reFashion!

Description

Students from all participating schools create a virtual fashion company that will work in a sustainable way. They plan, design, and create fashion items using used clothes and other materials, utilizing technologies like 3D design, 3D printing, and microelectronics. The project will be hosted on the eTwinning platform and entail student group mobilities and teacher job shadowing activities.

Goals

To raise students’ awareness of the environmental, ethical, and sustainability issues that arise from the current business and production model of fashion worldwide.
To enhance students’ design thinking and critical thinking competencies.
To enhance students’ cooperation competencies.
To enhance teachers’ digital competence through STEAM methodology so that teachers and students learn and use new innovative methodologies.
To develop and improve students’ oral competence in English by providing situations of use in real contexts to increase their motivation, fluency, and communication skills.
To internationalize the schools by cooperating with European educational institutions in the hope that collaborative work will help to broaden, improve and sustain the school’s methodologies and activities.

Participating schools

Institut Escola Miquel Martí i Pol of Lliçà d’Amunt
Experimental Primary School of Florina
Theodoros Kastanos Primary School of Florina
Primary School of Ydrousa Florina
Escola Sant Josep of Terrassa Spain

Activities and timeline

A proposed timeline and description of activities.

Start eTwinning project (September 2022)

An online meeting was held between teachers from the partner schools. We decided on the form of the project and how students will work inside the virtual company. There will be a directing board of 10 students (2 from each school) responsible for making all the major decisions and communicating the work being done locally to the rest of the partners. Each school will have a local production depending on the students’ ideas, but the virtual company will be common, sharing the work from all schools. The directing board will also be responsible for disseminating the work through a website.

Research about our subject (September – October 2022)

The main theme of our subject is fashion (clothes and other fashion objects) and sustainability. At first, we introduced our students to the subject locally by utilizing some interesting videos that are on the TED Education webpage:

This way, we can discuss with our students and highlight the environmental and ethical problems that arise in the fashion industry.

Create the virtual company and the action plan (October – November 2022)

Each school decides on the two representative students on the virtual company’s directing board. Candidates should be able to explain why they want to undertake this task and how they could be useful to the company. After their presentations, the rest of the class votes for the two members

Each school also explores production items through brainstorming sessions. How would they find used clothes? What will they produce? Who will work on each project? They also brainstorm on logos and slogans for their company.

The following Mural is the brainstorming process and the outcomes from the Experimental Primary School and the 5th Primary School of Florina.

The directing board members are getting ready for their first online meeting that will be held at the start of December.

Implementation (December 2022 – end of the school year)

After we decide on the exact format of the virtual company and the action plan, we start the implementation, and we decide to have regular online meetings between our students to monitor the progress. We can also have online workshops to exchange know-how between our teams.

First online meeting of the board (December 2022)

The representatives from each school held their first online meeting on the 13th of December, 2022. The agenda of the meeting was the following:

Introductions (20 min): Each school (two students) had 5 minutes for a short introduction about themselves and their school or town.
Production Ideas presentation (20 min): Each school presented its ideas about the production (3 minutes and 2 minutes for questions from the other students).
Logos, slogan presentation (20 min): Each school presented its ideas about the logo and slogan of the company (3 minutes and 2 minutes for questions)
Logo and slogan voting (20 min): Students voted for their desired logo and slogan.
Closing the meeting (10 min): Students exchange contact info (Viber etc.) for better communication

The meeting proceeded as planned, and after the introductions, students presented their productions ideas:

From the Experimental Primary School of Florina, students proposed to work on smart purses for medicine that will remind us of the time we have to take them
From the Institut Escola Miquel Martí i Pol, In Lliçà d’Amunt, students proposed to work on creating fashion artifacts from old jeans, customized t-shirts, jean jewelry, and labels.
From the 5th Primary School of Florina, students proposed to work on paintings from old clothes, shopping bags, ornaments, pencil cases, clothes for dolls, accessories, and other items from old clothes.
From the Escola Sant Josep of Terrassa Spain ….
From the Primary School of Ydrousa, students proposed to work on creating clothes with traditional looms from their villages

They also presented their ideas for logos of the common company, and the winner was the following logo from Escola Miquel Martí i Pol, In Lliçà d’Amunt.