Living in a smart environment 2030 - chances and challenges

"In the continuation of a Comenius Project dealing with the living conditions at present, this project focused on future developments in a smart urban environment in 2030.The aim of this project was to sensitize the pupils of the participating schools (organizations) to the chances and challenges that living in a smart environment in 2030 will bring about.Participating schools were five upper secondary schools from Munich/Germany, Sint Niklaas/Belgium, Oulu/Finland, Varna/Bulgaria and Loulé/Portugal. After a kick-off meeting in Munich, where all the project activities were set by the coordinating teachers of each school, delegations of all the participating schools met in teaching and learning conferences at each school.Between these conferences, each school worked in their classes on different aspects of the project including the three principal topics of ""Ideal School"", ""Inclusion"" and ""Smart Environment"". Thus, an overview of all the tasks which were to be completed between and during the conferences was drafted during the kick-off meeting. For the first conference for instance, the schools prepared questionnaires about the students' ideas of an ideal school, made food maps about the origin of their clothes and produced practical school guides for new students.During the conferences, presentations about the results of the above mentioned tasks were held. Afterwards, the students were supposed to draw conclusions regarding the results in discussions and group work. Apart from these discussions, trips were made to illustrate the principal topics to the students in a practical as well as theoretical approach. Thus, i.e., in Portugal, a solar cooking class was held; in Finland, the so-called fab-lab of the University of Oulu was visited, where work shops were prepared by resident students; in Munich, the campus of the department of electronic mobility was presented to the students.As a result, not only the students who came to the conferences profited from the awareness for the necessity of a smart future environment, but also the products, which were developed by the participating students, were made accessible to the fellow students of each school, such as for example different applications for mobile devices. For presentation of the start-ups, the series ""Lion's den"" was taken as a model. Besides, very innovative was an application for the school intranet."