Our forests – our future is a project in which six European schools will work together on various topics dealing with forests. The schools come from Finland, Spain, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Portugal and Romania. The coordinator of the project will be Putaan koulu from Tornio, Finland. The main goal of the cooperation is to raise awareness and stimulate debate between the countries on how to best deal with the different aspects of forest. Other important goals are related to the development of our schools. For one, we need to strengthen the students' as well as teachers' team-work skills and to make better use of modern entrepreneurship education methods. Another important thing is to open the school towards the surrounding community and enhance active citizenship. With the help of our international cooperation we can also pactise active European citizenship. The third issue, dealt with in any international cooperation, is tolerance towards different kinds of people. Through this project we want to teach our students to accept and respect every person. The fourth educational goal will be the development of our students' and teachers' English and ICT skills. This will be a natural result of the activities since English will be the working language of the project and a lot of the cooperation will be done in the virtual world. The partners of the project were chosen because of their the common interests towards the multiple use of forests and the testing of new educational methods. Another important thing was that the schools should be located in different climate conditions in Europe. In practise, this three-year project will be based on concrete tasks which will be carried out in all the schools each year, and every time, the students doing the tasks will change. All the students in a certain age group will participate in the activities, and thus we have carefully chosen them to suit the national curricula in the different countries. The concrete tasks include making food from the products we get from our forests, making products of domestic wood, making a herbarium, measuring the forests with mathematical tools, having a photo contest, making field trips, visiting lumber industry factories and learning about nature conservation by looking for information on the internet. In addition to the tasks carried out at the participating schools, we will do a lot of cooperation via the internet. We will show each other what we have done and also compare the results that we get. However, to be able to learn more from each other, we will have several international meetings. Some of the meetings will concentrate more on the teaching methods and on distributing and observing new ideas and these will be attended by teachers from different schools. During these meetings it will also be easier to manage the project on a more general level. Some of the meetings will concentrate on the forest issues and in these events, there will be students participating, cooperating and learning from each other and about the area they visit. The impacts of the partnership will stretch from students to teachers and the institutions they work in as well as the families of the students and the local authorities and the local communities. The students will learn to appreciate the forests, learn about jobs within forestry, improve their key competence skills such as writing, mathematics, ICT and presentation skills, learn to take a more active role in their learning and in their everyday lives in their communities as well as become more tolerant towards other cultures. The teachers will share ideas, materials and knowledge between colleagues from different countries and thus make progress professionally. The teachers will also improve their ICT and language skills as well as their knowledge about Europe in general. On the local level, the desired impact will be a stronger cooperation between the schools and the local authorities and between schools and enterprises and other organisations within forestry. At the European level, the goal is to develop long-lasting cooperation between the involved schools. Another important goal is to promote the international dissemination of good practise and innovation of the topics covered by the project. The final products will be a booklet on the different aspects of forest and a portfolio with teaching materials and activities dealing with entrepreneurship education.
‘Our forests – our future’ (OFOF) was a project in which six European schools worked together on various topics dealing with forests. The participating schools were from Finland, Spain, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Portugal and Romania. The main objective of this collaboration was to raise awareness and stimulate debate between the countries on how to best deal with the different aspects of forest. Other important goals related to the development of schools. There was a need to strengthen the students' and teachers' teamwork skills and to make better use of modern entrepreneurship education methods. We also wanted to open the school to the surrounding community and enhance active local and European citizenship. The third issue was to teach our students tolerance and acceptance towards different kinds of people. The fourth goal was to develop English language and ICT skills. The partners for the project were chosen based on their common interests in the multiple uses of forests and the testing of new educational methods. Another important criteria was for the schools to be located in different climate conditions in Europe. In Finland the chosen school is located in the boreal coniferous forest vegetation zone, at the westernmost end of the vast taiga forest belt that stretches across Russia and Siberia. In Lithuania the school is in the south west where most of the forest grows in mixed stands and the dominant species are pines and spruces. This climate is a typical European continental influenced climate with warm dry summers and cold winters. In Spain the school is located in the arid and the Mediterranean zones, with a unique biodiversity composed by thousands of species evolved from the mix of biodiversity between Africa and Europe. In the Netherlands the school is located in an average sea climate. The forests there are mainly composed of an equal mixture of deciduous and pine trees, commonly originally planted as a production forest. In Portugal the school is located in the Mediterranean climate zone, with the forest predominantly occupied by intensive eucalyptus production destined for paper pulp. In riparian zones biodiversity is immense with undergrowth, shrubs and trees, as well as birds and small mammals. In Romania the school is located in a temperate climate with Mediterranean and western influences. In practice, this three-year project was based on concrete tasks which were carried out each year in all the schools by rotating groups of students. All the students of a certain age group participated in the activities which were carefully chosen to suit the national curriculum in each country. The tasks included preparing food from the produce we get from our forests, creating products from domestic wood, building a herbarium, measuring the forests with mathematical tools, having a photo contest, making field trips, visiting lumberyards and factories, and using online research to learn about nature conservation. In addition to the tasks carried out at the participating schools, we cooperated a lot via the internet. We presented our work to each other and also compared the results we got. In order to learn more from each other, we held several international meetings. Some of the meetings concentrated more on the teaching methods and on distributing and observing new ideas and these were attended by teachers from different schools. During these meetings it was also easier to manage the project on a more general level. Some of the meetings concentrated on specific forest issues and in these events there were students participating, cooperating and learning from each other and about the area they visited. The impacts of the partnership stretched from students to teachers and the institutions they worked in, as well as the families of the students, local authorities and local communities. The students learned to appreciate the forests, learned about jobs within forestry, improved their key competence skills, learned to take a more active role in their own learning and in their everyday lives in their communities, as well as became more tolerant towards other cultures. The teachers shared ideas, materials and knowledge between colleagues from different countries and thus made progress professionally. The teachers also improved their ICT and language skills as well as their knowledge about Europe in general. On the local level, the impact manifested as a stronger collaboration between schools and local authorities and between schools and enterprises and other organisations within forestry. We promoted the international dissemination of good practice and innovation around the topics covered by the project. The final products we produced included a booklet, a mural and a shared eTwinning website (we will apply for a quality label for our site). The collaboration between Finland, Spain and the Netherlands is set to continue beyond the project.