Visual creativity and Design thinking as tools for young learners in a virtual world

Project need and objectives

The COVID-19 had a highly negative impact on the mental well-being of young learners. Being isolated at home, being deprived of social interaction and communication with their peers in the classrooms or in their usual environment, young people had to cope with these challenges alone. The need to address these problems is the reason to have this project. Our objectives are:

– To enable young learners and teachers to use creativity and arts to stay balanced despite the situation they are facing;

– To develop new skills and knowledge among young learners and teachers to help them to cope with problems, challenges, physical limitations;

– To train students and teachers to use Visual Thinking Techniques for the creative visualization of their situation and condition;

– To train students and teachers to use Design Thinking Strategies for the solution processes of various problems in life, in studies, in work;

– To support teachers and youth workers to employ Design Thinking Strategies for planning lessons, delivering activities and content;

– To elaborate a methodological framework for a course to be delivered in schools, youth centers, organizations on Visual Thinking techniques and Design Thinking Strategies;
– To shift the approach to planning and delivering lessons to a new one, more creative, engaging and animated with the use of Design Thinking Strategies.

Project activities

• 5-sessions of training of trainers on VTT and DTS;
• Replication of training sessions by the trained trainers – teachers, youth workers, NGO representatives from the 5 partner organizations;
• Exhibitions of artworks elaborated by the young learners with the use of VTT;
• A virtual festival of animated works of young learners with the main theme “The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on me as a young learner”;
• Transnational project meetings.
• Multiplier event in the form of a final conference involving representatives of the 5 partner organization and of targeted institutions.
• Local events run by partners, educational conferences, small-scale training events at the level of each partner organization involved to share the new knowledge with colleagues, etc.

More on the Intellectual Output

The objective is that through this Intellectual Output will be developed an important contribution to the activity of all interested people who oversee designing and delivering lessons and knowledge to help young learners to develop new skills. We aim at providing useful insights to innovative tools and technology for the purpose of strengthening learning and learning results regardless of actual physical conditions and location of the learner.

The Intellectual Output production will involve the collaboration of 5 national teams composed of 5 trained trainers and one teacher/researcher per each team. The aim is that while the researcher gathers and elaborates the textual input, acting as observer, the trained trainers – coaches will provide the raw material based on their practice, acting as testers.

The official launch of the Methodological Framework will take place in the framework of the Final conference organized offline and virtually simultaneously.

As a result we must plan a new framework for educators to apply in order to animate their lessons, to deliver them in an attractive way, to involve more actively the learner in the process of learning. We plan to have an enjoyable learning period for young people under any conditions, to enable tools for them to stay creative in the classroom or at home in isolation. We offer the framework that helps to open up the borders for our target groups the same way the COVID-19 pandemic closed them.