Description

This application focuses on the development and enhancement of digital competences within our school staff, as well as the topic of sustainability and environmental education at BORG Kindberg, a secondary school in Styria, Austria.

Digital competences are not only the foundation of quality improvement for every school, but are a necessary tool in order to guarantee a high quality of education for our students. We want to ensure that our students are well prepared for the challenges they will encounter in their future workplace. Jobs will become increasingly virtual and we will need flexible, technologically competent and internationally connected workforces that can easily adapt to this business reinvention. Furthermore, we are trying to enhance sustainability and environmental consciousness at our school. It is very important for us to be a role model and to integrate sustainable concepts into everyday school-life. Therefore, it is necessary to get in contact with schools and other educational institutions around Europe to learn from each other and get new ideas. Our application includes two courses and one congress that will help us reach these goals.

The course “Augmented and virtual reality in the classroom” offered by the Greek E-School Educational Group focuses on the implementation of virtual and augmented reality in the classroom. The course will provide our teachers with both theoretical and practical knowledge in order to be able to create and use augmented and virtual reality examples as a motivating tool for our students. These methods can then be used in all kinds of subjects and are an effective tool for interdisciplinary projects. The knowledge our teachers gain during this course will then be reinforced through the visit of “didacta”, the world’s biggest education trade fair in Stuttgart, which will focus on technological reforms next year. “Didacta” is a chance for us to gain insight into new pedagogical and technological concepts, which can then later be integrated into our school and will inevitably help to modernize education at BORG Kindberg.

The second core area of this application is environmental education within our Science department, which can be strengthened through the course “Environmental and Outdoor Education in Non-formal settings” in Nicosia, Cyprus. As our school also focuses on STEM subjects, environmental education and a sustainable lifestyle are very important to us. The course helps our biology teachers to enrich their repertoire of teaching techniques and ideas in environmental education. They can then share their ideas and knowledge with teachers of other subjects. We hope to gain insight into sustainable projects in Cyprus and to get ideas from other participants on how to best integrate sustainability into school life.