HikeWays: Mountain Trails for School Hiking Trips

Hiking in the environments of natural beauty is a valuable form of activity, raising curiosity of the world, offering opportunities for new encounters and contributing to a healthy lifestyle. It is a form of ecotourism that should be promoted among young people who tend to submerge in the virtual reality of digital games and social media interactions at the expense of physical activity in the open air. The project originated from identification of the need to promote hiking as part of a school programme. Such trips can be organised at a lower cost than excursions to distant cities. They let students explore their own ‘small homelands’ often unknown in their riches. Walking in the countryside gives students an enjoyment of physical exercise in the company of school friends. If skillfully combined with an exploratory learning programme, they strengthen positive attitudes to education projects bridging school knowledge with the real environment. Active exploration of nature facilitated by digital media (digital maps, photography, filmmaking) opens opportunities for connecting subjects like Geography, Biology, PE, Art and IT into integral learning experiences, attractive for young people and enjoyable at the same time.

The overall project objective was to increase the number of school students taking part in hiking trips that combine physical outdoor activity with an interdisciplinary learning programme. This objective translates into more specific aims: - Offer new learning experiences to teachers and youth workers who can act as facilitators of school hiking trips - Identify trails leading through sites of natural and cultural interest in the surrounding mountain ranges where the participating schools are based - Involve students in hiking together during school trips and sharing the coverage of the excursions through maps, photos and films - Facilitate intercultural encounters of students across the partnership through online and onsite exchange - Select the best trails and learning scenarios connected with the hiking and present them in a publication that can facilitate organisation of mountain excursions by other schools

This is an overview of the project work plan as actually implemented. The work was coordinated by EST with each partner contributing with their particular competences to the main project result, a guide for teachers entitled “HikeWays: Mountain Trails for School Hiking Trips”. Preparatory phase (XI 2021 - I 2022) - This phase was devoted to planning and designing activities. - Each partner shared their relevant experience (mountain guiding and digital maps, aerial photography, video storytelling, interdisciplinary learning programmes connected with ecotourism) - We selected the most appropriate trails in each country to explore with the students and present in the publication. - EST provided the project website to serve as the main promotion and dissemination tool 1st set of trails and learning scenarios (II - VIII 2022) - The development of the publication was connected with school hiking trips in each country, each preceded and followed by classroom activities.The gathered experiences and resources provided input to respective chapters. - We created digital maps of selected trails in each country, provided illustrations and annotations of the trails and interesting places to visit in the vicinity as well as developed interdisciplinary learning scenarios related to the chosen trails and school curriculum. - As a result, we had 1 such module from each country (trail + learning scenario). We agreed on the common format of their presentation. - We drafted the introductory chapter with the focus on organisational aspects of school hiking trips. 2nd set of trails and learning scenarios (IX 2022 - I 2023) - We followed the same steps as above, but now taking into account initial experiences from the previous phase. - By the end of this stage, teachers and youth workers active in the project were acquainted with the three important components of the interdisciplinary learning programme - digital mapping (IT, Geography), video storytelling (Art, English) and aerial photography (Geography, Art) during staff LTTS in Poland, Romania and Slovenia. 3rd set of trails and learning scenarios (II - IX 2023) - Same steps as above but on different trails, with different classes and different learning programmes. - Our objective was not only to have a diversity of trails from the partners’ mountainous regions presented in the publication( 3 from each), but also different ideas on how to motivate students into ecotourism and exploratory learning. - The most motivated of them were invited to student LTTs, one in each partner country. Final edition, translation and dissemination of the publication (VII - X 2023) - We were editing the chapters in the course of their development but they finally needed to be assembled in a consistent and coherent way. - The publication was written in English and translated into all the partners’ languages to maximise the number of potential readers. - Multiplier events were the highlights of its promotion and dissemination campaign run by each partner.

During the project we gathered a wealth of experiences in engaging school students in mountain hiking and learning activities connected with these trips. These experiences have the potential to influence other teachers to launch similar initiatives and thus extend the project impact beyond the direct group of its participants. With this in view, we distilled the best trails hiked by us and related learning scenarios as well as resources used by us and presented them in a publication entitled “HikeWays: Mountain Trails for School Hiking Trips” (4 language versions: EN, PL, RO and SLO) and made it available for free downloads from the project website www.thewaywehike.eu/hikeways-publication. The publication consists of the following chapters. Chapter I: School mountain hiking trips All the partners contributed content to this chapter that presents our approaches to plan and implement interesting and motivating programmes for hiking trips. We argue here that in order to raise students’ interest in nature and active lifestyle we don’t necessarily have to take them to the most spectacular locations, usually full of people and noise, but rather engage them in creative investigation of the natural environment. With this in view we presented two approaches that can ‘hook’ young people into such explorations on a mountain trail: digital mapping and video storytelling. Also, addressing the issue indicated by the expert evaluating our proposal, we drafted a set of rules that have to be followed in order to ensure health and safety of students on the hike. Advice and recommendations by the mountain guides who are participating in the project was very helpful in this respect. Chapter II: HikeWays - the trails that we hiked The main part of the HikeWays Guide presents concrete trails in our countries that we have explored together with the students from the partner schools and found suitable to recommend to others (3 from each country): - For each trail we created a map to enable other groups to follow it if they download it to their mobile devices and activate on the hike. - In each case we pointed out a number of attractions, both those related to the natural environment and cultural heritage sites, that can be connected into an interdisciplinary learning programme for school classes. - We also provided practical information on how to get there in order to promote low-cost and thus inclusive opportunities for whole classes which may include students who cannot afford costly trips. - Having in mind the need to clearly link the excursions with the school curriculum (one of the recommendations by the expert who evaluated the project) we proposed concrete learning scenarios for each of the trails. They connect different school subjects into an interdisciplinary learning programme. Chapter III: Resources and tools for mountain hiking The final chapter is a resource of available materials, mainly those freely accessible on the Internet, that can further facilitate organisation of trips in these locations: other guides and websites, publications on relevant natural and cultural heritage of the regions, etc. The content of the publication is innovative as a whole - we haven’t found a resource addressed to teachers with concrete ideas on how to plan school mountain trips as ways to leverage students’ interests and learning.