The idea for building the teaching and learning web concept originated on the occasion of the new national complementary subject for vocational schools,
"Technik & Umwelt" (T&U) (as of 2015), at the Berufsmittelschule of the commercial college Wirtschaftsschule KV Wetzikon (wkvw.ch).
The concept forms a basis for applied learning methods «bili» (bilingual education), interdisciplinary teaching (IDAF) and cross-curricular competences according to the new curriculum (Kantonaler (ZH) Lehrplan, mba.zh.ch).
Concept's main elements
"The Horse"
A closed working and interaction environment for student work and exchange. Each student has his/her own account. Works on any device.
Project website
A publicly accessible website with contributions (projects) of student teams: dontwastemy.energy
THE ! association – "The Horse" association
The association is the home of "The Horse" concept since its foundation in September 2018 in Zurich, Oerlikon.
The aim is to facilitate cross-border collaboration projects on environmental topics and to spread the idea worldwide,
to support, promote and accompany special projects, learners and teachers in a targeted manner.
Association website:THE ! association
From 01.01. to 01.10.2023 an average of wonderful23'712 visitors per month visited our project website dontwastemy.energy!
1'161'186 pages were viewed!
More statistics » [October 06, 2023]
Under the title "Sustainability education at Swiss vocational schools through international digital collaboration"
we have submitted a funding application to Movetia -
Movetia - International Programme.
The project aims to promote, challenge and provide the necessary tools for sustainability education in Swiss
vocational schools
through digital international collaboration (COIL) from
Switzerland with partners from
India,
Indonesia and under scientific supervision.
The following partners support the project, together we will implement it,
provided Movetia approves the application:
There are already some «The Horse» concept certificates in the wild! See a
specimen «The Horse» certificate here.
There are different levels, some enhancements are in planning.
[December 19, 2022]
In 2022 (until 12/12/22), we averagedwonderful11,900 visitors per month (136,218 total) to our website dontwastemy.energy with collaborative projects of young people! [December 19, 2022]
Valuable new projects from as many parts of the globe as ever are currently available to discover at
dontwastemy.energy! Some are still in progress.
[May 31, 2022]
Wikipedia preview box
We have created a new tool/feature for the project & working websites that
supports information retrieval (mouseover/tap
"information retrieval" to see it in action).
It's easy to use in other websites and Open Source.
Project website »[December 01 2021]
Flyers, members, payment services
Flyers have been printed and are being distributed to recruit members;
Become a member! - There are new rules;
New payment systems for donations & fees: Credit Card, QR Invoice and TWINT
[November 09 2021]
Triangles
Beautiful new projects to discover!!
For the first time we tried collaboration across three countries, so-called "triangles".
[09. November 2021]
The number of environmental & technical contributions from students has grown to over 150!
This and the increase in collaborations have prompted us to completely rebuild the navigation structure.
The focus is now on topics such as
"Climate",
"Recycling", etc.
[February 08 2021]
Collaborations 2020/21 are underway
Students, teachers and experts from India, Belgium, Switzerland and – in the clarification process –
Basque Country, individual teams from Pakistan, Canada and Dubai are collaborating!
The main topic is "City climate & city trees".
"The Horse" concept gets attention!
We are pleased to present "The Horse": ffu-pee article (pdf, page 15 [de])
Movetia website (movetia.ch, in 4 lang)
ffu-eep (ffu-pee.ch): FachFrauen Umwelt represents the interests of women
who are professionally involved in environmental issues.
Movetia (movetia.ch): This is the national (Switzerland) agency for the promotion of
exchanges and mobility in the education system.
"The Horse" certificates
Issuing awards is an idea we already had, time is come to do it.
A student asked for a certificate for her collaborative project to attach it to her application for a university.
We used the toolbox for the first time for the
"Food & climate"
projects in our "Food App" (sway.office.com) for
data collecting.
We like to integrate the tool deeper in "The Horse" concept. Next we will use it in the "Tree App".
"The Horse" uses now an "unlimited" account for "Humanitarian Organizations" which is provided by the UN
OCHA Services (humanitarianresponse.info), thx!
[November 03 2020]
Interviews
via Skype with the teachers Ann,
Mary,
Praveena from Belgium and India and the students
Lars and
Dharany from Switzerland
about their current project experiences and "The Horse" concept.
Further information on the projects can be found on the association's website.
[Dezember 22 2019]
Belgium, India, Switzerland and South Africa - 110 students, 7 teachers and experts are collaborating.
The topic is "food and climate" and with the help of a "food app",
daily food is recorded and can later be used for projects and research.
[October 4 2019]
A new Knowledge Pool with over 3000 categorized articles and pages and a
full text search gives students and teachers access to previously acquired knowledge and documents in a closed area.
[August 2019]
"THE ! association" website
THE - The Horse Education; Our association has got its first
website (the-horse.education).
[August 2019]
Domain change
save-energy.tips changed to dontwastemy.energy
– so it matches better the website motto "Don’t waste my energy!". There were more than 3800 visitors in the month of March'19! Some
infos and website statistics » [April 20 2019]
Movetia Conference, input presentation and panel discussion, 16 May 2018
"The Horse" concept at Movetia conference,
"The Horse" Konzept an der Movetia Konferenz,
using digitization for exchange and mobility.
Project «Z.B.» (Zurich.Berlin.): Students of the business school wkvw and
the «Lette Verein Berlin» develop contributions together,
read more »Quick Box: Our Research-Box is now available on "The Horse" and the
project website,
infos Quick Box »New Webserver:save-energy.tips has a brand new home, details here »Last updated August 30, 2023, dfe
We presented "The Horse" concept at the following cantonal and national meetings:
Invitation to the Movetia Conference
"Strategy Exchange and mobility of the Confederation and the cantons" in Berne on 16 Mai 2018,
Input-speech (Workshop A, Digitization: How can the digitization for exchanges and mobility be used?) with a
subsequent panel discussion (slides Input-speech),
other documents for downloading (movetia.ch).
Through the consequent application of Cloud-services (Azure)
the costs for the infrastructure and the running costs are inexpensive. They are customized to the exact requirements.
Overview Infrastructure (pdf)
Features
Transferring of knowledge and experiences, application of various media, realization of projects in teams, publicize and propagate contributions (IG, Twitter, FB), paperless up to 100%, knowledge pool for future users and much more.
The "The horse" concept is suitable for both teachers/instructors/coaches and learners/students. New digital media can be tried out and applied under "genuine conditions". There are countless possible variations.
Double page article
Presentation/introduction of "The Horse"
