From the 18th to the 22nd of April we hosted in Tallinn the first residential activity of the long-term project “Edugame: Expansion” involving youth workers and educators. Here are the personal reviews of Darina and Laci, the Estonian participants representing Shokkin Group:
“Projects like this one are the perfect introduction to the world of Erasmus+. It is a genuine pleasure to attend a well-planned training course with motivated, engaged participants and facilitators.
I felt immediately immersed in the project bubble from the very first session. The flow of the schedule felt natural and logical, we followed the path of learning game facilitation techniques to leading and playing games to designing our own. The diversity of activities is something I appreciated a lot – it never got boring or tedious. It is hard to choose a favourite activity, I genuinely enjoyed every step.
There is one moment that will stick with me forever – the fulfilment, excitement and inspiration I felt when the educational game we were designing with my group started coming together.
I found the pyramid for designing educational games extremely useful. It is a great tool to make a multi-step process less intimidating. It helped with approaching the design process bit by bit and staying on track with the learning outcomes we wanted to reach.
The connections I made thanks to this project are one more thing to be grateful for. I feel that so many doors opened for me as a result of participating in this project. I had so many eye-opening and inspiring conversations, that left me with food for thought for days, even weeks. I made friends and discovered like-minded people to share ideas and work on future projects with. Safe to say, I am glad I get to be a part of this project.“
Darina Petrova
“Participating in this really interesting Erasmus+ project organized by Shokkin was a brand new experience for me… on multiple fronts. It was the first proper Erasmus training I have ever participated in, I did it on behalf of a country and an organization I am a mere guest to, and even though I have been enthusiastically working on projects aimed at non-formal learning methods, this was my first official course on such topics.
I don’t think it is possible to emphasize enough how important and inspiring a professional experience it was and how much it meant to me. Even though my home country was not a member in the project, the games we got to know are all super cool and interesting, already having lots of potential uses and thus, I really hope that creating new translations and running the first experimental game sessions will be part of the upcoming months.
And all the wonderful people participating in the training session, new game ideas that were conceived during our brainstorming… I want to see these days only as a start of something absolutely meaningful that has only just begun!“
Laci Pitlik
Watch the summary video and more posts here.
