How much water do you have in your wardrobe??? Do you know how much water is being used to produce just a basic t-shirt? It is an awareness activity to remark water consumption on clothes production. As we are on the edge of a severe water shortage in our near future, we want to raise awareness on reducing our water footprint.

Introduction

School: Ipekcilik Anadolu Imam Hatip High School
Age of students:13-17
Date of  activity: 30/04/2021
Coordinator: Zerrin Tasdemir Sirin (English Teacher)

The aim

The main aim of our project is to raise awareness of water consumption in the production of our clothes. Most importantly, this is an education of sustainable development (EDS). This project is about environmental issues and blended with internet technology. It meets the students with web 2.0 tools and STEM issues. It also supports the English language learning and the creativity of the students.

Activities and Implementation

The main activity of us is finding our water footprint and properly our fashion footprint.
Therefore, we applied a quiz about water footprint awareness in Quizizz.

The students made some research on the water that is used in the process of producing garments. As we all have a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in our wardrobe, they took them into account. As a result, they found that one pair of jeans needs almost 10000 litres of water on its production. A t-shirt needs around 2500 litres of water on its journey from cotton to a T-shirt.

All the students calculated the amount of water that their jeans and t-shirts make. After that, they made their videos or photos as an answer to their teacher’s challenge video. Meanwhile, they made some attractive posters to show the result of their research on this issue. As a result, we collected all of our photos and videos in a padlet. You can see all of them here.

We also shared our posters and other information from a linoit canvas. Please check them here.

We downloaded our videos on youtube and share them.

In the end, we shared it on our event on eTwinning to be an inspiration for other teachers. We created an event named “Wardrobe Challenge” on 30/04/2021. 70 teachers from different countries participated in our event.

Digital Tools

Due to the pandemic restrictions, we have online education in our country. So, announced the project idea in all of the classes in our school. Then, we had our group with willing students.

After that, we started to work on the Teamsviewer program. At the same time, we shared our work and ideas there. Then, download our documents to Google Documents and had online meetings on Zoom. We also had a quiz on Quizizz. The students prepared their posters and photo collages on Canva. After preparing everything, they post them on Padlet and Linoit. At the same time, we created a Youtube channel.

Our principal shared our activity on our school website and our school’s social media accounts. One of our biology teachers joined our project with her photo and comment which was good for us.

The pedagogical value 

The students could work in collaboration and coordination with a group online. Certainly, this supported them to raise their skills in Project-Based learning. At the same time, they met with new tools on the internet and this developed their knowledge of STEM issues and internet technologies. As a result, they could see how creative they are with each work. As our activity was in English, the students also had a chance to develop their foreign language skills. Above all, this activity contains science, maths, environmental issues, language learning, and technological efficiency together. At the same time, this was a social responsibility project that supports active citizenship. 

Interpretation

We, Ipekcilik Anatolian Imam Hatip High School teachers and students decided to raise awareness about our indirect water consumption with our fashion footprint. This challenge was to save our water sources and be sensitive about environmental issues. Students worked on this activity with eagerness and joy as it brings science and technology together and it was a real-life implementation. 

To sum up, we do believe in the power of the butterfly effect. Change starts in ourselves and one change can lead another.