Digital Erasmus+ Project Week (14.03.-18.03.22) Three months after the last online project meeting in December, we started our Erasmus+ week – due to the Covid-Situation still online. We met up with the students from the same partner schools in Romania, the Netherlands and Spain. This time Spain organized the meeting.
On Monday, here in Germany, we met up earlier to make sure all the electronics we needed were working properly. Then our first meeting started at 9:30 am. Spain welcomed us all and asked us what we were expecting from the project week. We wrote our thoughts into a padlet. Then we continued with a small game to get to know each other. Spain considered that we had to say what we would take with us to a deserted island, but the difficulty was that we had to say what the students before us would take with them. Luckily, we were allowed to take notes because since there were so many of us it would have been almost impossible to remember everything. After the Spanish students presented some fun facts about Spain, we started to present our presentations to each other which we prepared the weeks before. The topic was “Our Region-Contributing to the balance between economy and ecology”. Examples of good practice in each region were presented. It was also interesting because we got to know something about the region the other students are living in. After a break we watched a virtual tour of the Spanish school (Sagrada Familia de Urgel). The background music was a Taylor Swift song we really enjoyed – of course. Later, we presented each other the presentations on the subject “Our School-Contributing to the balance between economy and ecology”. We saw that all schools are already worried about the topic and that different means are already put into practice to be more sustainable. And that was the end of the first day of our week.
We started our Tuesday at 9:30 am. As a warm-up all groups danced to two songs on Just Dance. The first one was “the Ketchup Song” and since we wanted to do one more we danced to “Limbo” as well. After that we were super motivated to start. We worked in smaller international groups consisting of around six people and discussed which actions, we can take to contribute to the balance between economy and ecology – more precise: to act more sustainable – ourselves. We also had some time to make pictures where we showed examples of what we can do ourselves to protect the environment. After a 30-minute break the students of each country presented each other the presentations on the subject “How to reduce the use of plastic and paper at school”. And that was it for Tuesday.
On Wednesday we started the day with a little quiz on “Quizizz”. After the quiz we got back together in our groups at school and analyzed how four different metals changed over the time of approximately two years (every country placed 4 metals outside the respective school and exposed it to the environment and all weather conditions). The different metals were stainless steel, copper, aluminum and carbon steel. We examined the different materials under a microscope and wrote our findings into a table. It was really interesting to see how the different metal changed since the changes were very different. After a little break that we all enjoyed, we were again put into different international groups and thought about possible questions for a survey on the topic: “How can I contribute to saving paper and plastic and what am I willing to do?” Every group wrote down questions to their topic in an online “Padlet”.
Thursday, our conference started with a game as usual. The game we played was to get to know each other better and we did it on an online website called “Nearpod”. It is a real-time insight where you can do interactive lessons, gamification, and activities online with other people. After that we recycled old plastic bags which was a little chaotic but also super fun. We cut the plastic bags into pieces and ironed them together to create something new. With needle and threat, we stitched them together and created tote bags or just art. At 11:15 am we did a workshop together with the Spanish team on the topic of feminism in economy. They were so kind to translate all the work steps into German language so we could do them parallel with them. We sorted different aspects on a piece of paper that had an iceberg on it. In the end we watched a video in Spanish on YouTube which luckily had subtitles. We learned a lot and had fun but also, became aware of the differences between women and men in the economy which aren’t fair.
The next and sadly our last day started with Romania and the Netherlands telling us how they spent their Thursday afternoon and what ecological project they visited in their region. For example, the Netherlands visited a small garden in their city which is maintained by the locals there. It has trees, ponds and houses lots of different animals. The Romanians visited a company in their city that produces ecological creams and other pharmacies. They also visited a solar panel field. After that, at 10 am, we were sorted by chance in smaller groups and put the pictures, we took over the span of the week, in one big presentation. Afterwards everyone answered a questionnaire with the questions we wrote separately on Wednesday. At the end we evaluated the week again in a survey, which was of course positive. In summary the week can best be described as very successful, we were happy to learn interesting things and meet new people. I think we have also become more thoughtful about our environment. We all collectively agreed that it would be great to meet in person the next time but the week still was great and the best of the situation was made. The Spanish team really did a great job. In the end we all said goodbye and started in our weekend.
