The ELENA project has been selected by the European Union Lifelong Learning Programme as a Good Practice and Success Story of ERASMUS+ projects. The modules developed in the project are recommended curricula in several sustainability educational programmes in Germany, Romania and Hungary. They are suggested to anyone that is interested in the education of loving and conserving nature and would like to raise a sense of responsibility through calling forth emotions in students by working with living animals.
The ELENA educational materials are freely downloadable from here
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We can proudly announce, that ELENA, the trans-European cooperative project is accepted by the European Commission’s LifeLong Learning office. Thus we can officially close this highly successful project.
The venture consortium was composed of partners from Germany (ANL, leader), Hungary, Romania and Georgia with the aim to promote the awareness of nature and the responsibility for nature. The main idea of the project is to introduce living animals into the classroom. However the project’s formal end has arrived, the „ELENA spirit” continues being kept alive by the partners through other EU funded projects, teacher trainings and implementation of ELENA modules in the curricula in many schools.
ELENA is a trans-European cooperative project of partners from Germany, Hungary, Romania and Georgia with the aim to promote the awareness of nature and the responsibility for nature.
The main idea of the project is to introduce living animals into the classroom (animal-assisted education): they can assist teaching and co-supervised responsibly by students. Living animals are "a heart openers" and therefore increase pupils' motivation and interests in the learning process, while experiential learning methods contribute to carrier competences. This approach was highly successful in the model project "Tiere live" of the Bavarian Academy for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management (ANL, Germany) and is now adopted to the partner countries needs and situations.
Our three-year-long project (2013-2016) starts with a baseline study in the participating countries, and a development of a Competency Framework – and based on their results teaching modules – will be adapted and developed as well as teachers trained and encouraged to use the method in the classroom.