Teaching & Learning Web "The Horse" concept

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The idea for building the teaching and learning web concept originated on the occasion of the new national complementary subject for vocational schools, "Technik & Umwelt" (T&U) (as of 2015), at the Berufsmittelschule of the commercial college Wirtschaftsschule KV Wetzikon (wkvw.ch). The concept forms a basis for applied learning methods «bili» (bilingual education), interdisciplinary teaching (IDAF) and cross-curricular competences according to the new curriculum (Kantonaler (ZH) Lehrplan, mba.zh.ch).

Concept's main elements

"The Horse"

A closed working and interaction environment for student work and exchange. Each student has his/her own account. Works on any device.

dontwastemy.energy - energy and environment questions were answered by student research teams from different countries.
Project website

A publicly accessible website with contributions (projects) of student teams: dontwastemy.energy

Visit the our association website with 'The Horse' concept
THE ! association – "The Horse" association

The association is the home of "The Horse" concept since its foundation in September 2018 in Zurich, Oerlikon. The aim is to facilitate cross-border collaboration projects on environmental topics and to spread the idea worldwide, to support, promote and accompany special projects, learners and teachers in a targeted manner.
Association website: THE ! association

News I hot !

Some updates [2025]

In 2025, three international conferences were held. In addition, numerous collaborations emerged between students from Switzerland (CH), India (IND), Indonesia (IDN), and other countries; dontwastemy.energy.

To support collaboration, we have set up a new platform with a wide range of collaborative features. At the same time, a new website for the THE ! association is currently in development.
[22. Januar 2026]

Pilot project [2024/25], funding

The Horse" has received a funding contribution from Movetia for a pilot project. Details can be found below under "Funding application Movetia".
[04. August 2024]

Funding application Movetia

Under the title "Sustainability education at Swiss vocational schools through international digital collaboration" we have submitted a funding application to Movetia - Movetia - International Programme.

The project aims to promote, challenge and provide the necessary tools for sustainability education in Swiss vocational schools through digital international collaboration (COIL) from Switzerland with partners from India, Indonesia and under scientific supervision.

The following partners support the project, together we will implement it, provided Movetia approves the application:

Scientific accompaniment

Partner institutions, COIL (suny.edu)*)
*) Collaborative Online International Learning

Organisation

[06. April 2023]

"The Horse" concept certificates

There are already some «The Horse» concept certificates in the wild! See a specimen «The Horse» certificate here. There are different levels, some enhancements are in planning.
[December 19, 2022]

Statistics dontwastemy.energy

In 2022 (until 12/12/22), we averaged wonderful 11,900 visitors per month (136,218 total) to our website dontwastemy.energy with collaborative projects of young people!
[December 19, 2022]

News II

Global collaborations 21/22

Valuable new projects from as many parts of the globe as ever are currently available to discover at dontwastemy.energy! Some are still in progress.  [May 31, 2022]

Wikipedia preview box

We have created a new tool/feature for the project & working websites that supports information retrieval (mouseover/tap "information retrieval" to see it in action). It's easy to use in other websites and Open Source.
Project website »   [December 01 2021]

Flyers, members, payment services

Flyers have been printed and are being distributed to recruit members;
Become a member! - There are new rules; New payment systems for donations & fees: Credit Card, QR Invoice and TWINT [November 09 2021]

Triangles

Beautiful new projects to discover!!
For the first time we tried collaboration across three countries, so-called "triangles".  [09. November 2021]

New menu dontwastemy.energy!

The number of environmental & technical contributions from students has grown to over 150! This and the increase in collaborations have prompted us to completely rebuild the navigation structure. The focus is now on topics such as "Climate", "Recycling", etc.  [February 08 2021]

Collaborations 2020/21 are underway

Students, teachers and experts from India, Belgium, Switzerland and – in the clarification process – Basque Country, individual teams from Pakistan, Canada and Dubai are collaborating! The main topic is "City climate & city trees".

"The Horse" concept gets attention!

We are pleased to present "The Horse":
ffu-pee article (pdf, page 15 [de])
Movetia website (movetia.ch, in 4 lang) ffu-eep (ffu-pee.ch): FachFrauen Umwelt represents the interests of women who are professionally involved in environmental issues.   Movetia (movetia.ch): This is the national (Switzerland) agency for the promotion of exchanges and mobility in the education system.

"The Horse" certificates

Issuing awards is an idea we already had, time is come to do it. A student asked for a certificate for her collaborative project to attach it to her application for a university.

KoBoToolbox (kobotoolbox.org)

We used the toolbox for the first time for the "Food & climate" projects in our "Food App" (sway.office.com) for data collecting. We like to integrate the tool deeper in "The Horse" concept. Next we will use it in the "Tree App". "The Horse" uses now an "unlimited" account for "Humanitarian Organizations" which is provided by the UN OCHA Services (humanitarianresponse.info), thx!
[November 03 2020]

News III

Testimonials "food & climate" projects 2019/20

Interviews via Skype with the teachers Ann, Mary, Praveena from Belgium and India and the students Lars and Dharany from Switzerland about their current project experiences and "The Horse" concept. Further information on the projects can be found on the association's website. [Dezember 22 2019]

Collaborations across three continents!

Belgium, India, Switzerland and South Africa - 110 students, 7 teachers and experts are collaborating. The topic is "food and climate" and with the help of a "food app", daily food is recorded and can later be used for projects and research. [October 4 2019]
A new Knowledge Pool with over 3000 categorized articles and pages and a full text search gives students and teachers access to previously acquired knowledge and documents in a closed area. [August 2019]

"THE ! association" website

THE - The Horse Education; Our association has got its first website (the-horse.education).
[August 2019]

Presentation/Workshop

Teacher training at PH Luzern, CAS bilingual education in vocational training, August 14 2018

Movetia Conference, input presentation and panel discussion, 16 May 2018

"The Horse" concept at Movetia conference, "The Horse" Konzept an der Movetia Konferenz, using digitization for exchange and mobility.
Project «Z.B.» (Zurich.Berlin.): Students of the business school wkvw and the «Lette Verein Berlin» develop contributions together, read more »
Last updated August 04, 2024, dfe

We presented "The Horse" concept at the following cantonal and national meetings:

Idea & Concept

Simple ways and an open architecture, adapted to the requirements and level/skills of the teachers and students.
Factsheet (pdf)
Overview "The horse" (pdf)

Basics & methods

Active learning and self-responsibility. bili, CLIL, IDAF (save-energy.tips),
Competencies MBA ZH (pdf),
Kant. Lehrplan BM ZH (pdf)

Infrastructure & costs

Through the consequent application of Cloud-services (Azure) the costs for the infrastructure and the running costs are inexpensive. They are customized to the exact requirements. Overview Infrastructure (pdf)

Features

Transferring of knowledge and experiences, application of various media, realization of projects in teams, publicize and propagate contributions (IG, Twitter, FB), paperless up to 100%, knowledge pool for future users and much more.

Projects & experiences

befter – before and after the experience , a new method for collaborative projects in 7 steps.
:: Previous project topics:
Energy 2015/16 :: where2where 2016/17 :: ZürIzmir projects 2017/18 (Zürich Izmir) :: Scenarios Z.B. 18 :: Befter 18/19 ::
:: Project topics overview, since 2015/16
:: Student teams since the beginning

Possibilities & outlook

The "The horse" concept is suitable for both teachers/instructors/coaches and learners/students. New digital media can be tried out and applied under "genuine conditions". There are countless possible variations.

Contact     
Eliane Suter

044 585 19 18

ubub - umweltbildung umweltberatung - ubub.ch     THE ! association - The Horse Education - der Verein, the-horse.education