Piloting event in Graz, Austria

At the end of January, we had the pleasure to implement the piloting event of our project together with VET teachers and trainers from Finland, Portugal, Denmark and Austria. The event took place at bit schulungscenter in Graz, Austria.

On the first day, we had the possibility to get to know each other better and the project and its results were introduced to the participants. Then, the first and second project result – the theory package for teachers and students as well as the activity toolkit – were presented in the setting of a learning cafe. The teachers could have a look at the materials and received a lot of tips on how these materials could be integrated into their teaching.

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In the evening, we had a guided city tour with the topic “Sustainability in Graz”. All participants got a lot of information about the city itself and its measures regarding sustainability.

On the second day, we continued with the learning café for the theory package and the toolkit. In addition, there was a lot of time for testing the 360° environments relating sustainability, circular economy and Lean at home and in social and health care, in manufacturing, in building industry and in hospitality. The teachers got an overview of the contents of the environment, they could exchange ideas of how they could integrate it into their teaching and they gave us a lot of good feedback.

The third day was about including topics like sustainability, circular economy and Lean in teaching and learning. First, a short input was given by the project team, based on the theory package that has been developed. And then, the teachers had some time to elaborate ideas for their own teaching in groups. All findings were presented to the whole group so that everybody could benefit from them.

In addition to all these group works and presentations, some of our activities of the toolkit were tested in practice:
• the ballpoint pen game on how to make a production line lean
• the sustainability profiler to identify how sustainable each person is living
• a workshop without electricity where the teachers had no electricity to collect ideas for a certain topic and present their findings

It was great to meet all these wonderful people and to have on the one hand a very productive pilot testing, and to have on the other hand a lot of fun together as well!

Article by:

Jasmin Fischer, bitSchulungscenter, Graz