Kilglass National School

Third mobility of the project Ecological literacy for a sustainable future was held in Kilglass NS, Ireland. 

Topic of third mobility was renewable energy and sustainable sources. Partners from Romania, Turkiye and Croatia visited Kilglass National School in Ireland.

We spend 5 days teaching and training mobility.

We visited Kilglass NS where the hosts welcomed us with an appropriate program prepared by the students of the school.The host welcomed us with traditional Irish dances, in which we also tried ourselves. All school students participated in the concert.

 The hosts took us through the school and showed us the school premises. We also met all the school employees.

The students cultivate their own garden in the school yard, so they showed us what they grow and told us how they take care of the vegetables.

Later during day we observed renewable art workshop held by 5th and 6th class.

The hosts took us on a visit to the distillery, where the guide explained to us how they produce the drink ecologically and how they pay attention to self-sustainability.

The second day of our mobility started in the morning where we attended workshops on paper recycling and wind energy.

The workshops were very interesting and we were happy to join in the process of making paper and windmills.

The students were also happy to participate.

Each of the partners prepared a presentation on renewable energy sources and presented it to the students at school.

In the afternoon we went on a tour of Ballinasloe with our guide teacher Johny who told us the history of the city in detail.

Wednesday was reserved for a visit to Galway, where the wind farm is located. The guide took us through the wind farm and explained to us how the windmills work and how the preparations for construction went.

Partners compared windmills in their countries with those from Ireland.

In Galway, we visited the Galway city museum where we looked at exibition Wild Atlantic.

The ocean is key to all life on Earth. It is an extraordinary and largely unexplored place, teeming with a fascinating array of plants and animals. These, together with currents and natural systems, shape our planet.

The ocean is of huge importance to Ireland – providing food, employment and pleasure, while influencing our climate, weather and well-being. We are an island nation with one of the largest seabed territories in Europe.

The Wild Atlantic Sea Science exhibition is a partnership between Galway City Museum and the Marine institute.

On Thursday, our hosts took us to Clare county, where we visited Bunratty castle and saw how the Irish lived in ancient times, how they warmed themselves, what they cultivated.

The site on which Bunratty Castle stands was in origin a Viking trading camp in 970. The present structure is the last of four castles to be built on the site.

Bunratty Folk park is a set on 26 acres of unspolit Clare countryside. It  features over 30 buildings in a ‘living’ village and rural setting.

Rural farmhouses, village shops and streets are recreated and furnished as they would have appeared at that time according to their social standing, from the poorest one roomed dwelling to Bunratty House a fine example of a Georgian residence built 1804 home of the Studdarts, the last family to occupy Bunratty Castle. 

 In the afternoon we visited the Unesco Geopark Cliffs of Moher.The Cliffs of Moher are home to one of the largest colonies of cliff nesting birds in Ireland including over 35 species of birds. 

The plants growing on and around the Cliffs of Moher are tough and hardy to survive the prevailing winds and thin soils. On the rocks and shore, you can see seaweed and lichens, while mosses and liverworts cling to the cliff face along with wildflowers and grasses such as scurvy grass, sheep’s bit, sea pink, and sea campion. 

On friday morning, we handed out certificates for participating in the mobility and filled out the evaluation at school.

We visited Galway Livin g Bog.

Galway’s Living Bog’, aka Carrownagappul Bog SAC, just outside Mountbellew, is one of the biggest, most accessible raised bogs in Ireland. It has been at the centre of local community life for generations, and now welcomes people from all over the world to visit it. Not only is it one of the best examples of a raised bog West of the River Shannon, it is one of the most beautiful bogs in all of Europe.

At almost 1,200 hectares, it is the second biggest Living Bog project site, and thanks to its condition (plenty of raised bog and unique flora and fauna), its folklore and its location Carrownagappul has the potential to become one of Ireland’s foremost bogs to visit. You can learn a lot by visiting it, or by popping into the Interpretive centre at Galway Teleworks/Mountbellew Mart, just a few km from the bog.

The bog contains one of the largest extant areas of uncut high bog surface in all of Galway. It is also the most negotiable bog in all of Galway, traversed by a road and track network and thanks to areas like the historic Patches Garden right at the heart of the bog, it is a peatlands amenity with huge potential. Every single aspect of the Irish peatlands story is contained within its SAC boundary, and with a history going back over 9,000 years, it is a bog with a great story to tell!

Restoration works here took time, as there was numerous open drains (many of them hidden, other treacherously deep) and almost 25kms of them were blocked by The Living Bog team on the high bog alone. Careful assessment of the bog took place between 2016 and the commencement of restoration works here in January 2019. Works were completed April 2019, with additional works undertaken in September 2019 and again in 2020. In all, over 3,000 peat dams were required to encourage active raised bog growth on the high bog and cutover bog. Seveal large-scale plastic dams were also developed by The Living Bog to block particularly wide drains which were taking millions of gallons of water off the bog. 

We've been hearing about Bog all week and now we're happy to see it.

We learned all kinds of things and returned home with a lot of new ideas that we will use to improve teaching in our schools.