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 mobilelearning into environmental education fostering local communities development) are two projects, funded byErasmus +Program, proposing innovative and engaging ways of teaching environmental education inside/outsidethe school Both projects targeted teachers of primary and secondary schools (age 10-15) and aimed to improvetheir competences in teaching environmental education through the implementation of training courses andprovide teaching materials: practical lesson units implementing also CLIL, ICT games and other innovativematerials. Lesson units were designed keeping in mind common constraints in school environment: e.g. lack oftime, 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 directlyinvolved by the two projects by participating to five-days training courses and by developing, contributing toimprove and test the lesson units developed in both projects. Seven main topics of environmental education wereidentified and one of them regarded WATER and any environmental aspect related to this global key topic. InEnvimobile, more than fifty units (ten of them dealing with WATER topic) were developed following the three stepsEAR methodology (Evocation, Appreciation and Reflection) and integrating CLIL and use of ICT. In Bioprofilesproject, fourteen activities were developed. Each activity regards the study and monitoring of an indicator ofenvironmental quality (two them deal with WATER topic) at local level Activities are structured according to amethodology that implies the assessment of the indicator at local through data collection and analysis, andfostering actions to raise awareness at community level and propose solutions to mitigate it. Both projects aimedto 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).