PlasticsEurope and European Schoolnet send you season’s greetings! December is the season to spread joy and warmth all around. Enjoy your winter break and we look forward to hearing from you in January 2009!

FuturEnergia Chats

Plastics, chemistry and climate protection
The FuturEnergia monthly chat sessions were launched by Mr Anton de Vries, PlasticsEurope Vice-President and President of Polymers Division LyondellBasell Industries, on 27 November 2008. More

Plastics, the great opportunity of the future
Thomas Schmidt, a former Olympics Champion at slalom canoe, met ten schools in an online chat with the topic “Plastics, the performance materials”. More

Next chat: 12 January 2009 at 14.00 CET (Central European Time)

It will be hosted by Averil MacDonald (the UK), an educational consultant involved in promoting science and engineering through various media. The chat will focus on the benefits of plastics. The teachers who would like to take part in with their classes should register by sending an email to Petru Dumitru at: futurenergia@eun.org

The email should contain the following information:

Chat session no.
Guest name
School name
Town
Country
Students' age
Teacher name
Teacher e-mail
Phone number during the chat

Competition examples

To help you get a picture of what type of competition contributions we expect from you, our teacher advisers created some samples. Have a look and then contribute. More

Why taking part in?

Your students and yourselves may win important prizes. Watch a movie that was made during the latest award ceremony that took place in Brussels in September.

What teachers say about our programme?

At the beginning of the school year 2008-2009, all the participants to the Energy is our Future (FuturEnergia) school programme were invited to answer the question:
In your view, what was the major contribution of the FuturEnergia School Programme 2007-2008 to enhancing school curriculum in terms of teaching energy-related themes? More

FuturEnergia on the eTwinning portal

A FuturEnergia Kit is published on the eTwinning portal. The kit provides ideas and a set of related resources to help teachers enhance their curriculum with energy-related activities in school. More.

Visit us: http://www.futurenergia.org/

Florica and Ilie Rus teach at National College “Samuil Vulcan” in Beius, Romania. They share some of their methods of combining traditional teaching and hands-on experiments while teaching science. They also tell us about some interesting activities focusing on energy education at school.

The full report in Romanian and a summary in Frenchare available. Should you have any questions, please get in touch with Florica and Ilie: ilierus@yahoo.com

Thomas Schmidt, a former Olympics Champion at slalom canoe (2000 Summer Olympics), has accepted our invitation to host a chat on performance materials. This would be a unique opportunity to pose your questions to a former Olympics Champion, so do not miss it!

Chat theme: Plastics, the performance materials
Age group: 12-20
Date: 2 December 2008
Time: 14.00 CET
Guest: Thomas Schmidt
Language: English

The teachers who wish to take part in the debate can register by sending an email in English to Petru Dumitru: Petru.Dumitru@eun.org

The email should contain the following information:

School name
Town
Country
Students' age
Teacher name
Teacher e-mail
Phone number during the chat (debate)

Registration deadline: Wednesday 26 November 2008. For coverage reasons a maximum of two schools per country will be selected to take part in.

Thank you.

Regards,
Petru

Project coordinator and Web editor
European Schoolnet
Rue de Trèves, 61
B-1040 Brussels
Phone: +32.2.790.75.56
Fax: +32.2.790.75.85
http://www.europeanschoolnet.org/

Life in the new knowledge society demands more independent and responsible behaviour and much less routine execution of orders; and most of all, we all need to continue to learn throughout life.

ICT (Information Communication Technology) is now everywhere in our daily lives, it surrounds us, and we use it every day for shopping, using home entertainment systems, buying train/air tickets. Whether you're a secretary, executive or teacher, the ability to use technology is a basic requirement.

Learning Technology has the potential to bring improved learning opportunities to a larger audience than has ever previously been possible, supporting more active learning experience through high degree of learner involvement, thus promoting a deeper understanding .

Practices based on ICT can develop methodologies of cooperative work, sharing and debating experiences, giving also the possibility to create learning communities.

The school project FuturEnergia, bringing together science and culture, gives the opportunity to integrate ICT into powerful lessons in human, social and physical sciences, promoting awareness in school students of all ages of the role of energy: its production, conversion and use.

Its aim is also to encourage energy efficiency and uptake of renewable energy sources in order to promote sustainable development in energy. A good energy education is an essential preparation to develop special energy programmes for changes in the behaviour of current and future energy consumers.

The use of technology applied to science learning can help motivate students and promote better take-up of these scientific topics, giving access to a variety of up-to-date resources that support more effective learning and teaching.

Mauro Verde, Italy
mauroverde1@gmail.com

This event is organized by the Slovak Association for Youth, Science and Technology (AMAVET) at Comenius University on Faculty of Natural Science in Bratislava, Slovakia, on 27-29 November 2008.

The Festival of Science and Technology 2008 is under the patronage of the President of Slovak Republic, Ivan Gašparovič, and will host more than 150 young scientists from five European countries: the Czech Republic, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Poland.

More about the event:
http://www.amavet.sk
http://www.festivalvat.sk

Taking part in chat sessions with experts and classes to discuss energy related themes can be a great opportunity for students and teachers as it helps to increase students motivation, facilitates communication among schools bringing diverse classes closer together.

The chat sessions can create conditions for effective and collaborative learning/teaching allowing long-distance exchange and interaction among groups of teachers, students, experts, who have the chance to investigate and understand ideas that may have a global impact.

These activities encourage students to be independent learners within a collaborative environment breaking the routine and making learning more varied.

Before gathering online the participating schools are provided with background information to help prepare the chat and get familiar with the theme.

http://www.cardarelli-massaua.it/futurenergy.htm

Education has a strategic role in improving Energy awareness, promoting changes in daily behavior, teaching students and children about energy efficiency and renewable energy .

Mauro Verde, Italy
mauroverde1@gmail.com

The email should contain the following information:

School name
Town
Country
Students' age
Teacher name
Teacher e-mail
Phone number during the chat (debate)

Registration deadline: Friday 21 November 2008. For coverage reasons a maximum of two schools per country will be selected to take part in.

Thank you.

Regards,
Petru

*Encourage classes to produce Web-based content
*ICT use
*Language learning opportunities
*Raising awareness about energy efficiency, climate protection, resource efficiency
*Improving daily behaviour in terms of energy saving
*Team work opportunity
*Competition opportunities
*Chats
*Good practice examples
*Connecting classes to worldwide contemporary subjects such as climate change and energy challenges.

The three partner schools from Denmark, Latvia and Sweden worked together during
three years with topics covering sustainable society themes. The partner teachers
aimed to match the following pedagogical goals: working with problem-based learning,
introducing IT technology to enable classes to present the progress of their
work, to work in a democratic way with cross-curricular school subjects and
to get to know other cultures and to developing understanding.

The concrete project topics involved mobility, emigration, water, new technologies,
ethical questions and good neighbourhood, all in relation to energy, the broad
project theme.

All
schools designed energy questions to survey local communities. The results were
presented in Umeå, Sweden. Differences and similarities in the political
choice of energy were discussed and compared. Students listed similarities and
differences to understand the background of the political choices.

Later on, each school considered different questions concerning sustainable
society. The presentation of the results took place in Copenhagen and focused
on Agenda 21. In the third year, the participating classes took into discussion
energy effects on the Baltic Sea. Different choices of environmental issues
concerning energy were investigated by all schools.

During the project evaluation the students' feedback gave an interesting picture
of the diversity of what they learned. The overall picture is that it has been
a positive experience for the great majority and they enjoyed meeting peers
from other countries and learning something about each other.

Ulla and Barbro share some of the presentations made by their students:

Bränsleceller (PPT)


Solenergi:Framtidens energikälla? (PPT)


Energijämförelse Mellan Uganda Och Sverige (PPT)


Fjärrvärme & Bergvärme (PPT)


Kärnkraft (PPT)


Vårjord, i dag och i morgon (PPT)


Alternativa bränslen (PPT)


Vattenkraft (PPT)

The project focuses on debating about relevant scientific and technological issues at local and international level.

More about the project (PDF, 191 KB)

The finals of the Youth Parliament Debate ended in style when Žan Žveplan successfully argued that plastics were the solution to climate and energy problems rather than the problem and won the award for best debater at the European Parliament in Belgium.

Žan summarised for the ‘pro’ side of the morning’s debate and declared that he was a “true believer in plastics” and asked the jury and audience to join him by saying that: “If (the future) is in plastic, it’s simply fantastic.” The listeners reacted with a huge cheer, which was only surpassed by his closing remark:

“We have a choice; we can either reject plastic and run away from it or embrace plastics for what they are. I am willing to make that step but the question is: are you?”

Other quotes from winner:

“We cannot allow ourselves to run away from plastics. We have to embrace plastics for what they are if we truly want to tackle the future of climate crisis.”

“The opposition used rhetoric like: oh no something bad may happen if we use plastic.”

“Just because something might go wrong is not reason enough for us not to use plastic.”

More information

The first ten names out of the hat win a prize! The correct answers and winners names will be published here in the first week of every month following the draw. The names will stay on the website for the duration of the quiz campaign.

Rules:

* Each month 10 energy–related prizes must be won.
* The quiz is based on 10 multiple-choice questions.
* Once you complete the quiz, the questions you answered correctly are highlighted. Try as much as possible to get the answers right!
* When you answer all the questions correctly, you are invited to complete an entry form to participate in the draw.
* You can enter the quiz as many times as you want. The more you play, the greater your chances of winning one of our prizes!
* At the end of every month, all participants’ names are entered in the draw, and ten winners are selected. Each winner’s name will appear and remain on the web-site for that month.

Go to the quiz website!