Educational projects

GasTerra is involved in a wide range of educational projects. We also supported several educational projects in 2022. One of the new projects was the development and construction of the updated Hanze Hydrogen Table (in Dutch: Hanze Waterstoftafel), for education and demonstration purposes, by students taking HBO bachelor’s degree courses in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics and Law at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen. This project was carried out on behalf of the Green Hydrogen Booster and co-financed by GasTerra.

From March to June 2022, the Forum in Groningen was dedicated to Green House Forum, which looked at the gap between humans and nature. The aim was to try and bridge that gap through all kinds of initiatives. Thanks in part to GasTerra's contribution, schools received a teaching pack to get students thinking creatively about the relationship between humans and nature and how we might improve it in the future. A listening unit and story box were developed for the children's section in the Forum, Wonderland. With its ‘mega green’ (‘Gi-ga-groen’) theme, Children's Book Week was perfectly aligned to the topics covered by Green House Forum. The Forum is planning to acquire a collection of books on that theme that will be freely available for classroom use to schools with a membership.

GasTerra and Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen have been working together for several years by giving students the chance to gain practical experience in industry. GasTerra has written an assignment for the Dutch communication course (Minor in Communication and Campaigns) which tasks students with developing a green gas campaign for town and countryside. International students will also receive a further case study from GasTerra on the energy transition in Europe. This involves designing a lobbying campaign aimed at Brussels’ policy-makers and opinion-makers, MEPs and their staff, to convince them how crucial it is to continue using gas in the transition towards a climate-neutral energy supply.

After seven successful years, Forum Groningen and GasTerra have stopped the GasTerra debating contest. The number of secondary vocational schools (VMBO) that wanted to take part kept growing and we found ourselves saying ‘no’ too many times, as we could only run two days in the Forum. With our new project Got it! we can reach more schools and hence students from all school years attending secondary vocational schools, and now also general secondary schools (HAVO) and pre-University secondary schools (VWO). Got it! is an invention competition for all secondary school students in Groningen. Using meaningful assignments set by GasTerra and Forum, Got it! boosts students’ digital literacy, such as information skills, media literacy and computational thinking. 

We started the preparations last year together with the Forum Groningen team and several teachers. Attractive teaching materials have been developed and an accompanying website has been built with design and animation studio Annie Made It. We started with the pilot in February this year, but COVID threw a spanner in the works. We hope to get further this school year and the competition will start in October 2023.

Quintel developed the Energy Transition Model together with GasTerra a few years ago. It is an independent, comprehensive and fact-based energy model used by governments, businesses, NGOs and educational institutions. Accompanying teaching materials were developed for its use in educational institutions; teaching professionals helped to produce these. These were widely used by teachers but energy transition developments move quickly and the materials (teaching materials, the quiz and the game) were no longer completely up to date. Over the last few months we have been busy working on a revised version that will soon be tested at a secondary school. Would you like to know more? Have a little look here!

IVN (Dutch Institute for Nature Education and Sustainability) has a unique school network in all the municipalities within Drenthe (a province in the North of Holland). The schools receive structured lessons on topics such as bees and the climate; the subject of energy is also covered. Teachers are trained by IVN during municipal network meetings, after which they can lead projects themselves with their students. This involves the use of materials specially developed for this purpose, which can be borrowed by schools. The technology kits are used in these projects.

We need broad groups within society to be sufficiently aware of complex energy and climate issues if the energy transition is to succeed. The foundation for this is laid in the classroom, at all levels. That’s why we work with various educational institutions and support several educational projects and programmes, by developing the calendar below for example.

Primary schools ordering books from Forum Groningen tying in with themes such as sustainability, energy transition and nature will receive a special annual calendar together with the project materials. Each calendar month features an energy or energy savings activity and displays illustrations appropriate to the theme. Targeted at children in primary education, the calendar contains twelve Going Green (Groen & Doen) activities to work on at school or at home.

Fanny Gordijn-Hubers (Fanny Kleurt) created the illustrations on the calendar and Daniël Koning of StudioTW took care of the design.

We have been involved in several projects for many years, such as the mobile classroom ‘Your Future Energy’ (Jouw Energie van Morgen). 

Would you like more information about these educational projects? If so, please contact our Education Communications Advisor: Areke van der Sluis (areke.van.der.sluis@gasterra.nl).