Environmental Education in Action

"<< Background >>The main reason was supporting teachers, school leaders and other teaching professions. We had a goal of improving the quality of environmental education. In this context, we conducted an online survey for our teachers who are willing to implement environmental education in our schools. We planned to determine our common needs with this survey. According to the results of the survey, our teachers needed more practical activity examples on Environmental Education. We had already implemented some activities in our eTwinning project but needed more to implement environmental education in our schools in a sustainable way. Thanks to this project, our teachers could share the environmental education methods applied in partner countries by making exchange of good practices. During the covid-19 pandemic period, all our teachers and students stayed away from nature and closed to their homes. Therefore, by integrating environmental education into the regular curriculum, we brought our teachers and students together with nature again. Moreover by strengthening environmental education, we were able to provide our students with green skills such as love of nature, sensitivity to environmental issues and awareness of climate change.<< Objectives >>Thank to participation in this project there was an opportunity to apply more effective environmental education both in our partner schools and in other European Schools. All of our project partners except PARTNER 3- IC Pontassieve/ITALY were newcomer school/organisations. By adding newcomers, we wanted to give them a chance to gain experience in implementing a project under the Erasmus+ program.The common need of our partner schools was ""Improving the Quality of Environmental Education"".In line with this common need, each partner shared the Environmental Education Methods they have implemented or applied in their countries with all partners. In addition, these methods were collected in an e-book and used in dissemination activities as project output . Thanks to the cooperation and motivation of all partners, partner schools had the opportunity to implement ""Environmental Education"" with higher quality and efficiency. Students also needed extra-curricular education where they could increase their self-confidence, peaceful life motivation and social skills. “Environmental Education” was one of the most important tools to meet this needs. The important goal was to develop green skills and students’ awareness of ecological issues.<< Implementation >>We have implemented an activity aimed at moving from theory to practice in environmental education by sharing methods for students, sharing good practices in the field of Environmental Education in each partners’ country. Many activities were aimed at increasing the project participants' awareness in the topic of climate change, save resources, reduce energy use and waste, zero waste, carbon/water footprint, etc. Finally, we wanted to encourage our students to be good observers of the environment and ensure that our students receive an ecological education that makes them sensitive to the environment and develops the ability to create behavioral changes in their everyday lives. Our activities:- A student club named “Nature Savers” was established in each school- We created an eTwinning project and invited our students and teachers - Newsletter 1,2,3 was created by our Italian Partner- 2 virtual activities were held under the slogan Let's exhibit our digital portfolio and Let's exhibit photos of upset and happy nature- 4 transnational activities(as teacher workshops) successfully completed- The discussion forum-“What have changed?” was created on eTwinning- “Erasmus+ ECO-ACT CORNER” exhibition prepared by each partner<< Results >>- A project website has been created and all concrete outputs and dissemination materials are published here: https://www.ecoacteu.net- Participation in the project resulted in improving the quality of work of each partner facility by adapting examples of good practices observed during participation in mobilities. Thanks to the exchange of good practices in environmental education, a better quality and effective education was created. The result of these observations are 2 e-books titled ""Environmental Education in Action"", which includes descriptions and photos of the good examples and practices and „The basics of an experiential environmental program in Nature” https://www.ecoacteu.net/project-outcomes/outcome-1e-book- Digital Portfolio: Products of our students on Climate Change Awareness and Environmental Issues(https://www.ecoacteu.net/project-outcomes/outcome-2digital-portfolio)-Digital photography exhibition: Published on the project website-We created 3 newsletters (https://www.ecoacteu.net/project-outcomes/newsletters)-A competition for the project's logo was held (https://www.ecoacteu.net/about-our-project/project-logo)-Environmental education became an integral part of the educational process of our schools"