend a large part of their life in their school. The school constitutes the social con-text in which they grow up, they socialize and they develop their personalities. Each school has its own history and the administration, teachers and students are part of it. The aims of this activity was to:

• Explore the history of the school through school archives but also through interaction with the people of the school

• Prepare a short video to present the history of the school.

Students were enthusiastic about this idea and they worked really hard: They took up the role of a journalist, a screenplay writer, a director and a film editor. They arranged meetings with various members of the school community. They prepared questions and they interviewed the Head of the school, teachers and former students. They researched and discovered fasci-nating details about the history of the school. They shot videos and they edited their material in order to finalize their product. During the learning activity in Lublin-Poland, all videos were presented so that all participants had the opportunity to see the work of the students but also be informed about the history of the five schools.

Students from Croatia researched the school archives and went back to 1875 when the school started to run the chronicle for each year.

Screenshot from Croatian video

Here is a link where you can watch the full video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCkY-BU6fnCE

Students from Greece decided to interview the Head of the school so they prepared a list of questions and arranged a meeting in his office.

Screenshot from Greek video

Here is a link where you can watch the full video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXs0B-KH2Z3o

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Students from Slovenia explored how their school has changed through the years by inter-viewing a former student and current parent.

Screenshot from Slovenian video

Here is a link where you can watch the full video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU3mUX-QCr9k

Students from Poland used technology to present the history of their school in a original way.

Screenshot from Polish video

Here is a link where you can watch the full video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLLXMU-VjJjs

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Interviewing chosen teachers about their life stories

After our students have studied their development and their history (past), they had to do the same with their school. To get familiar with the life and work in school through the past, they decided to interview the teachers.

The aim was:

• to find out more how they used to teach and what teaching methods and teaching re-sources they used

• what kind of relationship was between a teacher and a student at some other time.

In order to realize their task, students had to choose the teachers first for an interview and discuss the questions.

Students from Croatia have made an interview with a retired teacher.

Here is the link you can watch the full video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGEBBt-MatZU&list=LLKhaPve2a8FZe5lsEgN-VLbA

Students from Greece have made in-terviews with teachers and their life stories.

Here is the link you can watch the full video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOtCKZ-KAAtc

Screenshot from Croatian video

Screenshot from Greek video

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Students from Poland have made an interview with a Spanish teacher.

Here is the link you can watch the full video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMP-CEyCDN2A

Students from Slovenia have made an interview with an Art teacher.

Here is the link you can watch the full video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU3mUX-QCr9k

There were few younger still working teachers but also few retired teachers and children easily compared and concluded similarities and differences between them.

All the interviews were recorded by students and the result are video clips. The students were excited and interested in teachers stories and they enjoyed video recording.

Analyzing and comparing interviews with project participants we can conclude that teachers’ stories are quite similar. The most significant is the love for children and teaching that con-nects them.

Screenshot from Polish video

Screenshot from Polish video

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Gathering legends about cities/regions

After having discovered the stories of their families and schools, the students are prepared to enter the last part of the module. The objectives of this task are to:

• learn about the cultural heritage of the students’ environment• familiarize with the local legends and choose the most interesting ones• present the legends in different forms

In this part the students had an opportunity to revise or to discover their local legends. Ev-ery school selected two most interesting and important ones to become a base of a project during the meeting of all the partners. What is more, the task can become a part of many types of classes, starting from history lessons or national language classes to art and foreign languages classes.

As a project it can be performed individually or in groups, depending on students’ preferences. The steps outlined in the action plan for the task are the following:

1. doing research on the local legends and narrowing it down to one (per person/group)2. choosing a form of a presentation3. consulting a teacher about the form4. presenting a legend n a form of a comic strip, a picture, a written story or a multimedia

presentation5. evaluation of the project

Through the work on the task it was stated by the students that every single place in the world has its legends and stories and it is our task to preserve it. They are easy to understand even for small children and certainly all of us remember some legends and stories during the bed-time even if we didn’t realize what they were at that time. The legends chosen by the students were:

• Czarcia Łapa (about a trial with the devil’s appearance)• Legend on how Lublin got its name• The great fire of Varaždin• Legend about bear’s den and church• Legend of lake Wörthersee• Legend on how Klagenfurt got its name• The birth of Athena (and other form the mythology of Athens)• The legend of Water Man in Ljubljana• The legend of Martin Krpan

The diversity of the legends enabled students to create brand new legends and perform a short play. This ensured all the kids remember a piece of their friends’ local legends as well as the teachers be amazed by their pupils innovative ideas and imagination.

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A fragment of presentation about Greek myths A story of a Great Fire of Lublin

Slovenian legend of Povodni mož in pictures

Croatian legend about great fire in Varaždin 1776

Croatian legend about bear’s den and church

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Blogging about cultural events

Technology provides the freedom to share, virtually instantaneously, experiences and infor-mation from people to people and culture to culture. In order to utilize this technological freedom, the partner schools decided to develop a collective blog where each school will once a week share an event that has taken place in their community or update achievements in their pursuits of module and objective fulfillment. Giving all participant schools a chance to communicate regularly via an electronic platform on a regular basis in English was a valuable aspect that also proves to be challenging at times from a point of view of effective expression and relaying factual information and also risk-taking since the majority of participants do not have English as their native language.

The events described on the blog were as follows (by country):

Croatia:

• The Varaždin Baroque Evenings m . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = -JKhw83cf-g8

• Špancirfest www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5dQdlM6BGM

Poland:

• Night of Culture en.nockultury.pl/• Carnaval Sztukmistrzów in Lublin en.sztukmistrze.eu/• Different sounds festival en.innebrzmienia.eu/• Jarmar Jagielloński en.jarmarkjagiellonski.pl/

Night of Culture in Lublin

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Greece:

• The globally acclaimed “Van Gogh Alive – The Experience” (www.vangoghalive.gr/indexen.html), which stretches the definition of the word ‘exhibition’ as it stimu-lates the senses and opens the mind and

• The exhibition “Science Fiction: A Journey into the Unknown” (www.sgt.gr/eng/SPG1974/) , which explores science fiction’s long-standing influence on the full range of contemporary culture.

Slovenia:

• Enci benci Katalenci performanceconnectedwiththeenvironment.blogspot.com/2018/04/enci-benci-katalenci-performance.html• Opening of the art exhibitionconnectedwiththeenvironment.blogspot.com/2018/04/opening-of-art-exhibition-portraits.html

Austria:

Velden and the surrounding area are mainly tourism focused and have been for a number of decades. Because of this, events mainly cater to the tourist crowd and this is what we chose to blog about. It is and has been a part of our cultural fabric.

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Analysing the cities’ importance in a chosen historical period

By the end of this activity, students have gained a deeper understanding of:

• what everyday life was like in the chosen historical period• what consequences did it have for the life we have today.

In order to achieve this goal there are various paths to take.

The students from Slovenia chose to write a story set in a historical period of the Romans, when the city of Ljubljana was still called Emona.

The students from Poland talked about Lublin during Industrial Age and their project called ‘2nd Chance - Waking up a Sleeping Giants’.

The students from Croatia presented the event of a great fire that happened in Varaždin in 1776. They chose that period because after the great fire Varaždin was not a capital city.

Here is the link you can watch the video which students were given from Museum of Varaždin:www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_LzmlDCG-c

The students from Greece analyzed the importance of Athens during the 5th century BC, the so called Pericles’ Golden Age and presented the Economic, political, philosophical and cultur-al evolution of the city. They discussed the development of direct democracy and presented the landmark monuments created during that period.

The students from Austria discovered that there was not a lot of information about the sig-nificance of Velden am Wörthersee so they expanded their research to the state of Carinthia in which Velden lies. They then chose to create a History blog about what they discovered.

Screenshot from Croatian video

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This task encouraged students to investigate the significance and importance of the historical period – the time frame, the architecture, the customs, language and the culture itself.

pic1: Student’s presentation of Emona.

Polish students working on Industrial sites wordsearch

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Learning/teaching/training activity in Lublin

All the activities performed throughout the module were to prepare the students for the final task. The representatives of schools in Greece, Croatia, Austria and Slovenia came to Interna-tional Primary School Paderewski in Lublin, Poland, in March 2018. The aims of the meeting were the following:

• summarize the work from Module I History• reenact the legends prepared by the students in all of the partners schools• reinforce linguistic and social abilities of participants• promote Polish cultural heritage

The first day consisted of integrating workshops as well as acting classes in order to break the ice with the stage and get familiar with the upcoming situation. Next, all the schools briefly summarized their participation in the project and shared their work with others. In the mean-time, after some brainstorming the teachers have decided to change the activity with reenact-ments of legends. Instead of preparing the plays of existing legend, the teachers wanted the students to come up with an entirely new play containing the elements of legends from every country. The children were divided into groups with representatives of each school. They had to revise the legends, pick the most suitable elements and create a draft of the play. In order to help, the teachers provided them with a Story Mountain handout, which facilitated them to work on the plot. In the middle of the week, on Wednesday morning they had to resent their ideas in order for the teachers to monitor the progress and for the other groups to give the feedback. It was a very significant moment for the teams to reflect upon their work and make some necessary adjustments. All in all, the plays staged on Friday were extraordinary! The teachers could not hide their pride and appreciation for the students creativity. It was impres-sive especially because the kids improvised with the gym equipment, brought some prompts form their host families and did not have access to a professional stage. All the groups sup-ported each other and had a lot of fun watching the performances.

Apart from working on plays the guests visited the Old Town in Lublin and its Castle as well as went on a field trip to a picturesque palace in Kozłówka and a city of Kazimierz Dolny.

The visit was a great success for all the participants as it showed both the students and the teachers not to be afraid of improvisation and adjusting the plans.

The videos of the play are available on our eTwinning page:twinspace.etwinning.net/50939/home

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MODULE II - Relationships

After having got familiar with the history and culture of all partner schools and countries, we set out to discover the world of the relationships around us. The aim of this module was to identify and analyse the emotions in the classrooms as well as find out whether the school can be a family. The students were also involved in organising socialising actions for their environments and conducted a variety of charity actions so that they could help some local institutions. The final steps were to define the schools’ position in the local environment and to interview the citizens on the quality of life in the region. This module enabled the students to develop management skills and deepened their collaborations skills as all the tasks had required their initiative and group work.

The module was finalised in Varaždin, Croatia, with the 2nd Transnational Project Meeting, where project staff members worked on this Guidebook, exchanged good practices and strengthened their relationships.

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Analysis of emotions and relationships in classroom

A classroom is a dynamic environment where students are educated but also develop as personalities. As John Dewey points out “education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself”. Effective teaching and learning is closely related to the emotional state of the students and it is also affected by the relationships that are built between students and their teachers and peers. Students who feel emotionally safe and respected in class are more likely to develop their mental capacity relative to students who feel rejected or underestimated. Re-search has also shown that students that take up the responsibility of their own learning and are self-regulated become long-life learners, set their own personal aims and decide the steps needed in order to achieve them.

As part of Module 2 of our project, we decided to run a survey among the students of all five participating countries in order to look into our classrooms and draw some conclusions about the emotions and relationships developed in them. The Erasmus+ team collaborated with the Psychologist department of the schools and prepared a questionnaire that was delivered to students from all five schools online. The list of questions was as follows:

1. I feel physically safe in my classes (nobody fights with me, beats me etc).2. I feel emotionally safe in my classes (I am liked, accepted, I am not bullied, teased etc).3. Faculty and staff value what students have to say.4. My school respects all races and cultures.5. Students in my class care about learning and getting a good education.6. I’m not afraid of asking questions and expressing my points of view.7. I feel involved in decisions about things that affect them in class.8. I feel that I belong (am accepted and liked) in my class.9. Most of my teachers like me.10. I respect my teachers.11. Most of my teachers know my name.12. I can count on my friends and teachers if I have a problem.13. My head teacher tries so that we work in groups, collaborate, help each other and talk.14. My friends and teachers support me when I can’t do certain things.15. Good atmosphere and contact with my classmates and the teacher helps me in learning.

After running the survey, the answers were statistically analysed using the Google Sheets program, graphs were created and the results were analyzed so that the team could draw some conclusions.

The task is considered to be extremely useful. Apart from the fact that students were involved in the process of conducting a simple social research and statistically analysing the outcomes of a quantitative questionnaire very important findings were identified.

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Our analysis showed that most of the students feel physically and emotionally safe in their class - that includes feeling liked and accepted. The vast majority feels their school respects all races and cultures, and agree that the faculty and staff value what the students have to say.

Most students believe their classmates care about learning and getting a good education and are not afraid of asking questions and expressing their points of view in school. In our schools students care about learning and getting a good education and they think it is very important for have a successful life in the future. They have no fear of asking questions and they feel involved in decisions about things that affect them.

It was evident from the survey that the students most strongly agree with the statement that most of their teachers know their names and most also stated that they respect their teachers and most of their teachers like them. The majority agrees that good atmosphere and contact with their classmates and the teacher helps them in learning and they can count on their friends and teachers if they have a problem.

Examples of bar charts

The full statistical analysis of our findings can been found in our e-twinning page

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Organising socialising event for students, parents and teachers

The main focus of this module were relationships - viewed from different perspectives. Stu-dents, parents and teachers together create a community - school - each playing their own role and contributing their own part.

Social events strengthen and enrich the relationships within the community. This helps:

• the participants to work on their social skills• connects and supports all the members of the community • enriches the parent - student - teacher relationships• developes care for each other• the students can meet their peers from different classes in different environment

The events can take different forms and shapes.

Connected With the Environment students at International School Carinthia invited the school community to a “parent coffee” to learn about the project and gain support for the hosting opportunity in May when all member schools send their representatives to ISC. Par-ents were given the opportunity to ask questions and offer their support.

Another group from ISC’s Connected With the Environment assisted in the annual PYP 5 Exhibition where stu-dents present their findings of a self-di-rected inquiry over a two hour period on a Friday. This gave these Connect-ed with the Environment students the chance to discuss the project with parents and students from across the school. Their documentation of the event itself is in the form of a video.

Each year Danile Kumar International School from Slovenia organises a socializing event that enables the students, their parents and teachers to spend quality time in nature. The collage of the event can be seen on the following link:youtu.be/4BhvOPmX0KE

At Danila Kumar International School’s Social Event

ISC Parent Coffee Morning Information Event

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CGS in Greece organised Academic evening where the students presented their achievement and experience to the parents and this year they included a presentation of the Erasmus pro-gram. The report can be read at Erasmus+ blog connectedwiththeenvironment.blogspot.com/2018/05/cgs-academic-evening.html.

The students made a performance and a fair for Christmas.

MSP Paderewski organised a sleepover at school and a sports day. The sleepover allowed the stu-dents get to know their teachers in a less formal environment which allowed them to connect and strenghten their bonds while having a lot of fun. The video is available under the link:www.youtube.com/watch?v=KerTPYqIqy0

Croatian students have made these events: • Christmas Eve fair at school• Pink Shirt day• Family day• School day• Down Syndrome Day www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdWaFc_-GH0

All these various events and activities enabled the students, parents and teachers to connect and get to know each other in a different environment. It was a great opportunity for students to socialize with all the other students form their school, not just form their own class, all while learning and contributing to help others.

Sleepover at Paderewski school

Social events at 1st Primary School Varaždin, Croatia

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Analysing the school as a family

We spend so much time at school throughout our life that sometimes it can be called our second home. A well-functioning school can be therefore compared to a family. The main aims of this task was to:

• get to know the students’ school environment• determine the roles in family and how it functions• practise creating comic strips and family trees.• presenting the school as a family

The plan was to create online comic strips or a family trees. First, the students had to reflect on what actually a family is and if there are any similarities or differences between the school and their family. It turned out that those two can function in a similar way and the same roles can be spotted both at school and at home. Students were supposed to get to know the school environment and find the area they would like to present in their work. Some schools decided to do the comic strip, but the outcome was different.

Students in Poland discovered a new programme called Pixton and created online comic sto-ries about school being a second home for them.

In turn, Slovenian students used lego blocks to present scenes both from school and home to show similarities and differences.

Croatian team went for creating a family tree consisting of all the faculty members having a certain role. They used computer programme www.xmind.net

A comic book made by a Polish student

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A lego story from a Slovenian group

A Croatian school family free

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Greece: Students from Greece decided to use online software to create a family tree like rep-resentation of our school. They visited all different departments of the school and they con-ducted brief interviews with the heads so that they are informed about the teachers and their roles. Finally they created their family tree using familyecho.com. Their work can be seen at the following link: familyecho.com/?p=START&c=9zhyk230wm&f=877994637829539873

Austria: International School Carinthia chose to brainstorm what qualities make a family a family. After some deliberation, students concluded that a school is not really “like a family” in the sense that most people that you do not come into contact with on a daily basis would be difficult to rank any sort of relationship with. With that agreement, students de-cided to move forward with more questions based on year-levels rather than vertically across the year levels because these are the students (and staff members) that each child would have more contact with and would likely draw upon connections when answering surveys about “the school family”. They collected the results from a sampling of students across the school, compiled results, analyzed them and made a poster of the constructed graphs from the analysis along with some brief conclusions that could be reached through the analysis.

Questions used on the survey:

• I am nervous about my Teacher• I can talk with my teacher about outside of school things• I play a special role in my class• I can talk with anyone in my school• I can work efficiently with anyone in my class

Austria posting final outcome of results and conclusions of our “School as a Family” investigatino.

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Thanks to this activity young people discovered that every single person at school has a given role and can be not only a teacher or a colleague but also a tutor, a guide or like a sister. The students also realised that as in every family, the school life also has its ups and downs, but all in all, we are there to support each other. From a practical from of view students acquired the ability to create family trees and use online softwares to produce the final product.

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Conducting charity actions at school connected with local initiatives

Each school has a program of a type of service learning which the kids complete in order to open their mind to the needs and their ability to fill them in communities in which they belong. Bringing all of these ways of fulfilling this idea of looking outward at communities of which the kids are a part and sharing

them with each other helped to fulfill the exchange of ideas and cultures at the foundation of our ERASMUS+ Connected with the Environment project.

The process for determining what would best fill this purpose is below:

• each school looked at what was considered a “need” to fulfill in their wider school com-munity

• initiatives were created with a purpose of helping a group or groups of people within a community that the kids belonged by fulfilling the determined “need”

• students then organized the necessary components in order to successfully fulfill the above need within their wider school community.

The final events in which each school took part are described below:

Austria: A member of our group dis-covered that there is a shortage of donated blood available for those in need of it. She organized a date in June, 2018 for a blood drive spon-sored by the Austrian Red Cross to be held at International School Carinthia. 20 people signed up and there were more walk-ins during the four hour period on Fri-day, 28 September, 2018. For a variety of reasons all but a few of the blood donors were not allowed to donate blood to the Austria Red Cross. Due to laws for information disclosure and clarity of lia-bility, potential donors who did not speak German fluently were not allowed to donate, even with a translator at hand. Ineligibility to donate blood is quite common and is among the major caus-es for the current shortage. It was a great opportunity for reflection and they are keen (armed with the knowledge of attempt number one) to possibly attempt blood drive 2019!

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

— Mahatma Ghandi

Blood Drive ISC 2018

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Croatia: Charity actions at school: • “A great heart of Varaždin”• “The smile of the children in hospital”• “A Visit to Vukovar”• “We help animals”• “Let’s help the floodplain area”• “The Earth day”• “ Humanitarian Grocery Store”www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT-M5aB4XIk

Greece: Every year CGS students become vol-unteers for the authentic marathon which takes place in Athens. All volunteers have a meeting point in Agia Paraskevi, a suburb of Athens where the marathon runners pass from. From this place kids with their powerful shouting and their hot clapping, they encourage the marathon runners. Our school cooperates with a Greek nonprofit organization named, ELEPAP, that supports children with disabilities. The volunteers also collect plastic bottles and they throw them in the green bins. Our school helps the town to be cleaned after the Authentic Marathon and gives the plastic bottles for recycling.cgs.gr/programma-ethelontismou-35ou-marathoniou-tis-athinas-tou-afthentikou-marathoniou

Poland: Paderiada - a fundraising event for Leszek Podkański foundation helping the kids with seri-ous illnesses and Give a paw - a collection for an animal shelter supported by Ex Lege foundation. During Paderiada students, parents and teachers spend some amazing time outside while collect-ing money for a good cause. The students prepared some items to be sold during the fair. The video is available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UKkvV82RpU.

Slovenia: Every year, at Danila Kumar Elementary School, we organize the traditional “Help our Schoolmate” charity fair. For the event, the students, together with their mentors, prepare a cultural program with an exhibition of their artwork, created especially for this occasion. The proceedings of the sales and the auction of sports equipment are used to help the underprivi-leged students, and provide the possibility for them to participate in various activities such as field trips and excursions, that they normally could not afford.en.os-danilekumar.si/2017/11/29/new-year-charity-fair-help-our-schoolmates

Each year Grade 8 students complete a Community project that enables them to research a chosen topic in great detail and conclude it with an action that will help the community in some way.

Charity actions at 1st Primary School Varaždin, Croatia

Athens Classic Marathon volunteers

Paderiada in Paderewski

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Analysing the school position in the neighbourhood

The focus of this task was to determine what kind of position does the school have in the neighbourhood and try to gather information on how that influences the behaviour and con-sequently on the relationships.

They survey had eight questions listed as follows:

1. Have you ever heard of our school?2. Do you know anybody who attends this school?3. List any differences there are to a state school? 4. Do you think that our school is more valuable for students than other school?5. Is it worth to pay for private school? 6. Do you think this kind of teaching/learning in our school is successful?7. Would you like your kid to go to this school?8. Do you think that our school is a good way to start a successful life?

The students were responsible to interview people in their neighbourhood thus collecting an-swers form five different cities (and countries).

Students from all five schools conducted surveys among the residents of the schools’ district. The results show that everyone knows where our schools are located. Most think that it teach-es appropriate values and that they are successful. They feel that the school successfully prepares its students for real life and would enrol their children in the school.

They listed the following sources of noise in the neighbourhood: delivery services, building sites, youth (10-14 years old), firemen, police, football field, school playground, birds. Most disagree that the school is a source of noise in the neighbourhood and agree that the school has a positive influence in the neighbourhood. It is evident from the survey that they feel the cooperation with the school is good and that they occasionally attend events organised by the school.

The students got the opportunity to meet people in their neighbourhood, learn more about how they see their school and the effect it has on the surroundings. They also gained experi-ence in collecting information and data and learning how to present it.

Most of the interviewers answered that they prefer private than public schools. They men-tioned that private schools in our country, not only provide better education, but also have better facilities and create more chances for every of their student’s studies.

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Examples of pie charts from the survey

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Quality of life in the region - An interview with the citizens

After our students analyzed the relationships in the classroom, a school as a family and the school position in the community, we wanted to find out about the quality of life in the region.The data was obtained through citizen interviews and the goal of the task was to find out what the citizens are proud of and what would they eventually change in their city or region. Students wanted to explore and learn about the:

• Quality of life• Quality of water• Quality of air• General satisfaction considering environment

Students developed their communication skills.

Students from Croatia were interested in the citizens’ opin-ion about the quality of air and water in the city and how eco-logically aware they were in ev-eryday life.

Interview analysis concluded that citizens are unhappy with hazardous baled waste at the entrance of the city and that they are satisfied by classifying waste organized at the local community level.

The Slovenian pupils studied the sources and levels of noise in the neighborhood. They were also interested in the school’s influence in everyday life in the neigh-bourhood. They concluded that the noise level is quite high and from different sources and that their school is not the primary source of noise. Also the school does a good job at teaching appropriate values and prepares the students well for real life.

A word cloud from Croatia

A word cloud from Slovenia

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Students from Poland carried out several interviews with the citizens. They worked together on the basic questions about advantages and disadvantages of the life in Lublin. They also wanted to know what the citizens were proud of, how they assessed the cultural life or chang-es and development in their environment. After collecting the interviews they concluded that most of the people appreciate the changes in Lublin and despite the cities problems it’s a great place to live.

Austria:Students from International School Carinthia created a short interview pro-cess for parents picking up their kids from ISC. It was a challenging process that they settled on which allotted time for quick, but pointed answers to the questions that they devised. The ques-tions mainly focused on quality of life and if the respondents felt happy with the balance and general atmosphere provided by governmental entities. Quality of air and water are fortunately a “given” in the area so these were not included in the interview questions. The word cloud below was generated with these resulting interviews:

A summary made by Polish students

A word cloud from Austria

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GreeceGreek students decided that the best way to go about was to head to the centre of the town of Pallini, and approach its residents and people who have businesses or work in the area.The questions asked would revolve around the issues of the quality of life in Pallini and reasons to justify their assessment, whether they feel the municipality of Pallini, the mayor and the public services do enough regarding hygiene, cleanliness and good condition of Pallini and if they feel that Pallini is a “good” area for someone to live in and why.

The majority of the participants seem to feel that the quality of life in our area is rather good and decent. However, from their responses we can deduct that they feel that the area doesn’t have much to offer in terms of entertainment. When presenting their reasons on why they have a positive view of the area, they mentioned the following: fresh air, surrounded by trees, low noise levels, proximity to clean beaches, quality of buildings. They also mentioned that the area has a vibrant and viable market.

In terms of downsides, the respondents did make reference to the condition of the streets and littering which appear to be an issue. They feel that the municipality and the mayor do not do enough to preserve the area. A major downside is also public transport which is rather restricted in the area and most residents have to use a car daily. This, however, is burdened by the traffic problems caused, on one hand, by the number of cars in the main streets and, on the other hand, by the school busses that seem to take over the streets in the morning and late noon. These create a major traffic problem in the area as, there are quite a few private schools in Pallini and the surrounding areas. Finally, few respondents mentioned violence and crime rate which, in their view, seems to be rising due to the development of the area and the increase of its population.

A word cloud from Greece

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Module III

Module III – Technology was aimed at researching about the use of technological devices, es-tablishing rules for the netiquette, reflecting about our lives without technology and conduct-ing research about how much technology is visible in our everyday life as well as the possible threats of using technology. Students chose various forms of presenting their achievements in forms of posters, videos with interviews, multimedia presentations and video montages. The culmination of the module was a LTT meeting in Athens, held in Athens between 21st-25th January 2019, where the students got a chance to attend a workshop about 3D design and 3D printing and create a 3D logo of our Erasmus program. They also had the chance to visit the famous archeological sites of Acropolis and Mycenae and the beautiful city of Naf-plio. It was an amazing experience for all of us.

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Interviewing students on the use of technological devices

For the best picture of how students are using technology in all partner schools, the Connect-ed With the Environment group from each school collaborated on the creation of a survey. Research was completed by each school on common measures for determining the depth and breadth of use of devices. The resulting research results were then used to collectively construct the survey. Each school distributed the survey to a representative group from within their school. There were 103 total participants indicating typical use of devices across the five partner schools.

In the end, the survey consisted of eleven questions covering three main topics of importance; types and use of the devices owned (7 questions), critical thinking with electronically sourced information and safety in cyber-contacts (2 questions each).

When it comes to critically thinking, there appear to be mixed results in the group. The partici-pants answered on a continuum from 1 (always) to 10 (never) when asked, “Do you believe the information that you read on the internet?”. A large percentage of students were in the 4 to 7 (center) range on this question (just shy of 70%) which may or may not indicate that they are being critical thinkers when they read electronically based material. Just over 40% of students landed in the 6 to 10 range on the continuum which put just under 60% on the 1-5 half of the continuum which would indicate that students are less likely to outright believe what they read on the internet. The second question asked students how often they verify information they see on the internet. The students also responded on a 1 (never) to 10 (always) continuum. There were just under 60% in the 4 to 7 center range. Students were as equally split as possi-ble given an odd number of participants with just under 50 % in the 1 to 5 range and just over 50% in the 6 to 10 range.

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The questions inquiring about device ownership and usage detailed some very interesting pat-terns among the student group mix from the five partner schools. All but one student reported having at least one cell phone. 97 of the 103 surveyed also have a laptop. Though cell phones and laptops were the most common devices owned, many more students reported having multiple devices in addition to these two - including gaming devices like playstations. While almost two thirds of students reported that an appropriate amount of time to spend daily on their devices was three hours or less, more than two thirds of the students surveyed reported (in reality) spending four or more hours per day on a combination of their devices. Just shy of 60% of students report that their phone is the device where they choose to spend a majority of their “device time”. The partner schools are technologically oriented; however, phones are generally not a part of this technology policy so students are spending large amounts of their leisure time on their phones where over one third answered that social media is their number one choice. Movies and videos came in second place with just over 25% of students reported it as their top choice of leisure time spent on their devices.

When students responded to the two questions involving cyber-contacts, they showed some promising, but also risky tendencies. When a student is contacted by a person they know “only online”, one out of three students would be curious enough to “safely” meet them out-right, communicate further and leave a possibility of a future meeting open or (more than 10% of students surveyed) may make plans to meet the person on their own (situationally depen-dent). The remaining (almost) two thirds would seek advice from a trusted adult or friends or outright block the person with no further communication.

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Students were also asked what they would do if someone they do not know contacted them. Almost half said that they were unsure of what they would do since this situation had never occurred; however, over 20% said that they would cautiously respond and communicate with the person out of curiosity.

Greece: Students began working on the task by doing some online research, finding articles and other resources related to the use of technological devices by teenagers. The purpose of this step was to become familiar with the topic and gain some background knowledge on its various aspects.

Post this stage, students formulated questions making sure they were appropriate for the intended interviewees, in terms of content and language. The questionnaire that resulted from this consisted of approximately 20 questions and was distributed online via Google forms. Erasmus+ students visited two classes during Technology sessions and, after discussing with them about the topic and goal of the questionnaire, invited them to complete it.

Finally, the results were gathered, analysed and discussed among the Erasmus+ students.

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Establishing rules for the netiquette to avoid hurting each other online

The work “Netiquette” is a combination of the “net” from internet and “etiquette” and it means to respect others’ users views and displaying courtesy when posting to online discussion groups. Students spend a lot of time of their everyday lives online which means that it is a crucial part of their education to learn how to properly behave online.

The goals for this task were:

• To brainstorm in the group about the need to properly behave online and have rules• To use technology and research about Netiquette• To decide which rules are the most appropriate for their own use• To create a poster with their rules to display in the school

All students were engaged in a discussion on the way they interact with each other online, apart from the way they behave individually. Drawing on their comments, they brainstormed ways in which online activity can become hurtful and/or disrespectful to others. Based on the ideas that derived, they did online research on the harmful behaviours that have been noticed when people are online. Also, they looked for advice on how to react, should they be the re-cipients of such behaviours, as well as how to avoid them. They then put together the most common threats statistically along with what the Connected With the Environment members thought were important to students at their school.

A presentation was created and the creators of the poster then went around to present it in each homeroom and, lastly hung printed copies around the school so that our whole school community could benefit.

Poster from Austria

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Croatian Eco team made some rules how to avoid hurting each other online. they chose some social network for example and made the rules. They have made a poster with windows which you can open and read those rules.

Posters from Croatia and Poland

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Poster from Greece

Posters (right picture: Poster in Slovenian language, left picture: Poster in English language) from Slovenian students displayed in school

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Writing and recording a (video) journal about a day without technology

After the research which devices students use on a daily basis and how often they are used each partner school spent a day without technology.

• The aims of the activity:

- to endure without using a mobile phone or any other technological device during the day- to point out activities that can be implemented instead of using technology- to see the advantages and disadvantages of using technological devices

CROATIA

Croatian school had the Day without technology on 29th No-vember 2018.

Most of the students accepted that idea and really didn’t use their phone that day.

During the classes most of the students didn’t see great changes because teachers don’t use technology every day. But most of the teacher use some of the technology and they said it was very hard to get used to doing something with-out their laptop, smartboard or tablets. Their students were very confused that day, but they can felt how we were taught long time ago. Students said that that day was a nice experience to see how their parents were taught in the past.

Most of students and teacher said it would be nice to have The day without technology every month.

Here is the link you can watch the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JobVzZ2uhhY

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POLAND

Erasmus + project team prepared a Day with-out technology on the 28th November. The entire school was encouraged to participate, however nobody was forced to take part. Stu-dents notified their peers via posters hung around the school as well as through short announcements in every classroom. Teach-ers were also asked not to prepare lessons based on technological devices. It was not an easy day, but the children who had taken this challenge felt extremely proud. During the Erasmus+ meeting they focused on socialis-ing and getting to know each other. For the next two days students from the entire could write their opinions on special posters. After the analysis it turned out that there were mixed opinions - some people liked this idea and some could not imagine their lives without a phone.

AUSTRIA

Connected With the Environment students from the ERASMUS + Austria group presented the idea of our “Day Without Technology” to all students in grades 6-9. They also commu-nicated with the academic coordinator and teachers of the Primary School about what the “Day Without Technology” was and why they thought it was a good idea to have the students in the Primary School also experi-

ence it too. Almost all classes and teachers in the Middle School took part (aside from classes like Digital Design) on 30 November, 2018. Some took it to an extreme of going without any additional lights on in the classroom. Students walked to school who normally got rides, left phones turned off or even at home for the entire day-even out of school; however, most stu-dents were not so disciplined. ERASMUS + students wrote reflective letters and shared them with the other ERASMUS + partner schools. They then created a banner of their experiences and reflections. Other students were invited to contribute to the word-splash banner as well. The banner was then hung in the stairwell so that the entire school can see the collective re-flections on the Day Without Technology.

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GREECE

Students were asked to reflect on the extent to which they use technology or interact with technology in their daily life. They were encouraged to note down all kinds of devices they use and the purpose for which they use them. The resulting realization was that, indeed, technol-ogy plays a major part in their life.

Further on, students had to imagine and/or act upon a day with no technology. By doing so, they would have to consider the constraints they would face, alternatives to not using technol-ogy to complete daily tasks and the way this would make them feel.

Finally, students produced a video which presented their perspective on a day with no tech-nology. Moreover, students wrote letters where they explained how they imagined a day with no technology to be or how their day with no technology went. These letters were later sent to Erasmus+ students from other countries!

SLOVENIA

The 21st of December 2018 was very special for our school. We had a day without technol-ogy - ˝IZŠTEKANI˝ or ˝UNPLUGGED˝. And when the no-phone rule is on for our students at all times, even teachers and staff had to obey it and put our classic lessons aside because all computers and projectors were turned off. And instead of grammar rules and equations, lessons were focused on socialising without our everyday devices and what our lives would look like without technology today.

Our students had different opinions:

• I think it’s good because we can spend our time in a different way without technology.• I don’t really see the difference.• In my opinion it’s pretty interesting and fun, we could have days like this more often.• I like that day because we can see how our everyday lessons would look without comput-

ers and other devices that make them easier.

The responses were overall very good and our students are looking forward to repeating the project next year or even making it a monthly thing.

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Workshops for teachers on technology in the classrooms

As most of the students who are now at school have been born into a digital era, it is indis-pensable for us, the teachers, to keep up with their reality. Some teachers use the electronic devices as tools on a daily basis, whereas some feel uncertain and reserved towards introduc-ing phones or tablets on their lessons. The aim of organising workshops for teachers was to:

• increase the motivation of teachers to enhance their lessons• build the confidence in using ICT tools• exchange good practices between teachers

CROATIA

Croatian Eco Team Teacher organized a lecture and workshops for other teachers in the school.

The workshop was prepared by a member of our project team Tea Pavičić Zajec – an elemen-tary teacher and a PhD in informatics and communication sciences.

She has introduced teachers with the advantages and disadvantages of using technology in teaching and how to critically choose the right teaching technology. Teachers got familiar with available online materials, some tools where they can create their own content and the instructions how to do it.

In the second part of the workshop, teachers got introduced with the digital tools and ways of using them.

They all got instructions on the rules of conducting online classrooms and the Internet, as well as online safety, but also the respect of copyrights.

The teachers took an active role in education and work-shops.

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GREECE

In Greece the aim was to integrate ICT in the process of communicating with the students on a daily basis, to facilitate providing feedback to students and to enhance their organizational skills.

For this reason, an online platform was selected by the school and workshops were delivered by the IT department to all teachers. The teachers that participated in the workshops were trained how to create their online classes, how to post messages to the students about their everyday homework, how to create tasks and to mark them online and how to manage the term grade reporting. The online platform is available for both computers and cell phones and all teachers and student can have easy access at any time.

Apart from the online tools available, the use of this educational platform allows for all teach-ers and students to reduce their carbon footprint as the online submission and online marking of tasks reduces the use of paper.

A screenshot of the online tool

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AUSTRIA

The existence of the ERASMUS + Connected With the Environment program, our school was able to have two very different, valuable experiences.

On September 24th & 25th, 2018, we hosted Mr. Tim Burns, brain research expert and interna-tionally renowned author and workshop leader on the latest in brain research. “The Amazing Brain”. During the day, he divided his time between workshops for teacher groups and also year groups across the school from grades one to nine. On the evening of the 25th parents, teachers and students alike were invited to an evening presentation, “Building a Better Brain”. The evening workshop specifically focused on how children, their parents and educators can work together and be sure that the body (and thus the brain) are getting what is needed for optimal performance. The presentation included how our modern age of technology use and constant device access is affecting the brain.

Our school was also able to send staff mem-bers to attend the International Baccalaureate supported Educational European Education Festival, Croatia 2019 held in Zagreb on 04-05 April. The keynote focused on the integration of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) into the curriculum for the benefit of thousands of students in Croatia and how that can be used in other contexts to do the same. Global best practices of edu-cators were shared by presenters and includ-ed how technology can best be used in the classroom today. Also use of technology to bring experiences to our students from other students from around the world was shared. Attendees of the Education Festival brought back the ideas and materials to our school. They held a workshop with their colleagues to disseminate what they had learned.

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POLAND

In Poland, the workshops took a form of a panel, where a couple of teachers presented and discussed their chosen apps, websites or softwares. The teachers participating in the work-shop were practically using their phones or tablets so as to see for themselves how to use a given tool. Everybody could find something for themselves, starting with Languages and ending with Maths or Science. Paderewski has been using ICT for a long time, but there is always a place for introducing some novelties or discovering new functions of an old web-site. All the teachers were provided with the materials for self-study. The ICT tools discussed included e.g.:

• Kahoot (Jumble or Survey options)• Quizlet (as a tool not only for Language Teach-

ers)• Quik (to make quick videos)• Learning apps (source of various exercises on-

line)• Word Art (creative presentation of the content)

SLOVENIA

In Slovenia we had workshops in order to educate teachers on how to make students digitally literate already from young age. We assembled a development group of teachers, who pre-pared a programme for young learners’ digital literacy and have afterwards started educating young learner teachers on implementing the programme into their teaching.The programme is based on the following key issues:

• What skills make students digitally literate?• What is important for young learners?• What is a permanent ICT knowledge and what are the skills?• How to educate teachers to be competent in implementing the educational programme

already from Year 1.

Firstly we included into workshops (on monthly basis) teachers at the young learner stages. Teachers have been actively involved in the education by following the long-term goals and simultaneously developing detailed and meaningful plans for performing actual lessons in the classroom.

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Supporting learning via technology

Technology cannot be omitted when it comes to modern learning and teaching. As it is such a big part of students’ lives nowadays it has to be incorporated in this process. Having so many options it is indispensable, though, to choose beneficial and safe apps and websites so as to strengthen students’ learning. The aims of this task were to:

• increase students’ motivation to participate in lessons• show students the benefits of using devices in their learning process• diversify the methods of teaching• promote gamification in the learning process

PL- Quizlet live in Grade 3 as a vocabulary practice

PL - Kahoot as a grammar game

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CRO - Plickers quiz, 1st grade CRO - QR code in Math,1st grade

CRO - Kahoot, Math 4th grade

CRO - Smartboard in 1st grade

Austria: Posted banner of teacher survey results on how technology is used in their classroom

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Slovenia: Using technology in First lego league and learning during lessons

Greece: Using tablets to study 3D anatomy

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Conducting a research observation on how much technology is visible in everyday life

The task itself was closely intertwined with the definition of technology itself. During this mod-ule we already had a day without technology, so we used that knowledge to search for evi-dence of technology in everyday life.

The goals for this task were:

• Firstly to decide what technology is (which devices are considered technology).• To closely observe our surroundings - our home, our way to school, the school itself and

all the other places we visited.• To use technology to collect evidence on the use of technology and present it in various

forms (photo montage, video, electronic slide show).• Short reflections on what the students observed and how their thoughts changed during

the work on this task.

Students from all countries found that technology is present in quite a few areas of their life: on the streets, at home, in town, at school, at work...we use it to travel, to communicate, to transfer money, to observe others, to convey information, to take pictures, to work, to help with washing the dishes, clothes, to be able to see in the dark...and the list goes on.

Parts of presentations from Greek students (picture on the left) and Croatian students (picture on the right).

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Parts of presentations from Polish students (picture on the left) and Slovenian students (picture on the right).

Croatian students also included a survey that was done in one class. They have found out that students mostly use technology for fun and believe that using it makes their lives easier. From all technological devices the students mostly use mobile phones and the biggest part of students uses technology while learning and believe that it helps them.

At the end of the task the students were required to make a reflection on what they found out during their work - it can be summarised that life as we know it, is not possible without technology.

Reflection from Slovenian students.

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Conducting an observation on the possible threats of using technology

While working on this module we researched the topic of technology from different aspects - we observed its presence in our everyday lives, we experienced how a day without technology would be like and lastly we tried to determine what threats lie in the use of technology.

As we found out that various technology is present in many parts of our lives - we researched and observed what are the consequences of its use.

The goals for this task were:

• The students collected ideas on what possible threats there are • Starting with the initial ideas they conducted research on the possible threats• Students collected evidence of the threats• Created a mind map to display their findings

As technology itself encompases many aspects and areas of our lives such is the diversity of the threats that its use may cause.

One of the digital mind maps the Polish students created focuses solely on the Social media as it has become such a big part of our lives and its overuse or inappropriate use may lead to cyberbullying, criminal acts, addiction or acquiring viruses that may cause damage to your computer.

Digital mind map from Polish stu-dents.

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Croatian team has made various digital mind maps about possible threats when we use tech-nology. They have identified some of the threats:

• Not having the need to talk and hang out with people in person because of social media and texting.

• You can’t always trust your navigation – it could lead you somewhere you can’t go.• Lack of concentration when you are walking – if you have headphones or looking at your

phone – it could cause a car crash.• Not developing our creativity as much, because we can find everything on the Internet.• Believing everything on the Internet – not checking the information

Slovenian students focused on the overall use of technology and found that its misuse or overuse may result (among other) in identity theft due to oversharing personal information, giving criminals and hackers a chance to get in contact with many people as well as the con-sequences of taking selfies in dangerous situations.

Digital mind map from Croatian stu-dents

Mind map from Slovenian students

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Equipped with the knowledge from previous tasks, students discussed how much technology we use everyday and attempted to identify the threats this poses on our life focusing on differ-ent aspects - health, social life, mental health, etc.

Mind map from Greek students

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Mind map from Austrian students

Students did a paper survey of the threats on technology. They expanded their data collection to include randomly selected students at break and continued to observe their world over the course of approximately two weeks. They took pictures of their observations and in the end they did their best to find the most succinct possible images to sum up all they had observed and learned. They used the images to create the poster and located it in the “MYP Aula” area so that students can see it each day as they occupy the area and pass from class to class.

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Learning/teaching/training activity in Athens

All the activities performed throughout the module were to prepare the students for the final task. The representatives of schools in Poland, Croatia, Austria and Slovenia came to CGS, in January 2019. The aims of the meeting were the following:

• summarize the work from Module III Technology• attend a workshop on 3D design and 3D printing• reinforce linguistic and social abilities of participants• promote Greek cultural heritage

The first day consisted of a treasure hunt game in order to break the ice and get familiar with the peers and the school facilities. Next, all students attended the first session on 3D design where they learned how to use tablets and specialized software. Finally, all the schools briefly summarized their participation in the project and shared their work with others.

In the middle of the week, on Wednesday morning, students formed groups and each group designed a part of the logo of the programme. Then they used the school’s 3D printer to print their parts and construct the logo of the programme.

Apart from working on 3D design and 3D printing, the guests visited the Acropolis and the Museum of Acropolis as well as went on a field trip to the archeological site in Mycenae and the city of Nafplio.

On Friday, the students assembled the 3D printed version of the logo and they also prepared short videos presenting their experience in Athens.

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Module IV - Ecology

Module IV - Ecology was aimed at investigating what it means to be “eco-friendly” and mea-suring to what degree the school community and other larger communities associated with each partner school are eco-friendly. Students then looked at how they can personally change some of their habits in order to become more eco-friendly and also those communities of home, school and the world. The goals of the module provided opportunities for extensive research in order to become informed about positive and negative environmental impacts, use of research to create surveys. Interaction with various groups both in and out of school in order to achieve the goals for the modules also provided a wonderful opportunity for the students to interact with so many members within the communities around them.

The culmination of Module IV was an LTT meeting in Austria held in Velden am Wörthersee between 20th-24th May 2019. Students developed and applied their knowledge about current topics in Ecology to form and defend their positions in a debate open to the public.

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Measuring of how eco-friendly the students are

Students of all ages are constantly informed about and educated on the importance of en-vironmental awareness. Most students are rather familiar with the concept of recycling and reducing the use of plastic in their daily life.

This task, however, aimed at providing students with the opportunity to investigate just how eco-friendly they are. To do so, they were invited to use an online carbon footprint calculator (https://www.footprintcalculator.org/). This site asked students to respond to questions that covered a wide range of daily aspects concerning food habits, renewable resources, public transportation, etc. Upon completion of the questionnaire, the site gave students their results, showing them just how many earths are required to sustain their lifestyle.

Overall, the vast majority of students came to the realization that their habits require a lot more resources than the Earth can provide, thus, changes in their attitude is required. The site also suggested ways in which these changes can be achieved but, the results gave room for the students to engage in reflection and discussion to make their own suggestions.

Dina, Croatia

“I was really curious about how many earths I’d get. I wasn’t that disappointed with the results, but it was still surprising to see how much Earths everyone would actually need if they lived like me. Ever since I got the results, I’ve been trying my best to live a more eco-friendly life and I hope everyone starts doing the same.”

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Alicja, Poland

“Results of this test were very surprising as I haven’t thought of ecology like that. This data is frightening and I realized that I’m not doing a lot of things for our Earth. I’m not using a lot of renewable sources of energy, I should probably recycle trash better and watch what I’m buy-ing. I would like to buy a lot of products from local sources. I can walk, go rollerblading or ride a bike more often than go by car somewhere with my parents. I would like also to use public transport more but I have 2 kilometers to bus station so this is big difficulty.”

Konstantinos, Greece

“After answering the questions, the site gave us our results. We saw many interesting, but un-fortunately scary results about the resources, every person needs to live and it made us realize how each person can negatively impact the environment”

A student from Slovenia

“I was surprised by the categories the calculator used for determining how many Earths we would need to sustain our current lifestyle. We also researched why are those categories im-portant and tried to come up with ways to change our behaviour. All of our results showed that we would need a lot more than one Earth for our current lifestyle.”

Aaron, Austria

“When I found out how many actual earths that it would take to live like me, I thought that there may have been a mistake so I filled it out again, but came up with the same results. My family only travels by plane once a year, but we do drive the car a lot. So, I saw my friends’ results too and realized that they too needed many earths to live like I do. It’s kind of depressing.”

Screenshots with students’ ‘ecofriendliness’ results

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Establishing rules and guidelines for changing the habits

Once the level of eco-friendliness had been measured it was time to step in and take action.Using their results from the footprint calculator, students prepared leaflets and brochures for changing the habits to be distributed at school and exchanged among the partners.

The aims of this tasks are:

• promote eco-friendly actions and raise awareness of how to change the habits• reflect upon own actions and how to change them• design a digital leaflet with instructions

The guidelines were formulated in an accessible way so that they appeal to people and make them consider changing their own habits. In order to make the leaflets the students used Can-va, Publisher, Microsoft Word Templates and Google Slides.

Posters and leaflets of Polish students

Croatian poster with rules

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Leaflets of Greek students

Leaflets of Slovenian students

Leaflets of Austrian students

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Creating and managing school green initiatives

Eco-school teams have to continuously observe ecological trends in their school and in the city, and also be informed about the global ecological situation. The teams have to initiate the various ecological activities in their local community. The goals for this task were:

• informing students about the problem• creating and planning an initiative to raise awareness about the problem• conducting workshops about the problem• choosing a day for the initiative implementation Every school had to pick a topic for which they believed has to be dealt with in their local com-munity. The activity had to be recorded (photographed or filmed).

GREECE

So our next task was A24 Creating and man-aging school green initiatives. This meant that we had to find out what kinds of actions our school has taken and what kind of green policies are implemented in order to promote and sustain an environmentally friendly atti-tude.

From the information that we gathered, we created a 3-minute video. The video shows some of our school’s actions for saving the environment. Reduce, reuse, recycle was our slogan and we used it to motivate us. We got so motivated that we even made a song! Recycle bins, reused batteries all found their place in the lyrics.

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POLAND

“Akcja-segregacja’ is an action undertaken by the 6th-grade students of MSP Paderewski. During a span of a month they prepared coloured labels for bins to facilitate rubbish segrega-tion and presentations for other students how to segregate different products and why that is so important to our planet. The students visited all levels from 1 to 6 and involved them in interactive quizzes and discussions after the presentations. Younger students got a follow-up activities in their Art class to prepare recycling paintings or installations.

SLOVENIA

On 26th of April we had a day without electronic devic-es that was dedicated to nature conservation and our role in it. Our students created posters about nature and how to protecting it. Each student also created a hand made out of paper on which they wrote about how they are helping Earth and what everyone can do to help. We created a beautiful exhibition showing Earth and our hands supporting it.

Recycling posters Presentations for younger students

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CROATIA

On 12th April 2019 CRO eco project team conducted a couple of workshops to raise ecological awareness. The main title was STOP plastic bags and disposable plastic packaging. On the board we displayed negative effects of disposable plastic packaging on the environment. To set an example, they were handing out canvas bags instead of plastic ones to all students who have participated in the workshops. The canvas bags were sewn by students who attend ex-tracurricular activities in the school. Furthermore, students were watching short educational movies about plastic pollution and the negative effects it has on plant and animal life.

In the end, students were offered to calculate their ecological footprint which they did with interest.

CRO initiative: STOP plastic bags and disposable plastic packaging

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AUSTRIA

Our Connected With the Environment group teamed up with our MYP Environmental Service Group. A recycling program was al-ready running, but assistance was given to help make it even more eco-friendly. Card-board boxes that school notebooks were shipped in are now used to collect paper in each classroom. Plastic is separated and recycled as well as batteries and hard plas-tic caps (which supports a Slovenian chari-ty). Students started a school garden with planting of lettuce and carrots. Some of the lettuce was harvested in June and used for lunch in the school cafeteria with more to fol-low before school is out.. There are plans for the garden to be expanded next school year.

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Analysing the cities’ engagement in being eco-friendly

Students in all five countries researched in their hometowns on how eco-friendly the citizens are. Beyond the recycling of the waist they found out that some cities have well organized public transportation, some rent the bikes, there is free parking outside the cities if you use the bus. Some students went to the city hall with suggestions on how to become even more environmentally friendly.

The aims of this task were to:

• Assess and document the cities’ waste management, recycling, etc…• Research and document local initiatives within each partner school community• Determine the target group by each partner school

The important insight for young people is the awareness what are we all doing already to pro-tect our environment as well as the ideas on how to improve our actions in being even more eco-friendly.

GREECE

Students did individual research to come up with the most significant and common actions that areas around Athens take in order to be more environmentally friendly.

The most common of all is recycling bins. In Athens, there are different bins, each for different kinds of waste (household waste, packaging material, paper etc). However, we realized that unfortunately, not many people recycle consciously and regu-larly, even if the municipality has taken measures to promote it.

We also learnt that the city is taking measures to encourage people to use more eco-friendly kinds of transportation. Tickets, which are now rechargeable to decrease waste, are quite cheap compared to other countries and they can be bought at discounted prices for students and seniors.

Also, we read about out cities plans to replace old buses with electric ones, in order to reduce gases. This will really help our city become cleaner and reduce our carbon footprint!

CROATIA

On monday, 29th April 2019 CRO eco team were in the City Hall. In conversation with the dep-uty mayor, we investigate how much us our city eco- friendly. We have asked questions about

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waste at the eastern entrance to the city as well as about the possibility of setting up bicycles for rent. We talked about an initiative for the city to ban the use of single-use plastic before the year 2021 when it should become prohibited by law. We also suggested not to use of single-use plastic at big events in our city, such as Špancirfest.

SLOVENIA

The students researched what evidence can they find or observe that the City of Ljubljana is eco-friendly. With the help of their findings they created a poster showing some of the options that lessen the burden on the environment. In Ljubljana we have a well established recycling system to separate and recycle plastic, glass, paper and biological waste. We also have a bicycle sharing system that enables you to borrow a bike and use it for transport around the city thus avoiding the use of cars. For all the people that drive into Ljubljana every day there is a service P+R that encourages them to leave the car at the parking lot and continue their travels with public transport.

POLAND

Polish students analysed the main website of Lublin City Office and they found plenty of in-formation on how our city engages in eco-friendly actions. It was surprising to discover that our city is extremely ‘green’, there is still a lot to be done, though. The flagship actions are the segregation initiative as well as improving the public transport through the modernisation of buses, roads and city bikes network. There are also various smaller initiatives as e.g exchang-ing used tyres for the plants, promoting eko-driving and clean air. Our city also focuses on managing educational programmes in schools in order to raise awareness among the young-est inhabitants of our city.

AUSTRIA

Students brainstormed to find out what would be a good measure of how eco-friendly the city of Velden was. Velden is a summer tourist destination and heavily dependent on the income provided by visitors. They chose to student the local recycling center, the train station, boat rentals on the lake (the major summer tourist attraction) and the types of annual events host-ed that people come to attend. The recycling center was adequate with what they have for facilities to separate and recycle the various types of waste. The train station has facilities to accommodate all types of passenger needs due to a recent renovation. Annual hosted attrac-tions involve a GTI, Classic Car and a Harley convention which led the group to conclude that, in the end, Velden is overall not very eco-friendly.

Croatian team in the City Hall

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Conducting a survey on the street on eco-trends

In order to get as accurate of a picture as possible of where the communities of the Connect-ed With the Environment partner schools measured up in their “eco-friendliness”, the schools collaborated on a common survey. Research was completed to determine what topics and practices should be included in the survey in order to indicate the current trends which would in turn measure collectively how eco-friendly our schools were together. The initial survey was mainly written by Austria with input and feedback from all of the partner schools. When the collaborative process was finally complete and all feedback included from the various schools, the project had a solid survey which they distributed to various members outside the community of each school. The purpose of this target audience was to gain a better overall picture of the eco-trends of your “average person on the street”.

The aims of this task were to:

• Collaborate on a survey across all partner schools • Produce the survey in English and the other host-country language of each partner school• Use the collaborative survey to assess the eco-trends within each partner school com-

munity.• Analyze survey results

The total number of participants in the survey was 112.

Reusing our resources is clearly a good indicator of whether people are willing to put in a bit of extra effort to ensure that single use resources (such as plastics) are reduced. Plastic and paper were clearly the most recycled items of those surveyed with both well over 80% of those surveyed. While this is encouraging, we are also aware that our survey asked a very general question and how consistent and diligent people are recycling these items would require more information.

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Human transportation clearly has an impact on the world environment and all aspects of ecol-ogy due to the global warming contribution. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people who took the survey have the car as their main source of transportation. Vehicles have the largest environmental impact of the choices offered. Somewhat surprising was approximately 20% of all participants had public transportation as their main source of transportation. When it comes to travelling long distances, over 50% of those surveyed choose a plane, which is the most time efficient, but also contributes the largest environmental impact. Together long distance travel by car or plane constitute just shy of 90% of respondents.

Humans use immense amounts of energy. This energy needs to be produced. We inquired if the energy used by our participants was renewable, non-renewable or a mix. Just shy of half of the responses we received (53) said that they did not know. Seven indicated that they used 100% renewable, which is possible, but unlikely due to the energy produced in the countries of all five participating partner schools is a mixture of renewable and non-renewable. The major-ity of energy produced collectively in Europe is from non-renewable sources.

The last general category for our eco-trends survey concerned the food that our survey par-ticipants eat daily. This category was deemed important due to the significant impact pro-duction, packaging and transportation has on the environment. More than one third of the respondents indicated that their food was “imported” while the rest claimed that the food they consumed was “local”. What each choice meant; however, was not defined in the survey. Over 70% said that their food was “packaged” and the rest indicated that their food was not. The meaning of “packaged” was again not defined, which may have been helpful to those partic-ipating. Survey participants were also asked if their food was processed prior to purchase. Almost two thirds chose “maybe” which likely indicated that they did not know - defining what “processed” meant may have been a help.

As a final reflection, we felt quite proud of our survey, but also realize the limitations. Much more specific information would be necessary to accurately determine how well people do really recycle the items they use as well as the true impact of the food and energy that they consume daily.

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Learning/teaching/training activity in Velden

The culmination of Module IV was an LTT meeting in Austria held in Velden am Wörthersee between 20th-24th May 2019.

The aims of the meeting were the following:

• summarize the work from Module IV Ecology• team-building within their mixed-school teams• attend workshops on performing in a debate• reinforce linguistic and social abilities of participants

On the first day, the students were divided into six mixed-school groups with at least one member from each of the partner schools. They took part in a scavenger hunt around Velden in order to orient themselves to the area and bond as a group. A “Bummelbahn” (small train) wider tour of the area along with an introduction by the Tourist Bureau of Velden. At the end of the day, students presented their findings from the Ecology Module.

Day two was primarily dedicated to a team-building experience amongst the trees; complet-ing the high-ropes together assisted the teams in getting to know each other and work more collaboratively.

For the remaining two and a half days, students attended workshops on debating where they were given the opportunity to research environmental issues and practices around the world, take a position and develop arguments for their chosen position. The students also took part in a local business tour itinerary to see the state of Carinthia’s energy production concept which included how these businesses take into account ecological impact. Students learned about the ecological impact of energy creation and consumption locally and globally. They used the knowledge and skills acquired throughout the week defend debate positions in the final event of Velden visit. Parents and International School Carinthia (ISC) community mem-bers were invited to witness the final debates on Ecology which took place on Friday, 24th May.

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List of softwares and applications used in the project

Videos:Quik | VideoShow | iMovie

Posters & Leaflets:Canva | Microsoft Publisher | Microsoft Office (Word - templates brochure)

WordClouds:WordArt

Presentation:PowerPoint | Prezi

Communication:Google Classroom | eTwinning | Facebook Messenger | WhatsApp for LTT visits |Instagram for student social contact and information exchange |Snapchat for student social contact and information exchange | Viber

Others:Powtoon | Word | Google Forms | Kahoot | Carbon footprint calculator | TinkerCAD | Quizlet and Quizlet Live | Coggle.it | miMind

This Guidebook reflects the views only of the authors and the National Agencies for the Erasmus+ programme cannot be held responsible for any information contained therein and its use. Should you wish to use the materials from this Guidebook, you agree to acknowledgethat the materials were developed by the ‘Connected with the Environment’ team.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.