What does a 2,000-year-old city in Western Germany, a landmark of high Gothic architecture, home of gilded medieval reliquary and a modern metropolitan hub for Central Europe, have in common with a bamboo school in the jungle of Bali?
A passion for student-driven learning and a belief in the power of collaboration.
Students and teachers from Green School Bali and the TH Köln University in Germany, have joined forces in a ground-breaking renewable energies collaboration. ‘Operation Rain or Shine’ is a shared learning experience, which grew from a common learning philosophy between the two schools. A shared belief in the power of learning through real-life projects and educating for 21st Century skills and competencies.
This progressive approach to learning, is giving a team of masters level students from the University and Green School High School students the chance to work together on an ambitious hybrid solar and micro-hydro project to be installed on-site at Green School Bali.
After winning the Zayed Future Energy Prize, which will fund the project, Green School embarked on one of its biggest sustainability projects to date. Technical support was going to be needed to fulfil the project goal and in a moment of perfect synchronicity, new friends of Green School, at TH Köln, stepped in to join forces and round-out a cross-generational, cross-school, cross-cultural team of students with a shared passion for learning by doing.
With students on the ground at Green School Bali, the Bali team’s role is to collect data, photograph, video, measure, plot and plan possible solutions to getting Green School powered by renewables. For the Masters students in Cologne, their role plays to their strengths with the analysis, technical assessment and expert advice on various solutions and installation advice. What a team, what a learning experience, what a way to take-on a big problem and power-up a real solution! This is progressive education. This is the school of the future, now.
Along the way, Green School students in Middle School and Primary School will also have the chance to participate, with the final solution being a highly visible hybrid systems that showcases the power and technical workings of renewable energies, for all to see and learn from.
Establishing the teams, working out how to best communicate across different time zones, identifying the various responsibilities, project milestones and learning objectives has been a learning journey already. But the two teams are on their way and with a deadline of December 2017 to have stage one of the system fully installed, it is all systems go!
We wish the two groups, as one team, all the best as they experience and share the power of harnessing our globally connected world, for the good of our planet!
Green School Bali won the Zayed Future Energy Prize in 2016 in the Global High Schools category.
View Green School’s Zayed Future Energy Prize Submission Video Here:
Learn More about other ways to get involved and support sustainability or enterprise projects at Green School here .