“The Gallium Spoon” School Collaboration celebrated 2019 as the International Year of Periodic Table of Elements. It explored interesting facts about various chemical elements. Every school chose one or several elements to develop its history, main characteristics, applications, and some experiments with it. Students prepared reports, videos, pictures, presentations, etc. Furthermore, students designed fun games on the Periodic Table in different forms depending on the resources available in their schools (table game, scratch coding game, an app for a mobile phone, etc.). The Project was adaptable to different levels of technical knowledge of the teachers and school infrastructure.
“TeACh: Teens in Action for Change” invited students to support the Global Goals for Sustainable Development by embedding GSD principles. Participants took actions by joining and participating in National and Global campaigns and initiatives within the vision of a Human Rights-based approach and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Inspired by global programmes like Design for Change, Global Youth Service Day, Apps for Good, this School Collaboration helped students to find inspiration, information, identify problems, get involved and, finally, act to solve these problems and improve their local communities.
“Space Exploration Buddies” School Collaboration was inspired by Valentina Tereshkova’s statement: “Once you’ve been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is.” By 2050, the world’s population will reach 9.1 billion, as reported by the Food and Agricultural Organization. The United Nations is working with the European Space Agency on space solutions such as Galileo system or Earth Observation technologies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). This Project encouraged students and teachers across Asia and Europe to create a “space network” on space technologies and developments.
“Sustainable Development: Marine and Freshwater Resources” created awareness among students about the importance of marine and freshwater resources. For millions of people, healthy oceans provided food and livelihood. The global community under the United Nations has a major plan for alleviating poverty. Healthy oceans play a key role in that plan as they are sources of food, jobs, and ample economic opportunities with big potentials to uplift the poor. During virtual interactions and knowledge sharing this School Collaboration helped participants improve their digital competences and understanding of one another’s cultural values.
“Healthy Living Phase 2” was the second phase of a previous School Collaboration that created intuitive awareness about healthy living, promoted physical exercises in day to day life, and meals. Students realised the significance of the choice of healthy foods and the importance of mental health. In this modern world, people, especially students and professionals are constantly engaged with disruptive social media and digital technologies, neglecting taking care of their health. Referring to Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3), students developed new ICT skills to interact with each other on online platforms and understand the importance of working in teams with others. Most importantly, students had ample opportunities to understand cultural diversity and values in Asia and Europe.
This School Collaboration focused on raising students’ awareness on waste management and the amount of waste produced around the world. Students researched, learnt and shared the waste management initiatives taken in their home countries with each other through online platforms such as Facebook and Instagram (#Projectgift2018). Students also came up with ideas to foster meaningful initiatives such as creating upcycled products, educational resources or even hosting an event like campaigns on responsible recycling or plastic bottles collection to raise awareness about waste management in their schools and communities.
“Our Stories in Photographs” provided students the opportunity to develop photographic skills and to express themselves and their views through photography. The Students explored three domains: 1) home/personal, 2) school and 3) public. They decided on the focus, location and perspective and produce photo storyboards with captions and/or short narratives. All photos were shared on a joint e-platform to create a large photo collage. The photo collage was transformed into postcards, and the students are invited to send them to their partners as a symbol of friendship or to be collated collectively to create a walk-through gallery at the end of the School Collaboration.
“My Travel Postcard” revived the communication medium of postcards and the excitement of sending and receiving them. The first postcard dates to the late 18th century. With the advent of technology, the use of postcards and their significance are slowly diminishing, and, likewise, their evidences are vanishing. This School Collaboration invited students to create digital postcards to showcase places of historical/cultural significance and to write a short story. Weekly online quizzes were conducted based on the cards posted online. All digital postcards were collected for a digital photo album.
“Mathematics Mystery Unveiled” invited students from Asia and Europe to explore the unknown areas of mathematics and its applications in their daily lives. Teachers shared the latest research of how mathematics has always amused people with the beauty of its method, results, experience, philosophy, information theory and arts. The students and teachers from Asia and Europe got a better understanding of the subject and tackled misconceptions on various topics we deal with. The students were encouraged to set a project based on mathematics, shared it among the peers by producing videos, articles, graphics and published it through multimedia platforms.
“Hacking Our Spaces” was a School Collaboration designed for students to learn and practice solving real-world problems using STEM and a Design Thinking approach. Participants researched on how STEM has impacted their lives and explore how STEM solutions can be leveraged to improve spaces like homes, schools, and communities around them. This was achieved by either acquiring some (block) programming using Microbits through an online platform, learning about different types of smart materials and their applications, or exploring other areas of STEM. Through a common online sharing platform, participants shared and collaborated with each other to study the different spaces of their partners and worked on solutions to hack the spaces with creative solutions to have useful functionalities.