During a Comenius (INSET) Course about Science across the World in Perugia in October 2000, some teachers present liked The Science across the World topic Biodiversity so much, they decided to start a Comenius schools partnership. Frans Carelsen (SG Marianum, the Netherlands) took the role of coordinator and planned a preparatory visit at Twente University (the Netherlands).

The John Paul II Alliance of Families School, Warsaw, Poland
BORG Ried, Innkreis, Austria
Penrice Community College, St Austell, Cornwall, UK
Gymnázium Jana Blahoslava, Pøerov, Czech Republic
SG Marianum, Groenlo, the Netherlands
ITAS G. Bruno, Perugia, Italy
IES Investigador Blanxart, Terrassa, Catalunya, Spain

Annual meetings and bilateral visits

The partnership was very successful. Teachers started with the Science across the World topic Biodiversity around us as a basis and added their own favourite investigations around their schools in their countries. The annual meetings were hosted in 2002 in the UK (Saint Austell, Cornwall by Penrice Community College), in 2003 in the Czech Republic (Pøerov by the Gymnázium Jana Blahoslava) and the final meeting (2004) back in Italy (Perugia, ITAS G. Bruno).

In between the annual team meetings many bilateral visits between two schools, all supported by the Comenius programme.

Four participating students in this final meeting wrote about their experiences:

We are the four Dutch students, who were selected to go to Perugia (Italy) for an international biodiversity project. We were in Italy from the 15th to the 18th of April. Students and teachers from England, Spain, Czech-Republic, Austria, Turkey, Poland, The Netherlands and of course Italy itself were there.

Every country had an own completion for the project, but the main theme was biodiversity. All students had to give a presentation and those became more interesting because of the different topics covered.

The Czech students for example had been working on the project for three years. The first year, they researched the biodiversity in a national reserve. The next year they researched a grassy square on the school ground and they compared the number of different species they had found there. The last year, they researched the school garden en trees, which grow there.

The Italian students were divided in five groups. The “Chemistars” studied DNA of plants”. The second group; the “Biomanagers” studied laws, economy and cooking about plants. The “Hocus Pocus” researched legends and magic histories about plants. The “Beauty care” concerned their selves about the cure of body with natural methods. The last group, the “Biopoets” researched poems and other literature works about plants. Their final product was a “didactic kit” for boys from 12 to 14 years old. It contained cards, games, information and many more about biodiversity and a lot of strategies to save and preserve it.

Villa Umbria in Perugia, was the place we met the foreign students and teachers. We did all the activities together and because of that, we had a lot of communication. We learned a lot about the foreign schools and traditions. It was a pity that the conference was so short. Just when you were making friends, you had to go home again.

We think it’s very interesting to work on the same project with people from different countries. We liked the project very much and think more projects should be international and should have a journey like this!

Are you interested in our work? Go to: http://www.geocities.com/bioversitynetherlands/.

July 2004
Anne, Anouk, Inge and Janneke (text), photos (all)