I am Irena,an English teacher from Lithuania. We have participated in this project for the third time .

This year my students and I have done our best to get more involved in the project and to discuss the results of the calculations and the importance of the project to ujs individually and to our families. We also made resolutions what we are going to do to decrease the amounts of carbon emissions which we produce in all these fields:home, transport,food and purchases.

Those students who participated in the project for the second time and did calculations of the test were pleasanly suprised that their amount of carbon emissions has decreased. It has not decreased greatly, but they were happy to state that little changes in their lifestyles influenced their results. They started cutting down on meat, walking more instead of taking a car to school, using ecological bags for shopping, installing energy saving bulbs at home or simply turning all the lights when leaving the room or house. They pointed out the value and importance of the project as they had noticed that to reach some results you do not change everything in your life, some small changes give positive results. They say that it is very important to involve more and more people in our societies to perform these calculations which would make them change themselves. In this way everyone can benefit twice: to save one’s money being more sensible consumers and saving and cherishing our environment. Everyone no matter how old they are have to take their part in solving environmental problems. The sooner we start the sooner we feel the results of positive changes.

Yeaaaaah guuys!!!! finally We’re in the map!!!
Now yoou can know where is Denia (And the IES Historiador Chabás) and the things that you SHOULD visit here hahaha ^^

Dear ISCFC teachers-

My apologies for the delay, but we now have our first February 2012 pins on the world map representing the student footprints and statistics from participating schools in France, Belgium, Croatia, Turkey, Lithuania and New Zealand!

http://footprint.stanford.edu/compare.html

Which schools across the world will be next?

Hello to all,
I am a teacher of English in Turkey. My class science class calculated their footprint yesterday. They were really interested in taking part. I did some explanations about the questions and new words before and the during the lesson. I also requested their biology teacher to give them some scientific information before partisipating in the challenge.
This activity helped them to gain awareness on the environmental issues. Their total avarages vary depending on living close to or far away from school.
Some students stay at school dormitory that’s why they walk but most of them take the school bus which makes your avarages high.
Unfortunately recyling isn’t common in our environment. My students suggested talking to the headmaster to provide containers to recycle the school waste and we are going to do it on Monday. We only have a container for paper.
I am pleased to participate in this activity because it helped them to use and practise their English as well.

Hello everyone,

My name is Hilary Johnson. I am a teacher of Science at Katikati College, a Year 7-13 high school in Katikati, New Zealand. My Year 9 GATE class has just finished calculating their carbon footprints and the results look very interesting, with a lot of variation.

Our initial thoughts are that some of this is caused by our school’s large rural catchment area. Other than school buses we do not have any public transport, so cars are used a lot, but unless there is a special reason, once rural students arrive home after school, they stay there. Shopping and being with friends is not an option.

Our climate is temperate and we do not heat our houses much, but it is interesting to note that our heating ranges from wood fires right through to solar panels.

Recycling is big in our little town - our recycling centre was recently doubled in size. However, unless you live in town (and half of us don’t), you have to drive your car with the rubbish to the recycling centre.

This is our first time undertaking a project like this and I’m sure the students will enjoy it.

Hello,
my name is Helene Spilmont, and I am a biology teacher in Boulogne sur Mer (France). My pupils have enjoyed calculating their footprint, even if it was difficult for them to understand most of the questions!!! I have helped them with the vocabulary, but even with my help, I suspect that some of them did’nt give the “right” answer, because our results are very low comparing to the average amount of emissions…
Anyway, it was a good experience!

Hi, my name is Ben Matthews. I’m an Environmental Science teacher at a school right outside of Washington, DC. It’s my first year participating in the challenge. My students have enjoyed calculating their Carbon Footprint.

Hello, I’m Katerina Savoulidi and I am teacher in a vocational school in the island of Crete in Greece. This is the second time that my students and I participate to the ISCFC project (first time in November ‘11) as a part of an environmental project.

Hello, I’m Gaelle Farout a biology teacher from France. My high school is located In the South West near Bordeaux. It’s my first particitation to the Challenge and i’m really happy. However,at the moment, the bad weather in France makes hard the participation of all my students .

My name is Dubravka and I am a teacher of English in the Gymnasium Pozega in Croatia (http://gim.gimpoz.hr/rubrika/english/a-brief-survey-of-gymnasium).
I participated in the November session of ISCFC with a group of 14-18 year -old pupils and since we really enjoyed doing all the assignments and discussions I have decided to introduce the ISCFC, the I2I team and the Eintzein social learning network to my colleagues and to publish a new invitation for the February session on our school web pages (http://gim.gimpoz.hr/novosti/751-are-you-ready-to-take-the-challenge ). It is in Croatian but you are welcome to see the photographs of my pupils and to check two interesting links – the first one is „Save the Earth“ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mt29Z7m8hU
(my pupils have found it on YouTube and used as an interesting illustration in their discussion) and the second one is about Fukushima
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcOol3KJscc&feature=related
(and it is published in the „Nukes post-Fukushima“ Eintzein discussion forum, as you will soon find out).
I considered these two video clips thoughtprovoking and used them to motivate a new group of pupils to join the project (and also to start a discussion and to practice reading and listening comprehension during an English lesson. I admit I had to squeeze them in the curriculum, but it turned out to be really rewarding and worthwhile since all the pupils understood and appreciated the importance of the message.)
As you can guess, I am a beginner in the area of carbon footprints and environmental challenges, but I definitely love our planet and I am really interested in helping my pupils discover the same feeling and enjoy learning and sharing the knowledge with pupils all over the world.
Looking forward to meeting all of you,
Dubravka