Bioproiles and envimobile: two projects two models of innovative teaching of environmental education applied to water

Bioprofiles (Implementation of practical environmental education in school) and Envimobile (Integration of mobile learning into environmental education fostering local communities development) are two projects, funded by Erasmus +Program, proposing innovative and engaging ways of teaching environmental education inside/outside the school Both projects targeted teachers of primary and secondary schools (age 10-15) and aimed to improve their competences in teaching environmental education through the implementation of training courses and provide teaching materials: practical lesson units implementing also CLIL, ICT games and other innovative materials. Lesson units were designed keeping in mind common constraints in school environment: e.g. lack of time, low cost and easy implementation. Both projects were structured in three phases; training and development of teaching units, test in classroom, translation in national languages as Open Educational Resources (OER). Around 100 teachers were directly involved by the two projects by participating to five-days training courses and by developing, contributing to improve and test the lesson units developed in both projects. Seven main topics of environmental education were identified and one of them regarded WATER and any environmental aspect related to this global key topic. In Envimobile, more than fifty units (ten of them dealing with WATER topic) were developed following the three steps EAR methodology (Evocation, Appreciation and Reflection) and integrating CLIL and use of ICT. In Bioprofiles project, fourteen activities were developed. Each activity regards the study and monitoring of an indicator of environmental quality (two them deal with WATER topic) at local level Activities are structured according to a methodology that implies the assessment of the indicator at local through data collection and analysis, and fostering actions to raise awareness at community level and propose solutions to mitigate it. Both projects aimed to use environmental education as a framework to improve students active citizenship at personal level (Envimobile) and community level with connections with key social issues (Bioprofiles).