TEST OF INNOVATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION METHODOLOGIES IN TUSCANY

In 21st century, our living conditions are worsening because our lifestyle is not sustainable anymore. On the contrary, everything in Nature is sustainable and recyclable therefore human beings should learn the lessons from nature. This goal can be achieved by improving the learning and teaching methods focused on environmental education at schools. Envimobile, funded in the framework of Erasmus+ Programme, is a project that aims to promote innovative educational methodologies for primary and secondary school teachers. The scope is to bring more innovative activities into environmental education through using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and increasing the interest and participation of local people in their communities’ life and related environmental issues. After the training provided by project partners from Italy, Spain and Slovakia, about the methodology, the project team and a core group of teachers were developing pedagogical methodologies and a quiz app on seven environmental topics, like for instance air quality, water quality and waste. All the activities are developed following a three step methodology: evocation, appreciation and reflection (EAR), combined with the use of ICT and delivered both in the national language and in English, applying CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). Overall, Envi-mobile offers to EU teachers a valuable open access repository of teaching material in five different EU languages. The aim of this paper is to present the application and test of some lessons in a real context. In 2016, teachers of primary schools and secondary schools in Tuscany applied some lessons to their students of 10-14 ages. The lessons are structured in a way that students are continuously engaged and active during the learning process, benefiting also of the use of multimedia and internet. This experience provided a lot of important suggestions and feedback that has been used to improve the lesson itself.