Enjoying Holidays Sustainably (EN-CUR-608)

For many countries, tourism is one of the major economic sources. Many families make a living from tourism, especially in small countries like Malta.

Yet, far from the picture-perfect photos that we see on travel guides and websites, there are important environmental concerns: what is the impact of the tourist industry on the environment? Is the environment always respected?

Are we draining the natural habitat that attracts tourists in the first place?

This learning scenario has been developed during the “Digital Education with Cultural Heritage” online course. The course aimed to improve teachers’ understanding of cultural heritage in order to efficiently integrate it into their lessons and practices. The courses can be accessed here.

Author: Melanie Cini

Age of students: 14-15

Subject and topic: Cross-curricular, civic education, environmental education, PSHE, Personal,
Social & Career Education and Sustainable Development

Learning Scenario

Europeana-DSI-4-cur-2021-EN-Cini.docx Download

Europeana-DSI-4-cur-2021-EN-Cini.pdf Download

Public Domain Mark 1.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Rijksmuseum.

iayrancıoğlu says:

March 28, 2022 at 3:23 pm

Hi, Melanie Genie
I have reviewed the lesson plan and would like to share a few notes about it. First of all, it is very important to share the concept of “sustainable tourism” with students in discussion environments and to support them in creating citizenship awareness by enabling them to come together for serious problems of daily life. I congratulate you for preparing this plan based on such an important issue. You have enriched this detailed plan with many web 2.0, provided high-level studies with lots of articles from Europeana resources, adopted an interdisciplinary approach, and used a lot of teaching methods to gain 21st century skills. It would be great to turn it into an eTwinning project with your suggestions. Instead of presenting the Sustainable Development Goals, maybe you could bring them to a point that students can reach by researching. The idea of having students mark the areas they deem important to zeemaps.com is also very important. At this point, students’ being the decision maker will increase their citizenship skills. The discussions initiated by the questions in the plan are extremely intriguing. Your lesson plan can also be applied for revised younger age groups. Thank you again.

alinaralucapopov says:

April 26, 2022 at 9:52 am

Dear Marco,
The topic of your LS is well-related to the real world, now that people have started travelling again. The LS contains links to many resources, especially articles which give students the big picture of sustainable tourism and the effects of careless travelling.
In my opinion, the final activity, poster-creation, should be more specific so that the students can be accurately evaluated. For example, I would give them a destination and ask them to include rules for behaving in that place.
Regards,
Alina

Mickaël BERTRAND says:

April 28, 2022 at 6:40 pm

Dear Marco.

Thank you for this inspiring idea.

As you write it in your learning scenario, it was created for the Maltese PSCD Curriculum but we can easily adapt it for a lot of curricula. In France for example, we can use your proposition in geography (linked with the notion of “tourism”), but also in history, especially when we study European societies during the 19th century.

I would also find it interesting to add a case study about the city of “Nice” because from the 19th century to the 21st century, it has remained a resort for a lot of European tourists. But, behind the appearance, the tourist offer has changed. Since the construction of the airport along the “Promenade des Anglais”, the richest tourists have finally left the seafront to buy villas in Villefranche or in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. With this example, I think that we could add another form of pollution in part 5: noise pollution!
We can find a lot of resources about this subjet in the Europeana collections: https://www.europeana.eu/en/search?page=3&qf=TYPE%3A%22IMAGE%22&query=nizza&view=grid

I also have a question.
In the part 5, you write that you use Mentimeter to organize a brainstorming in class. Could you explain please how you hold this activity?

Thank you again.
Mickaël

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