Our partnership consists of 4 secondary schools from Italy, Spain, Slovakia and Germany. In all countries the impact of climate change has recently gained broad attention when young adults and especially students started to demand urgent political action to combat climate change by organizing and joining ’Friday for Future’ strikes in many European cities. All countries of our partnership have been hit by different effects of climate change. Spain faces the problem of water shortage, whereas Italy experiences heavy rainfalls and floodings. Slovakia notices an increase of floods and long-term droughts and a decrease in water resources and Germany has to deal with weather extremes and also struggles to meet the European climate goals. Therefore the main goal of our project “Water can make a difference – we can make a difference“ is to raise awareness among the students, the new future generation, and to stimulate active participation in fighting climate change and its impacts. In the project the students learn how important water is for life by first looking at and examining visible impacts of climate change today e.g. floods, dry soil, pollution and then start thinking about planning the(ir) future in a more sustainable way, e.g. by creating future visions of cities and by designing and performing lessons for other students via MOOC (Massive Online Open Education Course). This way the participants of the project try to convince more students to actively support a more sustainable lifestyle. In every country about 20 students (12-14 years) per project year will participate and become aware of the challenges of environmental protection and climate change. Every year different students and teachers will work on the impact of climate change and ways to meet this challenge. The necessary mobilities will be used to bring students and teachers from our schools together to work collaboratively in international teams on the various aspects of climate change (floods, pollution) and possible solutions (e.g. sustainable future cities) as we strongly believe that this problem can only be solved together the way it has just been suggested by the European Union and their “Green Deal“ plan. We want to give a large number of students the chance to stay with a host family in a foreign European country, experience its culture and make new friends. In the first year of the project the students examine aspects of climate change in their own countries and thus analyse the current problems they have to face. By comparing correlated cases of flooding, droughts or pollution, the students find similarities and differences in causes of these problems with water and realize how it is connected to climate change. By also exploring how their own cities have used water in the past and how it has changed until today,they understand the meaning of water for their environment and life in general. This will motivate them to find sustainable ways of using water and working with water. Possible solutions thought up by local associations and institutions will be included but the students will also create own ideas of how to deal with the problems. All these issues will be used for lessons the participants will design for the MOOC. By designing the MOOC the students will improve their ICT skills and by preparing the lessons they will use motivating methods mainly based on cooperative learning. In the second year of the project the students will work in a more practical way by creating future scenarios or future cities that are sustainable and show how problems of climate change can be overcome. Those future cities/scenarios can be build by hand or can be designed at the computer. The participants learn how water can be used in a more sustainable way in the future and in a second step will create new lessons for the MOOC. The idea of the project is to use the final product, the MOOC, to teach younger students about the importance of climate change. Because the lessons are created by students, we expect the younger children to respond to them easily. As the lessons will contain for example videos and quizzes, the younger children will learn in a playful, motivating way about serious issues. Thus they will not only become aware of the impact of climate change but will also want to save their own future by using more sustainable resources. Therefore the participants of the project will go into primary schools and teach younger children, but we would also like to encourage other teachers to use the lessons or to let their students create new lessons on climate change aspects. The project will also serve as an important part of a more intensive collaboration with local institutions such as institutions for protecting nature and environment (e.g. Station Natur und Umwelt in Wuppertal).
The main goal of our project “Water can make a difference – we can make a difference“ was to raise awareness among the students, the new future generation, and to stimulate active participation in fighting climate change and its impacts. In the project the students learned how important water is for life by first looking at and examining visible impacts of climate change today e.g. floods, dry soil, pollution and then start thinking about planning the(ir) future in a more sustainable way, e.g. by creating future visions of cities and by designing and performing lessons for other students via MOOC (Massive Online Open Education Course). This way the participants of the project tried to convince more students to actively support a more sustainable lifestyle. In every country about 20 students (12-14 years) per project year participated and became aware of the challenges of environmental protection and climate change. Every year different students and their teachers worked on the impact of climate change and ways to meet this challenge. The necessary mobilities were used to bring students and teachers from our schools together to work collaboratively in international teams on the various aspects of climate change and possible solutions (e.g. sustainable future cities) as we strongly believe that this problem can only be solved together the way it has just been suggested by the European Union and their “Green Deal“ plan. We wanted to give a large number of students the chance to stay with a host family in a foreign European country, experience its culture and make new friends. Due to the Corona pandemic the first year could only be realized in an online meeting, as the students and also the teachers had to stay home in a kind of homeschooling. In the following passages I will call the second year the first year to have the connection to the goals mentioned in the application, as we could work with real student mobilities again in 2022. In the first year of the project the students examined aspects of climate change in their own countries and thus analysed the current problems they have to face. By comparing correlated cases of flooding, droughts or pollution, the students found similarities and differences in causes of these problems with water and realized how it is connected to climate change. By also exploring how their own cities have used water in the past and how it has changed until today,they understood the meaning of water for their environment and life in general. This motivated them to find sustainable ways of using water and working with water. Possible solutions thought up by local associations and institutions were included but the students also created own ideas of how to deal with the problems. All these issues were used for lessons the participants designed for the MOOC. By designing the MOOC the students also improved their ICT skills and by preparing the lessons they used motivating methods mainly based on cooperative learning. In the second year of the project the students worked in a more practical way by creating future scenarios that are sustainable and showed how problems of climate change can be overcome. Those future cities/scenarios were build by hand or were designed at the computer. The participants learned how water can be used in a more sustainable way in the future and in a second step created new lessons for the MOOC. The idea of the project was to use the final product to teach younger students about the importance of climate change. Because the lessons were created by students, we expected the younger ones to respond to them easily. As the lessons contained for example videos and quizzes, the younger children learned in a playful, motivating way about serious issues. Therefore the participants of the project taught younger children, but we also wanted to encourage other teachers to use the lessons or to let their students create new lessons on climate change aspects.