Landscape is an integral part of our lives. The landscape around us has changed a lot in last hundred years. Some species of plants have disappeared, and the number of insect species has decreased. On the other hand, some species of invasive plants, which had not been there before, appeared. The issue of the presence of water in the landscape has become more and more acute in a few last years. There is a connection between these changes and the activities of people. People have a great influence on the landscape – they have transformed the landscape a lot in last hundred years. This project called „Landscape yesterday and today“ is focused on researching the landscape around us, it tries to capture the changes which have happened in the landscape, and explain these changes from the historical, biological, geographical, and environmental point of view. We are going to explore these changes comprehensively, so the students can better realize that one small change can evoke a lot of other changes in the landscape. We will use modern digital technologies when exploring and mapping the landscape – geographical information systems (GIS) and GPS devices. GIS, which is these days used in a lot of spheres of people’s activities, will serve especially for mapping the landscape, and for capturing the changes of using soil in the landscape. It will be also used to create maps which will become a part of our most significant objective – Atlas of landscapes in chosen parts of Europe. In the Atlas, the current state of landscapes in the surrounding of our schools will be captured as well as its changes during last hundred years and its problems. The schools from the Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden, and Portugal will be engaged in the project. All these schools will bring some extraordinary experiences (e.g. with managing the project or using ICT in different subjects). The Czech Republic, as the coordinator of the project, will take most responsibilities for the project. Nevertheless, in order to divide the responsibilities among all the states, each partner country will become a guarantor of one sphere of exploring the landscape – Romania of the historical point of view, Sweden of the geographical sphere, the Czech Republic of the environmental issues, and Portugal will be the guarantor of exploring the landscape from the biological point of view. At the same time, each partner school will be responsible for one mobility (its preparation, realization, accommodation, etc.), for publishing the materials, presentation of the project, the quality of materials, etc. When arranging the mobility, the biggest emphasis is placed on the attractiveness of it, and on its benefits for both teachers and students. Before each mobility, the teams will explore the landscape from some point of view, they will make the presentations and worksheets, and they will prepare the workshop for all teachers and students. After these workshops, there will be lessons in a terrain where all the teams will explore chosen problems. After each mobility, the single chapters will be created and they will become parts of the Atlas of landscapes. These materials can be used anytime by whoever (not only by the teachers from partner schools but also by the wider public) as these materials will be available on the project’s websites. The main objective of the project will be the „Atlas of landscapes in chosen parts of Europe“, which will be freely available to download on the project’s website, on the schools’ websites, and on Twinspace. Another output will be methodical materials for GIS, particularly for the program QGIS. In this project, we will also focus on the work with different target groups of people – teachers and pupils of primary schools, the wider public, and our students’ parents. For the primary schools’ teachers and pupils, we will prepare terrain lessons focused on the landscape in the past and today. For the wider public, each partner school will prepare the meeting, and our students’ parents will be informed about the project at the meeting, during the school’s open days, via the project’s websites, etc. Then the project will get a new dimension, because not only the teachers but also our students will be employed in the work with these target groups.
Landscape is an integral part of our lives. The landscape around us has changed a lot during last hundred years. Some species of plants have disappeared, and the number of insect species has decreased. On the other hand, some species of invasive plants, which had not been there before, appeared. The issue of the presence of water in the landscape has become more and more relevant in a few last years. There is a connection between these changes and the activities of people. People have a great influence on the landscape – they have transformed the landscape a lot in last hundred years. This project called „Landscape yesterday and today“ was focused on researching the landscape around us, it tried to capture the changes which had happened in the landscape, and explained these changes from the historical, biological, geographical, and environmental point of view. We were exploring these changes comprehensively, so the students could better realize that one small change can evoke a lot of other changes in the landscape. We used modern digital technologies when exploring and mapping the landscape – geographical information systems (GIS) and GPS devices. GIS, which is these days used in a lot of spheres of people’s activities, served especially for mapping the landscape, and for capturing the changes of using soil in the landscape. It was also used to create maps which are a part of our most significant objective – Atlas of landscapes of chosen parts of Europe. In this Atlas, the current state of landscapes in the surrounding of our schools is captured as well as its changes during last hundred years and its problems. The schools from the Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden, and Portugal were engaged in the project. All these schools brought some extraordinary experiences (e.g. with managing the project or using ICT in different subjects). The Czech Republic, as the coordinator of the project, took most responsibilities for the project. Nevertheless, in order to divide the responsibilities among all the states, each partner country was a guarantor of one sphere of exploring the landscape – Romania of the historical point of view, Sweden of the geographical sphere, the Czech Republic of the environmental issues, and Portugal was the guarantor of exploring the landscape from the biological point of view. At the same time, each partner school was responsible for one mobility (its preparation, realization, accommodation, the epidemical conditions for entering the country, for publishing the materials, presentation of the project, the quality of materials, etc.). The biggest emphasis was put on the „attractiveness“ of the mobility and its benefits for both the students and the teachers. Before each mobility, the teams explored the landscape from some point of view, they prepared the presentations and worksheets, as well as the workshop for all teachers and students. These workshops included games, competitions, and other activities supporting teamwork. They were chosen carefully to employ everyone, we did not want just to introduce facts, and we were successful in this. Terrain education was an important part of these workshops. Thanks to this, students and teachers learnt a lot about the landscape in partner states and made a lot of observations. Thus the teams were improving the relationships and tightened up. After each mobility, the topics were processed to make them an appropriate part of the main output of the project – The atlas of the landscape. All the materials, we created during the project, were gradually showed on the website of the project, so they were available to all our partners and the public as well. We found out that the most significant interest was in those materials helping people with the QGIS program (software for geographical informational system). This software can be used in the Czech Republic as the software to process data, thanks to the ICT reform. The Atlas of the landscape of the chosen parts of Europe is nowadays available on the project website, and it is available on Twinspace too. In our project we focused also on other groups of people, not just the students and their teachers. We concentrated our attention also on the teachers and pupils from primary schools, public, and our students´ parents. We prepared the terrain education focused on the landscape today and in the past for the primary schools teachers and pupils. The project results were introduced to public too – at the open days, at the events of national agencies, we informed parents and students at the class meetings, and the public was informed on the websites of individual schools. We are really proud that we managed to introduce our work to the students´ parents who appreciated it a lot.