Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2018 Newsletter------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let ' s do compost! by Anamaria Corina Golumbeanu
An example of an eTwinning project is " Let ' s do compost!".
The main idea of this project is to explain to our students the relationship between compost and environmental protection. With this project, we wanted to sensitize students, parents and the local community about the importance of preserving the environment and explain what composting means. Students actively participated in compost production in school during the school year, and I think that in this way students will understand the composting process and gain useful knowledge for the future. Besides the main theme of the project, we wanted our students to use information and communication technology in a positive, safe and creative way. Teachers have collaborated and exchanged ideas and experiences, and each partner school regularly reported on the progress achieved through the eTwinning virtual space.
So the main purpose of the project is for our students to learn how to produce compost. This goal has been achieved by building compost containers in our schools and / or at the pupils ' homes and producing compost during the school year. Thus, students and their families have been encouraged to make compost and use it in their gardens. Furthermore, the aim of the project was to develop the key competences of our students, especially foreign language communication and digital competence. Students have developed these skills by actively participating in the eTwinning virtual space.
Also as a introductory work was did a representative poster using the Piktochart. Pictochart offers free facilities to create different types of attractive advertising materials.
Then the students were informed about the composition of the compost and the chemical processes that take place. Questions have been asked that: What household waste can be? How do you sort the household waste? What vegetable debris can there be? What is compost?
With the virtual lab http:// www. glencoe. com / sites / common _ assets / scie nce / virtual _ labs / ES01 / ES01. html simulations have been made to understand the transformations that take place over time.
Students created posters about compost and made an exhibition in the hall of the school to inform the rest of the students on the subject. Using the Word Art, they have also produced word clouds of various forms about the composition of the compost. Aspects from these activities were presented in the TwinSpace virtual space.
Another interesting activity was the creation of educational games about compost. To create such games I used the web 2.0 tool H5P( https:// h5p. org /). So we have done " Hot Spots " games in which students have to identify images with scraps that can be put into compost. For example, aluminum doses of juices can not be put into compost. Students learn what can be put into compost and what can not be used for compost, and especially students are thus aware of the types of waste and their degradation time.
The first activity was the one in which each team presented themselves. For this we have used a web 2.0 tool: padlet. Padlet is like an notice board, and it has enabled each partner to insert a PowerPoint presentation, video, or poster about his team.
Our students have done an introductory work by planting an ornamental thuja. Aspects of this activity and the past eTwinning project " Where is our green environment?", a project previously carried out and rewarded with the European Quality Award, were presented in the padlet, thus illustrating their concerns for the environment and sustainable development.
Further information was exchanged on how to make compost containers. Our students presented easy and low-cost solutions by recycling containers that would otherwise have been discarded. Thus, they learned and applied the principle of reuse.
In this project we also presented aspects of online lessons on climate change, lessons provided by EDU ARCTIC( https:// edu-arctic. eu /). Through these lessons, students have been in touch with the
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