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Transnational meetings
Transnational meetings
Transnational Project Kickoff Meeting, Alexandroupolis, Greece, November 27-29, 2024
The eGAIA project kicked-off at the partner 6th Experimental Junior High School, Alexandroupolis, Greece.
The consortium partners got to know each other through informative presentations of their institutions.
We engaged in educational and cultural activities promoting the traditions of the host and experienced the local environment.
The current status of the project was thoroughly analysed. Upcoming deliverables were discussed and milestones were checked. Current potential risks were carefully examined, in order to apply contingency measures, if necessary.
The logistics of the forthcoming LTTA mobility was planned in detail, as well us the future steps in the development of our project.
A impression of the event was recorded by Alfa TV, Alexandroupolis, Greece: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18f2qujCqa/
2. Transnational Meeting for Project Calibration, Craiova, Romania, March 10-12, 2025
The eGAIA calibration meeting took place at the coordinating University of Craiova and partner "Mihai Eminescu" School in Craiova, Romania.
The partners from Greece and Portugal got to know several Romanian traditions, cultural monuments and nature-preserved spots.
The consortium engaged into fruitful discussions regarding the status of the project on ongoing WP2 tasks and the upcoming first activities of WP3.
The organization of the upcoming LTTA mobility was discussed in detail.
A record of the TNM was made by Tele U, Craiova, Romania: https://youtu.be/O0fT0XxGw9s
3. Transnational Meeting and Activity Review, Funchal, Portugal, December 11-13, 2025
The eGAIA transnational meeting for activity review took place at the partner Escola Básica do 1o com Pré-escolar da Cruz de Carvalho in Funchal.
The meeting envisaged a collaborative review of current project activities to foster alignment and shared decisions among partners.
In particular, we discussed the calibration of our plant monitoring system in WP3 to start a synchronous observation of the different environmental conditions. In parallel, we considered the initial development of our cooperative environmental board game from WP4.
The partners also enjoyed the natural beauty of the Madeira island.
Finally, the organization of the two last mobilities (LTTA and TNM) for next year were carefully planned.
4. Transnational Meeting and Activity Review, Silves, Portugal, April 14-16, 2026
The final meeting of the consortium took place at the Agrupamento de Escolas de Silves.
On this occasion, we concluded the results of WP3 and organised the upcoming LTTA mobility with respect to the collaborative work from WP4.
The comparative analysis of the data collected by the sensors mounted on each pot plant was presented and discussed, highlighting the calibration issues and the climate difference between our regions.
In preparation for the last student meeting for cooperative board game playing, we finalised the planning of the components: discussed the final version of the rules and cards, as well as the definitive 3D printing design, number and size for the pawns.
The partners were also involved in cultural and environmental visits in the Algarve region.
Learning, Teaching and Training Activities
Learning, Teaching and Training Activities
Charting Our Environmental Journey: Student Project Launch, Madeira, Portugal, December 9-12, 2024
The first working group mobility with students took place at Escola Básica do 1o com Pré-escolar da Cruz de Carvalho in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal.
The agenda of the mobility was targeted towards the development of the key activities of WP2: collaborative storytelling and Scratch programming, as well as collecting training data (images of nature) for the development of the AI model. The images contain garbage or clean natural landscapes.
Activities related to animation were carried out in Studio Stop Motion, promoted by EDUCAmedia. The students were split into three groups (two pupils from each partner) and each had to animate a short movie about the trip to Madeira of the partner schools, the meeting in Funchal and a puzzle of eGAIA.
The resulting three collaborative video animations in Studio Stop motion can be found at the following links:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkEhrOibAqU
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-USmlrWzMQg
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ9EM_Thc34
The meeting also served as a feedback collector of the first version of the virtual environmental simulator. Three versions of simulators (Python, Javascript and Scratch) were presented. The students interacted with the simulators and gave their impressions and comments for further tuning. The measured effect had been a positive attitude towards understanding and protecting the environment.
The virtual simulator developed in Python can be reached in the Github repository at: https://github.com/catalinstoean/Ecosystem-Python/
The Javascript version is deposited at the link: https://catalinstoean.github.io/eGAIA-ecosystem-js/
The environmental simulator designed in Scratch can be found at the address: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1073629344
The students further engaged in Scratch programs as collaborative work. The six groups, each comprised of 4 students (one from each partner), developed Scratch implementations with an environmental topic given on-site, during a time frame of 1h30.
The six collaborative Scratch animations can be found at the following links:
- https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1109735672
- https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1109684620
- https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1109684364
- https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1109684677
2. Student Demos and Feedback Session, Silves, Portugal, May 8-12, 2025
The second working group mobility with students took place at Agrupamento de Escolas de Silves, Portugal.
The agenda of the mobility envisaged the demonstration of the results reached through the cooperative work of the students during the entire WP2. This was related especially to the finalization of the AI model to distinguish garbage from non-garbage, trained on the images collected by each school.
Activities related to understanding and building AI models started with a familiarization based upon “AI for oceans” from code.org.
Subsequently, students were presented the information on the 1629 images they collectively collected over the course of the year. An AI model has been trained on all this data and the results were revealed.
Next, each school was invented to similarly train the model on their own data. The conclusions of the magnitude of protecting the environment together and of carefully training our AI supportive models have been drawn with the students.
The data set will be made available open-access. The model can be implemented through Teachable Machine.
Further on, the students were engaged into promoting the eGAIA project through short, meaningful videos in Animaker. Four groups were established, each containing 1-2 children from each partner, and a topic specific to the subjects of eGAIA was assigned to each group.
The resulting four collaborative promotional videos can be seen at the links:
3. Student Meeting and Planning Session, Craiova, Romania, October 20-24 2025
The third working group mobility with students took place at Scoala Gimnaziala "Mihai Eminescu", Craiova, Romania.
The agenda of the mobility was targeted towards a collaborative work meeting to align partner knowledge and engage students in understanding sensor integration fundamentals.
We set up a system for monitoring the environmental conditions of different pot plants (sunlight, temperature, humidity). The activity involves a micro:bit board, corresponding sensors and block programming in MakeCode. Based on the collected information, the board displayed an avatar of their status (smiley or frown face).
Taking the collected data further, a Scratch-implemented avatar expressed the feelings of the plants, as a function of its detected humidity and sunlight. Based on thresholds, the plant looks too dry, OK or too humid, while the sun is also shining on it with lighter or stronger beams:
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1228205114
The students were split into four partner heterogeneous groups and experimented with their own plant and micro:bit sensor toolkit.
The students also visited the University of Craiova, where we continued the micro:bit sensor experiment, this time triggering automatic watering of the plant, once low humidity is detected and a sound alarm is triggered. The watering activity was also registered on the EU Code Week initiative:
https://codeweek.eu/view/1310926/microbit-for-plant-monitoring-and-watering
From this point on, data gathering will be conducted at each partner, in order to enable further comparative analysis between the environmental conditions for pot plants in each country involved in the project.
4. Student Work Visit for Game Testing, Alexandroupolis, Greece, May 5-9 2026
The fourth and last working group mobility with students took place at the 6th Experimental Junior High School, Alexandroupolis, Greece.
The agenda of the mobility was targeted towards the testing of the cooperative board game for environmental awareness.
Nevertheless, it also included a hands-on demonstration of 3D printing for the target group students and teachers. The scope was to live print one of the actual dice involved in the game.
The board game was then tested in 3 rounds, with teams each time made up of 2 students from each partner. The play brought joy, cooperation and feedback.
The hosts also engaged the students in a 3-team game to discover the cultural and environmental sides of the town of Alexandroupolis. Additionally, in a visit to the Ethnological Museum of Thrace, 4 inter-partner teams had to digitally advertise an object from the museum.
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