A major problem in the world is overconsumption and energy waste, and at our schools we can clearly see that many of the students are living and consuming in a way that is not sustainable. We also know that the awareness of the impact of every individual on the environment is weak. These severe problems are what we will address with our project. The overall goal with our project is to make young people aware of their impact on the environment, and what everyone can do to decrease his or her ecological footprints and negative impact on the environment. We will accomplish this by connecting an IT-development task to a task that will rise the environmental awareness of the students and make them live in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way. The first step of the project is to define what deeds are considered as sustainable (‘fames’) as well non-sustainable (‘shames’) actions and conditions. Then the students will take pictures of ’fames’ and ‘shames’ that they will upload to a database. The application developed by the students will then count and sort the pictures (or fames and shames) and create a (public) digital “wall of fame” where good and bad examples of sustainable living will be displayed to be studied and learnt from. The participants of the project will be IT-students at upper secondary schools in Växjö, Sweden, and Löhne, Germany. The participants are 16 to 19 years old, and approximately 180 students will be involved during the project time. Four meetings will be held, where background research will be done and the application will be programmed. To these meetings the sending schools will attend with 12 or 14 students. In order to keep the project going in a well-structured way we will use the Scrum and Kanbas methods. A great advantage with this is that the students will work with methods that are similar to what they will meet in their future jobs. And since there will be a lot of work done over the Internet between the meetings, the similarity to a real-life IT development project will be even stronger, thus preparing the students for their future jobs. A key feature of the project is peer to peer teaching, where older, more experienced, students will teach the younger beginners in programming, which will strengthen the students’ pedagogical skills. Also, the transnational development work will also give the students a wider cultural understanding, good language training and general preparations to live and work in a multicultural global and digital world. At the first meeting, the students will get the task (to develop the application) and the framework for it (i.e. issues on sustainable living, factfulness and the Scrum and Kanban methods) and they will also decide on the basic content and design of the application to be developed. The work will then continue via Internet until the second meeting, which will focus on programming and testing, as well as further discussions on the issue of sustainable living. Between the second and third meeting, the work will continue via Internet until the third meeting, when the application is supposed to be almost finished to a level where only additional tests are left. The fourth and last project meeting is dedicated to dissemination. The application will be deployed and made public, and the students in the project will meet other students to talk about the project, sustainable living and how the everyday choices of each individual can have an impact on the environment.
A major problem in the world is overconsumption and energy waste, and at our schools we can clearly see that many of the students are living and consuming in a way that is not sustainable. We also know that the awareness of the impact of every individual on the environment is weak. These severe problems are what we will address with our project. The overall goal with the project was to make young people aware of their impact on the environment, and what everyone can do to decrease his or her ecological footprints and negative impact on the environment. We wanted to accomplish this by connecting an IT-development task to a task that would rise the environmental awareness of the students and make them live in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way. The project outcome was a digital application (an interactive website: http://www.sustaining.te-vxo.se/) and physical walls of ‘fames’ and ‘shames’ in the schools. The first step of the project was to define what deeds are considered as sustainable (‘fames’) as well non-sustainable (‘shames’) actions and conditions. Then the students took pictures of ’fames’ and ‘shames’ that they uploaded to a database. The digital application developed by the students then counted and sorted the pictures (or fames and shames) and also created a digital “wall of fame” (a web page) where good and bad examples of sustainable living could be studied and learnt from. In addition to this, the also made exhibitions at the schools, i.e. the physical walls of fames and shames, The participants of the project were IT-students at upper secondary schools in Växjö, Sweden, and Löhne, Germany. The participants were 16 to 19 years old, and approximately 150 students were involved during the project time. Four meetings were be held, where background research was done, and the application was be programmed. To these meetings the sending schools will attended with 12 or 14 students. In order to keep the project going in a well-structured way we used the SCRUM method, which is an international standard method for project work. A great advantage with this is that the students would work with a method that is similar to what they will meet in their future jobs. And since there was a lot of work done over the Internet between the meetings, the work was very similar to a real-life IT development project, thus preparing the students for their future jobs. A key feature of the project was peer to peer teaching, where older, more experienced, students taught the younger beginners in programming, which strengthened the students’ pedagogical skills. Also, the transnational development work gave the students a wider cultural understanding, good language training and general preparations to live and work in a multicultural global and digital world. At the first meeting, the students got the task (to develop the application) and the framework for it (i.e. issues on sustainable living, factfulness and the SCRUM method) and they also decided on the basic content and design of the application to be developed. The work then continued via Internet until the second meeting, which focused on programming and testing, as well as further discussions on the issue of sustainable living. The idea was to continue the work via Internet between the second and third meeting, but the COVID pandemic struck, and forced us to pause the project work for almost two years. During this time, the Swedish students graduated, so a new group of students had to be involved in the project, which hindered the continuity. After the COVID hiatus, the third meeting was held, and the programming of the application continued. Due to the change of students, the progress of the programming didn’t go according to the original plans, which were that we should have an almost finished application after this meeting. However, taking the circumstances into consideration, considerable progress was made. The fourth and final meeting was, according to the project plan, dedicated to dissemination, but due to COVID restrictions in Germany, not muck could be done with the dissemination. Instead, we focused on the final programming and making of the physical wall of fame and shame. The application was almost completely finished after the meeting, and some additional work was done after the meeting, so that the digital application could be finished before the students graduated and the project ended. The application (homepage) will stay on a server after the project, and it will be used in the schools. It will be with new students for discussions on how the everyday choices of each individual can have an impact on the environment. It will also be used in the IT-courses teaching. It is also our hope and feeling that the project work has taught the students how to live in a more sustainable way, and the importance of the UN:s 17 Global Development Goals.