Sustainable Education & Going Green – An Intercultural German-American Blended- Learning Project

Based on the 2012 Election School project which engaged 1,700 students and teachers in a mock-election and intensive class work, the U.S. Embassy in Berlin will cooperate, once again, with Leuphana University Lüneburg and eXplorarium Life e.V. on a new project: Sustainable Education – Going Green - An Intercultural German-American Blended- Learning ProjectGoing Green: While Germany is considered the birthplace of the green party and receives world-wide attention for its efforts to implement the "Energiewende", the U.S. is often perceived as a nation more interested in profit-making than the environmental agenda. Both countries pursue sustainable development, but their approaches differ. Going Green will look at the different measures both countries are implementing concerning environmental issues. It will explore the role of the federal government versus local and state initiatives and contest commonly held stereotypes. In order to facilitate a dialogue between German and American students, existing school partnerships will be supported. Discussions with counterparts in both countries regarding local and personal measures to protect the environment while allowing for economic development and growth will be explored via Skype or Google Hangouts, chats, e-mail exchange, and social media. Gaming will become an interactive element in the lesson plan.Students will reach out to local policy makers and organizations, compare measures that could be implemented in their families, their schools and their respective communities and develop ideas to further the environmental agenda. Students in Germany and the U.S. will learn from each other and possibly turn the virtual exchange into target-oriented school exchange. Students from both sides of the Atlantic are encouraged to develop ideas for "real life actions", execute them and present them on the platform. At the end of the project period, these actions enter into a competition with awards for excellent sustainable activities.A final conference in which students present and discuss their award winning ideas will be held in November 2014 in Berlin. This conference correlates with the concluding UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014).Meet US school visits will address Going Green issues throughout the project: http://germany.usembassy.gov/germany/meetus.html