HikeWays is an Erasmus+ cooperation based partnership in school education which was implemented between 2021 and 2023 with four partners from three different countries: Poland, Romania and Slovenia. The project targeted teachers and students as well in the context of exploring the natural beauties of their own surroundings. It put emphasis on combining the promotion of a healthy lifestyle by organizing hiking trips in the natural area with interesting and motivating learning experiences outside the curriculum. HikeWays thus provided the same amount of challenge for teachers and students as well.
The main objective of the project related to student participants was to provoke them to take part in hiking trips thus enhancing their physical wellbeing and in the same time cut off the amount of time they spend using their digital devices. Providing them with pleasant experiences and ensuring the opportunity to meet other hikers from the partner institutions resulted in the increase of motivation to participate in such activities, this being the goal of the project. Teachers’ main role was an organizational one. They ensured all the circumstances and safety measures during the trip according to students’ needs in order to make them capable of acting like an explorer during the activity. Students also needed previous preparation for each trip, so the design of pilot classes and the outline of an interdisciplinary learning program were also the teachers’ responsibility.
Students were expected to design the project’s result and also to fill it with interesting contents. They not only depicted their hikes in a form of a digital narrative and photographs but also they created a digital map containing the routes, description of significant places and some practical information. All the aforementioned contents were embedded in the website of the project, where the digital version of the 4 language project guide is also uploaded. Taking into consideration youth’s communication habits, a Facebook-group was also activated ensuring effective communication among members. The group’s link is available on the website too.
