OUTDOOR EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS: IDEAS AND NEW EDUCATIONAL POSSIBILITIES

Educational environments – both natural, and internal, and virtual, digital – help to implement education content, motivate education process participants. Lithuanian students' non-formal education centre has been working purposefully for eight years seeking for the outburst in the country schools creating educational environments and using them for educational needs. In this article impressions and discoveries are generalised, experienced participating in the national evaluation commission work of the Republic school educational environment contest of 2018 and recommendations are presented for the school outdoor educational environment creation and activity development. Corresponding to the aim, it was sought to answer the following questions: 1) Why is Republic school educational environment contest so important and what is its mission? 2) What are the tendencies of fostering and use of Lithuanian school outdoor educational environments for education? 3) What should be recommended for schools, willing to maximally use outdoor educational environments for educational purposes? Positive 33 school experience is discussed, creating outdoor educational environments and applying them for education. It is examined, why it is useful to have an outdoor educational environment plan; why outdoor classes are necessary and what they could be; what environments meant for games, languages, artistic education the researched schools have established; how outdoor educational environments are used for natural science education and so on. It is discussed, what else the visited schools lack in outdoor educational environments, how one should supplement them. Recommendations are given, what direction school communities should go, so that outdoor educational environments are maximally employed in the child's education.