Although IDiverSE has a special focus on Islands, the methodology developed is valuable for schools in the mainland as well. Considering this, all schools are welcome to participate in the project.

Schools in Portugal, Greece and Spain will receive support from the national coordinators of the project, NUCLIO, Ellinogermaniki Agogi and Deusto University, respectively.

Schools from all other locations will receive support from NUCLIO which will be available to answer all questions, send all guidelines and offer continuous support.

In case you are interested in joining your school to the project,  express your interest through filling and submitting the IDiverSE school application form in the right side of this page.

The period for expressing interest takes place until the end of September 2019.

After your registration you will be contacted by the IDiverSE team

By joining IDiverSE,  schools will:

• Become an OSOS school (learn more about becoming an OSOS school in the following sections)
• Implement the IDiverSE methodology
• Find a variety of activities and resources that will put students in contact with their community while learning curricula content and valuable life skills.

What is OSOS?

The OSOS project – Open Schools for Open Societies (https://www.openschools.eu/)  is an H2020 project which aims at supporting and guiding schools to become “open schools”, that is, schools opened to the community, in which students develop projects that find the real needs of the community in which the school is located, gathering local knowledge and experience and publicly present the results of their works. The atmosphere of an open school should foster students’ independence through collaboration, counselling and co-creation and give them the opportunity to understand and question their place in the world.

What is the relation between OSOS and IDiverSE

All the schools that have implemented the IDiverSE methodology and activities will automatically be implementing the principles of an open school. Taking this into consideration, a partnership between the two projects was established, in which all IDiverSE activities will be hosted in the OSOS platform, giving teachers the opportunity to become IDiverSE and OSOS teachers at the same time.

What do I have to do to become an OSOS school?

If you are implementing the IDiverSE project, to become an OSOS school you only need to follow a few very simple additional steps, that will be guided by the IDiverSE team in detail in the beginning of the implementation of the project. However, for your information, these steps will be:

- Registration in the OSOS’ portal http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/osos

- Filling the school’s self-assessment questionnaire (which will be sent by us) after registration on the OSOS’ portal.

- Creation of a plan of action for the school regarding openness to the community

- The students who will participate in IDiverSE will answer a questionnaire before and after the project’s implementation

The IDiverSE team will guide every step and will give support in fulfilling them.

IDiverSE methodology gathers a unique set of ideas and tools integrating them in an innovative way. These are Design Thinking, Inquiry-Based Learning, Collaborative Inquiry and Science Trails, as well as Personal Geography, Interdisciplinarity and 21^st century skills assessment.

Design Thinking

All the IDiverSE activities, as well as the creation of the Science Trails, will follow the Design Thinking methodology, in four steps (Feel, Imagine, Create and Share) which take the students along a path where they learn school topics in an interactive and engaging way while at the same time integrating what they learn with relevant local and global issues, creating relevant outputs for their community.

Collaborative Inquiry

Both short and long term activities include a Collaborative Inquiry component, in which, through a common platform (https://globallab.org), students from different islands will collect data on the same problems, analyse it, and collaborate and communicate with each other in order to extract meaningful conclusions that can promote development both in their community and in others throughout the world.

Inquiry-Based Learning

IDiverSE activities fully follow the Inquiry-Based methodology principles. In each activity you will find reference to different Inquiry components (learn more about the "Inquiry under the Microscope toolkit" here) which will help teachers to implement inquiry in their classroom practices. They “unfold” Inquiry into a set of fundamental practices which should be implemented with a different emphasis in each stage of the activities.

Interdisciplinarity

The IDiverSE activities will follow an interdisciplinary structure through connections to the Big Ideas of Science (discover more about the Big Ideas of Science here). Different teachers implementing different activities related to the same Big Ideas of Science will find the opportunity to relate their lessons and give the students an enlarged picture of how contents relate to each other and to real life. In addition, in cases where teachers find the opportunity, the activities include a collaborative component where teachers from different subject domains can work together, from different points of view, involving an interdisciplinary, project-based approach.

Assessment of 21st century skills

IDiverSE presents instruments and suggestions that will allow teachers to assess the students in the framework of formative and summative assessment, providing them constant feedback about their learning and the development of key competences such as the for C's of the 21^st century skills: Critical thinking and Problem solving, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration.

Personal Geography

Personal Geography is an artistic approach used to represent and express personal memories, feelings, dreams, ideas, etc. While this methodology can be explored in a purely artistic manner, in IDiverSE it is applied so as to promote in students a self-reflection about how each learning experience has an impact in their lives, thoughts, personality etc. helping them understand their reality and share it with others if they want to. The initial point we use for the Personal Geography is: "me in my island, my island in me". Considering this sentence, students are invited to represent in an artistic way how they see themselves in their island and what relevance their island has to them.

The initial drawing should be done before the implementation, being then enriched throughout the progression of the project and finalized by the end. When the implementation of the project comes to an end, each student will create a montage with a picture from the initial drawing, two in between and one from the final one.

Science Trails

Science Trails are physical paths with stations, or stops, created by the students, which aim to raise awareness for relevant topics related to science, local culture, economy and social aspects if their community.

IDiverSE implementation consists of two phases. The first one is targeted at activity implementation and will take place during the 2018/2019 school year, between the months of January and June, and a second one which will be concerned with the creation of Science Trials and will take place in the 2019/2020 school year, between the months of September 2019 and February 2020.

Schools that join the project in the second phase will be able to focus either on activity implementation and/or in the creation of a science trail.

Implementation

IDiverSE teachers present the project to their students and debate the local and global problems faced by the community with them. That debate shall be the basis for the selection of activities to be worked by the class.

The teacher and the students choose together which IDiverSE activities they are going to implement, based on their previous discussion. All teachers should implement at least one activity although we recommend the implementation of more than one.

The students will then fill in a pre-questionnaire, before they implement any activity.

Teachers from the different locations participating in the project communicate so as to coordinate the implementation of the activities to allow students in different location to collect real data at the same time and collaborate with each other.

Teachers focusing on the creation of Science Trails will guide the students in developing stations for the physical construction of a Science Trail.

Before implementation, the school should be embedded in the OSOS schools’ network and during the implementation teachers will be asked to provide feedback to the project team regarding the implementation and the materials made available by the project.

IDiverSE is an innovative project and as such feedback from teachers is very important so that the project team can on one side assess, and on the other refine the project's materials. We have planned the gathering of information through questionnaires referring to the methodological efficacy of the project and the impact on the students, the school and on the island.

In order to gather information for the development of a project roadmap which allows other schools to implement this project after its pilot stage, we are also counting on the contribution of IDiverSE teachers and students to share information for this purpose in the form of testimonies, photos and other records they consider relevant.

In each school there is space for board, teachers and student’s participation.

Each school must choose a teacher who will be the contact between the school and the project’s national team. It is up to the school to decide if the contact person is one of the implementing teachers, or other intervenient.

It is recommended that at least 2 teachers from different subjects participate together in the project. There isn’t a maximum number of teachers per school and teachers form all subject domains are welcome to integrate the team. Teachers who implement the project will be considered IDiverSE teachers.

IDiverSE teachers must choose one or more classes to implement the activities.

The school board will have an important role in the school’s integration into the OSOS schools’ network. Apart from that, the board’s involvement and support will also be welcome so as to give time to IDiverSE teachers to work collaboratively.

The national team will have several contact and monitoring moments with each IDiverSE school.

Apart from this support each school can count on:

• Access to activities available on the IDiverSE webpage
• Tools for the assessment of the development 21^st century skills
• Guidelines for the implementation of short and long term activities
• Guidelines for the creation of Science Trails
• Guidelines to develop Personal Geography
• Guidelines to create the student’s portfolio
• Teacher training (for example, workshops)

After implementing the project each school, teacher and student will discover several results. The expected results are:

• A collection of OSOS projects (created by the students, in the framework of the activities, with a relevant meaning for the community)
• The enrichment of a collaborative data-collection platform - Globallab– with relevant data for the Teaching of Sciences;
• The creation of a Science Trail;
• The creation of a relevant output, by the students, to their community.

• Opening the school to the community;
• Getting teachers and students familiar with innovative classroom approaches;
• Integrating teachers and students in a collaborative work network at a national and international level;
• Prepare teachers and students for the challenges of the 21st century:
• Certification of schools, teachers and students

At the end of the implementation, certificates will be delivered to all schools, teachers and students who have completed the project’s implementation. More specifically, the certificates that will be delivered are:

• Certificate of IDiverse/OSOS school
• Certificate of IDiverSE teacher
• Certificate of IDiverSE student