STEM Discovery Campaign, Online sessions with Teachers

Our Education Working Group has been working hard the last months on creating our sustainability course. An important part is to trial the course, and 50 teachers from 24 different countries are taking part in trialing the course. It’s amazing to see faces from so many different countries who want to make a difference and want to teach the next generation more about sustainability.

On April 15th the first online session took place. Around 50 teachers were welcomed and we started with an introductory talk on SPOW06, Science Projects Online Workshops, Scientix, and AmgenTeach. Aroa and Nadia from Life Terra explained more about Life Terra, and we were all divided into different break-out rooms.

Prof. Santi Sabate from the Universitat Barcelona prepared a 30 minutes presentation on the importance of why we should plant trees and more info on ecosystem restoration. Interaction is even more important during online sessions, so it was time to actively participate and test the Life Terra web app where you can tag your tree. Teachers provided us with great feedback and could not wait to start planting and tagging trees themselves.

During the second session on April 22nd, teachers got more insight about the Life Terra project and how to plant a tree in the right way, considering ecosystems as a whole and avoiding “not seeing the forest for the trees”.
Together, we brainstormed about different aspects to develop a sustainable project: how to communicate about it, how to involve students, who to partner with, etc.
The teachers were enthusiastic and very proactive! They presented some inspiring ideas to start working on their own “sustainable projects” with their students.
Finally, we took The Six Thinking Hats approach to ask ourselves: “Should we organise a planting event at school?”, with interesting/positive results.

You can find the presentations of Session 1 here.

You can find the presentations of Session 2 here.

The Life Terra team is impressed and very grateful for their valuable insights, thank you to all participants!