Scope

Formal education tends to be restricted to knowledge acquisition, memorization and assessment. There is very little interaction between students from different classrooms and we don't want our students to make mistakes. Education is more than offering knowledge. It is also about offering skills, opportunities and instilling empathy into our classrooms. Teachers keep pouring knowledge into our students' heads while there are other approaches like learning by doing, flipped learning and collaborative learning. 

In the Climate Action project we break down our classroom walls and connect students over 60 countries. The project is student-centered and so the students have to do the research, brainstorming and discussion. They share their findings via weekly videos or presentations. The students are told that they are journalists and their classrooms become newsrooms. Teachers are initially driven outside their comfort zones as they are requested not to give away any knowlegde. They become discussion leaders and mentors pointing their students in the right direction and making sure the students verify their sources. All participating countries' students will learn in very different ways (collaborative, by expressing and creating, by doing research, by discussing, by connecting to experts on social media, etc) and will have very different outcomes (composing songs, dancing, creating, using Lego, Minecraft, stop motion videos, interviewing, etc). This project covers several subjects: Science, Math, History, Biology, Literature, etc. Students will learn to use certain tools without being instructed how to use them. Teachers will discover new approaches and tools. They will make global connection and... learning will be fun!

Take a look at our previous projects: Climate Action (250 schools), Human Differences (50 schools) and Wai Water (10 schools).

 

Values

This project is student-centered and a global collaboration between schools over 6 continents. We embrace the 21st Century Learning Skills and Sustainable Development Goals. The students also use technology in their classroom to find and structure content, present and share their findings.

  • Sustainable Development Goals: Gender Equality (SDG5), reduced inequalities (SDG10), peace justice and strong institutions (SDG16). More info
  • 21st century Learning: Collaboration, Knowledge building, ICT for learning, Real world problem solving, Self-regulation. More info
  • Student-centered & project-based learning: Students do research, brainstorm, bring structure to information, create, present and share.
  • Technology Enhanced Learning: students learn how to use computer and tools by working on meaningful subjects.
  • Cross-subject: History, Literature, English, Science, Maths...
  • Collaborative learning: small groups, between countries (based on the constructivist and connectivist approach
  • This project is not funded.

 

21st Century Learning Skills

Collaboration & Knowledge building

Collaborative learning is key. The students will build knowledge in group and interdisciplinary. During some moments each group will take care of another topic and they will learn from each other (jigsaw). Students will present findings to each other and to other schools (countries) via videos.

The students share responsibility and and make substantive decision with their peers.

ICT of Learning

Students will use tools like Office Mix and phones to create videos and will use several tools to create short articles (Eg: Sway, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, etc). During one specific week they will use one specific new tool (Minecraft, Lifeliqe, etc) so they will discover a new tool. During this week all participating countries will discover the capacity of many new tools.

Quick start guides are available for all tools used during this project:

Real world problem solving

About two thirds of countries in the developing regions have achieved gender parity in primary education

Lot's of countries have been building walls or are planning to. What causes wars? The rate of children leaving primary school in conflict affected countries reached 50 per cent in 2011, which accounts to 28.5 million children, showing the impact of unstable societies on one of the major goals of the post 2015 agenda: education.

Self-regulation

Although this project lasts no more than 5 weeks, the learning activity is long term. Students are allowed to assess their own work and the work of peers.

Skilled communication

The communication are guided to produce well-developed and organized communication on local and global scale. They will communicate in local language with each other in their own group, between groups and in English with the other participating countries: communication on 3 different levels.