Blog

Formal education is often restricted to knowledge acquisition and there is very little interaction between students from different classrooms. Instead teachers should shift from instruction to other learning approaches like learning by doing, flipped learning and collaborative learning. Being a pedagogical engineer, it becomes the teacher’s duty to apply the best learning approach to a specific situation. And no… collaborative learning is more than simply putting students in a group.

I have been launching several global educational projects and each time I choose one or more UN Sustainable Development Goals as the project’s subject. These 17 global SDGs are set by the UN aiming to make the world a better place by 2030 by focusing on gender equality, clean water, quality education and… climate action. I managed to connect 250 teachers across 6 continents willing to collaborate. They were asked not to give away their knowledge and limit their task to guiding their students. The project was student-centered and so the students had to explore, brainstorm, discuss, present and share their findings about 4 weekly topics. They had to create videos which were published at our website www.climate-action.info. This way the students learned in several levels: at first by collaborating in their own classroom while focusing on local issues and second by taking a look at the videos from peers around the world. This way they got first hand information about the conditions on each others’ country. Problem-based learning focusing on real-world problems is key! 250 schools over 69 countries focused on Climate Change.

“What’s better than learning about global issues directly from people living in those countries. “

The project covered nearly every age (6-18) and several subjects: Geography, Math, Science, Art, etc.

The Innovation project is based on the Climate Action project but involves more schools, focussed on other topics and SDGs.