Protection of Biodiversity
Comenius Project 2012-2014

Report of the first project meeting in Istanbul (18.-22.02.2013)

 

As the main content of the project is the investigation of the local ecosystems and the determination of the different species in all of the countries, the pupils of the different schools worked in the run-up to the meeting in groups of 2-6 members in their own schools and made investigations about species which are endangered. With this information they prepared a power-point-presentation about the respective species. The pupils had the opportunity to choose the species which they are most interested in, but the teachers made sure that in all the schools there were groups of different taxa of species, e.g. mammals, birds, insects and sea life species.

With the help of the internet plattform “etwinning” the pupils could get in contact with the other students, upload their presentations and have a look at the ones of the others.

 

In Istanbul has been 11 students from Germany, 4 from Italy, 7 from Spain and 2 from Poland.

They were living in Turkish families. There were also 2 Polish teachers, 4 German teachers, 2 Spanish teachers and 4 Italian teachers. All the teachers were staying together in the same hotel (Hotel Grand Star).

On the first day of the meeting all the different national groups presented their results to the whole group in English. So the pupils got an idea of the species which are endangered in the other countries and they got to know the reasons for that (e.g. extinction by neophytes, enviromental pollution, straightening of watercourses, climatic change).

After that presentation the pupils were divided into multinational groups, which means that in each group there was working a Spanish, a German, an Italian, a Turkish and a Polish student. They were formed according to the type of species which they had investigated before.

So there were formed a mammal group, a bird group, an insect group and a sea life group.

The language they used was English. They got the task to choose one species which they are most interested in. The aim than was to work out a catalogue of practical solutions, which can be put into practice in the respective ecosystems.

The pupils worked on that for two days and at the end they presented their results in English to the whole group. The presentations were also uploaded into the internet plattform “etwinning”, so that the students who didn´t come to Istanbul could get to know the solutions.

 

Apart from that, the Italian group presented their ideas of the layout of a project homepage. They presented three options and all the students voted for the layout they liked most.

From this moment on, all the results were documented on that homepage:

 

http://www.probiocomenius.eu/

 

Two students of each school were choosen to collect all the results of the meeting in Istanbul and send them to the Italian group for doing the uploading of the results to the homepage.

While the pupils were working in the groups the teachers planned the next step untill the next project meeting in Cagliari in May 2013.

As one of the main goals before starting the project was the cooperation with enviromental protection organizations, the teachers decided to let the pupils make investigations in the concrete ecosystems during the meeting in Cagliari. So they decided, that the students who should go there shall in the run-up to Cagliari make investigations about these ecosystems (marine, marshland and forest).

 

Apart from working together the students had great excursions to the oldtown of Istanbul, were they visited the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Basilica, The Great Bazar, the Galata Tower and they made a passage across the Bosporus.