TESLA newsletter no 2

NEWSLETTER No.2, December 2021 2020

ERASMUS+ & eTwinning project 2019-1-HR01-KA229-060810 Inside this issue The importance of using renewable energy sources European Day of Languages A treasury of creative international cooperation Green New Europe Competition Global Goals Week Action Plan The 165th Anniversary of Nikola Tesla Birth Impressions from Lugoj

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The importance of using renewable energy sources You have probably heard of energy issues and climate change in newspapers or on television. For years, human civilization has been living too much energy, resources and land.

Our energy supply poses particulary serious problems. Without energy, we cannot heat our homes or produce electricity, run factories, or power cars. And we need energy to produce and distribute food.

Up to now, we have met almost all our energy needs with matirials such as coal, petroleum, or natural gas. But their quantities are limited. Energy price are rising. The gas know as carbon dioxide witch is released when coal, oil and gase are burned, has been acumulating in Earth’s athmosphere and affecting Earth’s climate in undesirable ways.

So it’s high time that we developed other energy options. The solutions for our future lies in what is called a “sustainable economy”.

We must have respect for the environment and nature, protecting the climate, conservingresources – that meaning of the world “sustenability”.

At present, we still waste a lot of precious heat and energy. And we have to end our dependence of petroleum, natural gas and coal and switch to renewable energy sources.

Solar power, Hydorpower, Wind power, biomass are exempels of renewable energy sources. To help our students understand how such energies are produced, we used experimental kits that helped them perform experiments in this interesting and highly important field. They created electricity from wind, sunlight, water and use it to generate power.

Lucia Boldea, Romanian team coordinator

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European Day of Languages Each year, on September the 26th, we all celebrate the European Day of Languages as an excellent moment to appreciate heritage, diversity and tolerance. In 2021, all four schools participating in TESLA project designed this celebration together, as a preparation for our incoming Learning-Teaching-Training activity, that took place in Lugoj a few weeks later.

Since the students originally participating in the project graduated high school in all our schools and the new participants needed to learn about their partners, we decided to share some documents with our school descriptions in our native languages. The task for the students included reading the original text, translating it into English and their mother tongue using dictionaries or online translating tools and adjusting the phrases to obtain a coherent text.

Austrian team was the most advantaged in this process, as they have both Romanian and Croatian mother tongue students in their school. Also, all partner schools include German language classes in their curriculum, so the translation from German was not the most difficult task.

Besides the practical exercise of using online translating tools, the students came in contact with five different European languages: a Latin one, a Slavic one, two Germanic and one Finnic. They had the opportunity to observe similarities and differences and to appreciate the rich heritage of cultures and languages spoken on the old continent, while developing their communication and digital skills as well as their creativity and critical thinking.

During the first day of the project meeting in Lugoj, national teams had the chance to read their translations in English, to compare them and to get feedback from their peers. One of the funniest moments of the task included attempts of reading the original texts by students from other countries.

Adriana Mariș, Romanian team

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A treasury of creative international cooperation in Erasmus project of school partnership Marina Mirković, coordinator of TESLA project, participated in the 44th International Hybrid scientific-professional and technological conference on Information, communication and electronic technology MIPRO 2021, which was held from September 27 to October 1, 2021 in Opatija (Croatia). She presented the work "Treasury of creative international cooperation in Erasmus projects of school partnership" at the conference "Computers in Education" held on 28 September as part of the MIPRO 2021 conference.

The work of the conference held through fifteen scientific and professional conferences, through educational seminars, workshops, round tables with current technological topics, invited lectures and presentations, an exhibition of ICT products, technologies and services, and through meetings project teams and clusters. Thanks to thousand participants from about thirty countries from all continents with more than 350 accepted papers, its rich contents and their topicality, the MIPRO gathering is a central gathering place for experts from the economy, industry, science, education, management, state administration and local self-government. Its synergistic role significantly contributes to its great technological and social influence, which is recognized not only in Croatia, but also in the world. MIPRO is recognized as a unique gathering in terms of concept and quality, which belongs to a small group of the most important and influential international gatherings in Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean.

The Technical School in Požega participates in two Erasmus + KA2 school partnership projects: "Together in Environmental Solutions Learning Activities" (TESLA) and "With the Skills of the Future for a Successful Job and Life" (SKILLS).

The paper presents the objectives of the project and describes a number of activities.

The TESLA project raises students' awareness of sustainable development through the use of renewable energy sources and the conscientious use of energy. It strengthens the cooperation of secondary schools and institutions important for energy and ecology, as well as the exchange of good practice at the European level. The SKILLS project enables students to develop original solutions and ideas. The qualities that students will acquire overlap with the abilities required by the business world.

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The projects enable the school to collaborate with partner schools from six European countries (Austria, Estonia, Romania, Italy, Turkey, Slovenia) through student and teacher mobility and online activities through eTwinning projects.

The partners design workshops with the application of creative methods and techniques of teaching and learning with interesting activities for students but also education for teachers.

Digital technologies and tools help to acquire skills and key competencies.

International collaboration helps schools improve the experience of teaching students skills that will help them in education, work, and society. Project activities stimulate students' imagination, creativity, finding new solutions while learning about themselves, others and the environment.

Working on an international project is a challenge and an opportunity for selfrealization of personal competencies of students and teachers. Motivation is at a high level and a new dimension of connection between participants, teams of students and teachers has been created. Through relaxed, well-developed activities, professors and their students met new colleagues and gained new knowledge and friendships.

Today's students are the leaders of the future. Occupations in the STEM field are developing the fastest, and often have the greatest potential for job growth in the 21st century.

Building a solid STEM foundation through a well-designed curriculum is the best way for students to study math, science, and technology with interest throughout their education.

Project activities encourage students to develop and improve every aspect of their communication skills in personal and professional life. Students must possess the ability to collaborate seamlessly in physical and virtual space, with real and virtual partners globally.

Connection and cooperation with others is important not only for their learning but also for mental and emotional health.

Mobility activities will not only encourage the development of speaking and listening skills, but will also teach students how to work effectively together in a team.

New meetings and mobility are expected, getting to know the energy potentials and facilities in the countries of the TESLA partner schools, and interesting skills development institutions in the SKILLS project partner countries, which will further enrich the treasury of cooperation

Marina Mirković, project coordinator

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Green New Europe Competition On Monday, 29 November 2021 a zoom conference was held by Europe Direct Upper Austria with the title GREEN NEW EUROPE – Can the EU save the climate? Our project class took part in this 90-minute zoom conference, where the agenda of the Green New Deal of the EU was presented alongside a history of the development of CO2 emissions. It was the starting point of a competition, where students could collect ideas for improvements and actions concerning the climate crisis.

There was a standard form to fill in ideas according to topics like climate change and environment, health, economy, social justice and employment, values and justice, digital change, democracy in Europe, migration, education, culture, youth and sports.

All in all, we took part in that competition with 3 classes, 2 BHK, 2 SHS and the English group taught by Prof. Huber-Kirchberger of the 5 AHK. 6 students from this class also took part in the training event in Lugoj in October 2021.

As an example, we want to present the ideas of the second form, which concentrated mainly on what could be done at school to do something for the environment.

Suggestions by 2 BHK BHAK Linz International Business School Following watching the Webinar on 29 November 2021 in the next English lesson we collected ideas for the competition.

Toilets generally use a lot of water. In planes and some public places there are systems that work with a vacuum system. We think it would be a good idea to install such a system also at schools.

In schools it would be helpful to provide a drinks fountain for refilling glass bottles in the morning for usage during the morning. This would mean a reduction in plastic bottles and foster the idea of reusable glass or steel bottles.

Likewise, it would be a good idea to provide also other drinks for refillable bottles – healthy, sugar free drinks – that should replace some of the slot machines for carbonated drinks.

Let´s do something for our bees!

In our school yard we could plant plants that are good for bees, on top of that we could put plants that grow up the walls of the school building. On the one hand, it would provide food

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for bees and on the other hand it would look nice. Furthermore, it would have a cooling effect in summer.

In bigger schools it might make sense to install devices for returning plastic bottles, (Leergutrücknahmeautomat) glass bottles and cans. This would reduce waste and guarantee that containers can be recycled easily.

A Romanian company has developed a device for reusable packaging for online delivery. The name of the company is www.r-create.ro/en.

This system is already used by the company www.fitico-sportswear.com .

Rewards: Pressed for time we could not take part in a second zoom meeting in December, where we would have had the chance to present our ideas in person. So we did not win any of the top prizes. However, all 38 participating students were awarded a small gym-bag made from organic cotton with the logo of the Zukunftsakademie (future academy), who organised the competition.

All the students´ ideas will be passed on to the European Commission to be considered for implementation.

The contributions were also uploaded on the website of the Erasmusplus Consortium DöKoT (The ecological talent), a group of 700 Austrian schools and over 8,000 teachers that is concerned with ecological education. The BHAK Linz International Business School is a participant in this consortium and represented in the impulse group.

Prof. Michael Huber-Kirchberger Austrian team

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Global Goals Week Action Plan The week of 20th – 24th September 2021 marked the 6th anniversary of the Global Goals, so the World’s Largest Lesson proposed a toolkit of activities that offered children a range of different ways to learn about and support the Goals.

Since our project strongly supports sustainable development, all the partner schools got involved in different actions. For the first day, the students were climate changemakers. They were invited to write essays explaining why learning about the climate crisis is important to them. The topic of the second day was Gender equality. The students gained better understanding and awareness of places where this is really an issue and applied local statistics, gathered, processed, calculated and interpreted data. Artivism for nature, the third topic, was by far the most appreciated, since it gave students the chance to use their creativity to design trees images. Social Justice and Voices for Change, the next two themes, offered students the opportunity to watch videos, to take motivational quizzes, to wrote essays, to record speeches, to prove their creativity, to discuss about equality and justice and to reflected on the changes they want to see in their future world.

All students’ creations were displayed in our partner schools, were uploaded in designated areas of the World’s Largest Lesson site and can be found at the address https://worldslargestlesson.globalgoals.org/campaign/globalgoals-week-action-plan/ During Global Goals Week, not only the students had the opportunity to develop their communication skills in English, to use their creativity and to reflect on justice and equality, but they also understood that they need to get involved in building their dream world, the world they want to live in.

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The 165th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla Members of the project team of the Technical School in Požega in Erasmus + KA2 project "Together in Environmental Solutions Learning Activities" (TESLA), marked the 165th year of Tesla's birth with a meeting at the monument if Nikola Tesla in Požega on July 10, 2021.

At the initiative of the Nikola Tesla Association - Genius for the Future, July 10 was declared National Nikola Tesla Day - Day of Science, Technology and Innovation. Tesla's works and ideas encourage future innovators and scientists to come up with their own ideas and inventions.

The team also prepared several appropriate TESLA acrostic verses: Together we can change the world because Energy is all around us so don't be concerned.

Stop using it the wrong way and

Croatian team

Learn how to help our planet and seize the day.

And please, don't take it for granted.

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Impressions from our second meeting – Lugoj 2021 On the first day, we were welcomed into the school by the Romanian teachers and pupils. We met the principal of the Coriolan Brediceanu high school. After that we took a walk to the city hall where the mayor welcomed us and did his speech. We got back to the school and all did our presentation about renewable power sources. After that we went to the Ryno’s restaurant for lunch. After lunch we had a treasure hunt around Lugoj and got our first tour of the town.

We got back to school and presentations about what we saw. We were all exhausted and went for dinner to the Tivoli restaurant.

We shared our experience at the table and got to know each other a bit better. We went to our hotel and took a good rest.

Medeea, Alex, Anastasija, Delia, David, Simun On Tuesday, we went on a trip to Timisoara to visit the Experimentarium, the Polytechnic University and the Central University Library. We started off by going to the Experimentarium where we listened to the professors talking about how different types of green energy work. After the presentation, for a more practical understanding of the renewable sources of energy, we measured the current and voltage of a photovoltaic panel.

The second stop was at the Polytechnic University, where the prof. Ion Boldea presented the school and gave a motivational speech.

The third stop was at the Central university Library where they showed us a really big book archive. In the vault there’s a set temperature to keep the books in good condition.

In the end we were given free time to take a tour of the city and to visit the mall.

Unfortunately, the mall was rather a disappointment, because Andi couldn’t find a Ralph Lauren store.  Svet, Costi, Theo, Luka, Tauri, Andi We started the Wednesday off by solving a problem using the values that we found out the day before at the Experimentarium. We calculated the power and the electric resistance of the current produced by the solar panels. Then we came up with a graph to showcase just that. The next task was to make an experiment about renewable energy, obtained from the sun, wind or water. We formed 5 teams and got different missions in order to cover up everything about the topic of renewable energy. For example, one team had to build a water mill.

It explained the transformation between the water’s kinematic energy into electric energy which was then used to power up an LED. Afterwards we went for lunch and prepared ourselves for the following activity, the sports championship. We could choose between basketball and table tennis. First, we had time to practice a little bit and then the tournament started. We had a lot of fun and it was challenging

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to play against each other. The championship ended with a little ceremony where the winners were given prizes. Overall, it was one of the liveliest days of this mobility. We got to work mentally – with the problem and cool practical experiments – as well as physically, with the table tennis tournament and basketball games. The unique experiments, as a form of practical learning, were fun to do and compelling to look at when presented. Playing sports afterwards was refreshing and exciting because the only exercise we had done the last days was walking long distances around the town. However, having pizza for dinner, was still one of the most pleasurable parts of the day. It was an entertaining day that will surely be remembered.

Radu, Miruna, David, Markus, Sara, Sara On Thursday, we started off the day by getting on the bus and leaving for Darova , where we visited the photovoltaic panels and learnt a lot of technical aspects about solar pannels, producing and transporting electric energy.

After this, we hopped back on the bus and headed for Orșova. At arrival, we visited the Iron Gates Museum and found a lot of interesting information on the construction and functioning of the biggest electric energy provider of Romania. We had lunch and then soon we embarked on a ship on the Danube. The three-hour long journey was exquisitely pleasant, as we encountered eye-catching landmarks (Rock sculpture of Decebalus) and taking in the autumn scenery.

Redona, Jura, Imre Gabrie, Emma, Loredan, Geanina Lesson learnt The first day gave us the opportunity to get to know ourselves and our colleagues better. We created a connection through games and, at the same time, we managed to break down communication barriers, stepping out of our comfort zone.

Due to the visit to Experimentarium and UPT we acquired more knowledge in the field of physics.

Following the speech given by Professor Ion Boldea, we understood that each person is different, with a stain of authenticity.

Without coordination and cooperation, the experiments could not have been completed.

We discovered involvement and teamwork. Also, an essential thing we learned is that not everything consists in the actual win, but in the passion dedicated throughout the game.

Relaxation is the key word for the last day of activities in this project. This trip strengthened our knowledge about hydropower, which plays an important role in Romania's energy industry. The end of the day gave us the chance to connect with nature.

Alice, Alexia, Andreea, Ayse, Kevin, Niko

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ERASMUS+ & eTwinning project 2019-1-HR01-KA229-060810

We’re on the web:

https://www.teslaerasmus.eu/ https://twinspace.etwinning.net/97317/home

Partners:

Tehnička škola, Požega, Croatia Bundeshandelsakademie und Bundeshandelsschule Linz, Austria Kanepi Gümnaasium, Estonia Liceul Teoretic ”Coriolan Brediceanu” Lugoj, Romania

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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