Posts & News

In order to make the most of its dissemination activities and to reach its relevant target groups, the EcoPodcasts dissemination strategy was harmonized with and adapted to the EcoPodcasts online community. In the course of this strategy design, the disseminating partner REACH has produced an overview of the most important dates related to awareness for climate change, natural preservation and education.

The result was a beautifully layouted and practical calendar that can be used by anyone who wants to keep up to date on these important dates. It is available for download in our toolbox section here!

The EcoPodcasts consortium is proud to announce that it is now a member of the #NatureForAll movement. #NatureForAll is a global movement that believes that the best way to save our planet is to make people experience and learn about its natural wonders. Any organization that fosters the goal of connecting people with nature in whichever way, can join the movement and by that strengthen its core message.

Founded in 2016 #NatureForAll now has more than 400 partners in more than 70 countries! All those partners can easily interact with each other and publish their resources for everyone to use (also non-members!). Especially noteworthy is the “Discovery Zone”, a database of numerous ideas of how to connect all age groups with nature, many of them designed to be used in the classroom - browse here and get inspired!

Upon joining the movement, EcoPodcasts made a special #NatureForAll pledge, in which it committed:

... to bring the resources of #NatureForAll and its partners (especially the Discovery Zone) to the attention of teachers and students.

... to encourage students to submit their podcasts to the #NatureForAll storytelling challenge.

... to contribute the project results to the #NatureForAll Discovery Zone.

... to collaborate with partners of #NatureForAll that have similar or complementary aims.

... to amplify the voice of #NatureForAll and its partners on our social media channels.

Becoming a member is a quick and easy process, which is greatly facilitated by the accessible and supportive #NatureForAll coordinators! We warmly encourage you to check out their website.

Before beginning the development of our teacher training programme that combines podcasting and story-telling with climate change education, the Ecopodcasts partners had a look at what already exists out there.

The result is a brief mapping of what is already available for teachers interested in learning more about environmental pollution and climate change, as well as exploring ways to implement environmental education in their classrooms. The team from the University of Macedonia summarized the results in a short guide that includes interesting and innovative educational programmes aimed at primary and secondary school teachers to develop their knowledge of environmental education and help them integrate it into their teaching.

More specifically, educational programmes from the partner countries of the EcoPodcasts project (Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, Malta, Greece, and Portugal) to map the current situation, to offer an interesting guide to teachers that includes educational programmes on environmental education, and to map relevant needs and gaps for the EcoPodcasts project to address them through the development of appropriate educational material aimed at primary and secondary school teachers.

Have a look here!

As spring time is approaching in Europe, we will be seeing a lot more amazing pictures of nature again, for example of beaches!

Curious fact: these pictures are also used for research! In one of her research projects, EcoPodcasts expert Dr. Lucia Fanini has been monitoring social media pictures as a way to investigate environmental attitudes. This helps to adapt awareness strategies to the young generation and supports the development of effective communication of contents regarding conservation.

Lucia presented her research at  the Commocean 2022 Conference, which is devoted to communication of oceanic science, with an audience composed of researchers, communication professionals, artists, all passionate about preserving the Oceans and sharing a range of tools, contexts, experiences for doing so.

If this sparked your interest, have a look a the recordings of the conference here!

(Image of beach by David Mark from Pixabay, CC0.)

After having successfully worked together for one year, the EcoPodcats Consortium finally met in person for the first time! Hosted by our partner IIF in beautiful Valletta, Malta, two members of each of the seven partners participated in work-intense project meetings scheduled at the end of November 2022. 

In the meetings the progress of the past year was evaluated and the future steps were planned. Among other things, the partners discussed the translation and dissemination of the freshly published handbook for teachers “Care for the environment” (see here ) and of the Teachers Training Toolkit (see here). The meeting also served to jointly take final design decisions for the EcoPodcasts Platform, with a special focus on security and anti-bullying issues. Another important issue concerned the Strategy for Networking with existing climate change initiatives, as well as the exchange of resources and know-how. Also the details of the Teacher Training Workshop which will take place in June 2023 in Salento, Italy were discussed and preliminarily set.

As a highlight of the meeting there was the presentation of some pilot-podcasts, which were pro-actively produced by some students of Geo Milev, our coordinating partner from Bulgaria. And of course there were also moments of fun and play, for example when the partners exchanged goodies, such as the cookies with the project mascot “Friendly Mike” provided by REACH, AECCB, etc.

It was a great meeting, which will help us start the second project year with clear goals and tasks, as well as enhanced team spirit. All EcoPodcasts partners are very grateful to the IIF Team from Malta (Anamaria and Katina) for the fantastic organization!

We are thrilled to announce that we just completed our thoroughly researched handbook "Caring for the Environment", edited by the team of the University of Macedonia in Greece, with the participation of all Ecopodcasts project partners. The handbook aims to provide primary and secondary school teachers with the necessary clarification of terms related to environmental pollution, as well as inspiration to implement educational activities that develop children's knowledge and skills against climate change.

The handbook contains useful information on the threats that currently prevail around environmental pollution caused by human activity. In addition, it includes the impacts our planet is experiencing today, as well as an analysis of the possible future scenarios, especially by the end of the 21st century. Moreover, the handbook contains a valuable collection of good practices for tackling and combating environmental pollution, with a particular focus on the opportunities for children to raise awareness and take action against climate change, both in the partner countries (Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, Malta, Greece, Portugal) and in the wider EU. Τhe handbook is an important step first of the overall goal of developing the “EcoPodcasts Curriculum”.

From the infographic on the left, designed by REACH’s team, you can get an idea about the topics that the handbook covers, putting into focus the two important questions about 1) what is happening with our planet and 2) how can we all take action to change these harmful developments? We hope that with our handbook we can contribute to making it easier for educators and students to approach the very important issue of making a change for a greener, sustainable future!

Download the handbook here and find A4 posters of the infographic in our toolbox section!

Feel free to send us your feedback and share it with any educator you think might like it!

During the past few months, the EcoPodcasts project partners from the University of Salento (Italy) and from REACH (Austria) have been quite busy working on the EcoPodcasts Network Strategy. As one of EcoPodcasts’ ambitious goals, the Network aims to create an international educational community on a European and world wide level that lasts beyond the project duration.

To ensure a student-friendly and high-quality network, which also supports students to adopt healthy approaches to social media, we have been rigorously scanning the open access landscape, in order to identify the best-suited initiatives for collaboration.

Through the network, the EcoPodcasts project aspires to become an active reference for the educational community for training the youngest generation in the use of social media as tools for bringing social change by encouraging sustainable lifestyle.

We are excited to continue our work by continuously connecting with all those wonderful initiatives that are out there, so that as many students and educators as possible can fruitfully interact with each other to exchange ideas and learn from each other and to amplify EcoPodcasts’ agenda of playfully fostering sustainability!

In the last weeks, REACH has been busy conducting surveys in three schools in Austria. The goal of the surveys was to identify the habits and needs of students and teachers in relation to the use of podcasts as well as in relation to their engagement with the topic of climate change.
We warmly thank the involved school personnel from the Graz International Bilingual School,  from BG/BRG Lichtenfels and from BG/BRG Kirchengasse in Graz, for their support in enabling and coordinating the conduction of the surveys together with REACH members. Special thanks goes to all students and teachers, who filled out the survey and helped us to better design the materials and tools for the EcoPodcasts project! We appreciate your time and effort and will let you know what we found out soon with the survey analysis!

Things are taking shape! Our Maltese partner International Integrity Foundation is in the middle of designing the EcoPodcasts Platform online system, which will be an interactive virtual space for hosting podcasts as well as exchanging ideas and opinions about them. The consortium met to discuss the main structure of the system and its user requirements. These will be now further refined and developed following internal feedback from the partners, as well as based on input from teachers and students currently being surveyed in all partner countries. Stay tuned for more news as we are developing something really cool and practical!

EcoPodcasts, represented by Anamaria Magri Pantea from International Integrity Foundation, contributed to the Young Innovators “Climathon” at the end of August. This activity for students from ages 13 to 16 was organised by EIT Climate-KIC Malta Hub and was part of a wider “MG2i - MCAST Gateway to Industry” summer camp that included a number of Systems Thinking and challenge-based training sessions.

In her workshop, Anmaria presented the EcoPodcasts project, its objectives, planned activities and results to the students. They talked about listening to podcasts for learning about climate change as well as to use it as an advocacy tool for more sustainable living. They also listened together to the TedTalks Daily podcast "How hip-hop can make climate action cool" which you can find here.

The EcoPodcasts session ended with a students’ opinion survey about their specific usage patterns of podcasts and platforms, social media networks, learning and communication and preferences, which we will use as a base for the further development of our project activities.

It was a great first test-run to make our case that taking responsibility for climate change is cool and we thank EIT Climate-KIC Malta Hub for this great opportunity!