In the last week of February, a significant part of Latvia's Eco-Schools sent their representatives to the Annual Eco-School Winter Forum. With more than 200 participants, it is one of the largest environmental education events in the country.

Hob's adventure for everyone – while only 11 schools officially participate, others can gain a great deal from project activities

During the second day of the meeting some of the teachers attended the Hob's adventure workshop during which the main goals of the project were presented along with the project timeline. The workshop also mentioned the opportunities for schools that are not participants of the project.

It was followed by short presentations from project participants during which others could explore their approaches to connecting technologies and nature education.

A lot of insect hotels have a dramatic lack of customers due to their extremely poor architecture. A famous entomologist V. Spungis tells the science based approaches to designing insect hotels.

A simple task of taking group pictures outdoors at specific locations (connected to tasks) followed by some ideas how to integrate communication technologies into lesson plans. Each of the participant schools also received a Bee-bot educational robot to help integrate 21st century skills into environmental education.

There was also another open workshop connected to the project goals – a presentation by recognized entomologist about the most common mistakes when designing insect hotels. A science-based materials for best designs were distributed to all participants.

With some participants traveling more than 300 km and back to attend integrating the “Hob's adventure” workshop in a larger event so that was a decision many project participants appreciated.

Contributor: Edmunds Cepuritis