The applicant organization is the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (Spain) and the partners are the NU schools "St.Kliment Ohridski" (Bulgaria), the Circolo Didattico'Bufalini 'di San Giustino e Citerna (Italy) and the Mikro Evmoiro Xanthi (Greece) and the consultant La Llave Consulting SL (Spain). The "Domotic School Garden" (DSG) project will develop student competencies for the automation of an ecological school garden, developing their competences in STEAM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics), in addition to other linguistic competences (due to the vehicular language of the project will be English), and integrating transversal values. The development of the competences in STEAM requires that the student take the theoretical knowledge that he/she acquires in the classes to the practice, in an environment where the learning is developed in a natural and practical way and where the student participates in the teaching-learning process and achieve meaningful learning. As horizontal priorities, the project wants to contribute to environmental and climatic objectives, ensuring that students understand in a practical way how natural systems work in an environment such as the garden, and how it is affected both by the ecosystems around them, as for the climate, and its importance as the support of life on the planet and the risks, therefore, that derive from climate change as a global threat. In addition, the aim is to highlight to students the opportunities that arise from the intelligent use of technology, to achieve better use of resources and thus improve our resilience to climate change for the future. The identified needs that justify the project are: reduce school failure for our students, motivate students towards learning, incorporate innovation in institutions, promote teacher training and improve self-training capacity at STEAM, seek new teaching-learning methodologies, involve students in the teaching-learning process, attend to diversity, collaborate with other European institutions, share experiences, reduce rural bias, bring students closer to global environmental problems, such as climate change and developing the values in the curriculum in a transversal way. The result we will achieve will be a hardware and software system (IO1) adapted to schools, which will be used by the students of the partner centres and exportable to any educational centre that wishes to implement it in their classrooms. This generated material will allow students to build a node with sensors using basic electronic components that are easily accessible and low cost. Based on this, students will be able to develop an agronomic irrigation design to regulate the cultivation of plants in the school garden, through various basic parameters: humidity and temperature, and soil moisture. This project covers the need for schools to reinforce basic technological skills, in robotics and programming. The software together with the elaborated didactic activities and with examples will be organized in a Pedagogical Guide (IO2) explaining how the project has been developed. The Guide will provide tools that will allow the teacher to carry out projects around the management of the school's ecological garden, the low-cost installation of a domotic garden, and that facilitate students to interact with the environment through the garden. For the dissemination of the project results, 3 Multiplier Events will be held, the first a Conference on Technology and Education in school gardens, to be held in Bulgaria, a Congress on Agromotics and Organic Agriculture in Primary Education, to be held in Spain and lastly, a seminar in Greece focus on implementations for sustainable development. In addition, a Communication and Dissemination Plan will be developed for the Erasmus + Domotic School Garden project, the objective of which will be to contribute to the promotion of the project through an internal, external and marketing communication strategy at the local, national and international level.
As horizontal priorities, the project has sought to contribute to the environmental and climate objectives, ensuring that students understand in a practical way how natural systems work in an environment such as the garden, and how these are affected both by the ecosystems that are generated around them, as well as by the climate. The project has allowed the students to begin to see in a practical way that we are integrated in a globalized world, and within a single economic space such as the EU. We have shared the same innovative and transformative concerns in education and the need to adapt teaching-learning methodologies taking advantage of ICTs, as well as the search for new methodological formulas that help students to improve their motivation towards learning, to improve their academic performance and the improvement of STEAM competences. Our schools are based on principles of inclusion and educational equity, which is why the methodology used for the development of the project caters for the diversity of students, depending on their abilities, interests, attitudes and response to the group, facilitating the participation of the entire educational community.
The project "Domotic School Garden" was designed to develop pupils' competences in STEAM, linguistic competence (English), and integrating transversal values in their development through the domotization of ecological school gardens. The applicant organisation is the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (Spain) and the partners are the schools of NU "St.Kliment Ohridski" (Bulgaria), the Circolo Didattico 'Bufalini' di San Giustino e Citerna (Italy) and the Mikro Evmoiro Xanthi (Greece) and the specialised consultancy La Llave Consulting S.L. (Spain). The needs identified that have justified the project are to motivate students to learn about STEAM,, to incorporate collaboration and innovation between institutions, to promote teacher training and improve the capacity for self-training in STEMA,, to seek new teaching-learning methodologies, to involve students in the teaching-learning process, to cater for diversity, to collaborate with other European institutions, to reduce the bias of rurality, to bring global environmental problems such as climate change closer to students and to develop values in the curriculum in a cross-cutting manner.