I’ve recently been lucky enough to join #Shokkin on a training course called “Eduboards: Exploring Educational Board Games”. One, it was an amazing training course, really well prepared, designed and implemented and two, the organisation is fantastic with great members, staff and an incredible amount of energy that I do not understand from where they get.
However, the incredible abilities of Shokkin are not the only thing that impressed me. The unbelievable variety of skill set, intent and character that the group had was quite breath-taking. In contrary to many #Erasmusplus courses, there was an utter lack of suspects just travelling. In fact, there was a large variety of actual youth workers, teachers and game-designers rather than people who just volunteered once at their local NGO to stay on the register.
There was a vast amount of learning to be had, not only from the content, but also from my fellow peers. In particular, a number of my quite staunch viewpoints and concepts of the use of games in youth work were directly challenged, altered and improved by colourful characters like ‘Streetballer Ricardo’, ‘Graffiti Marketa’ and ‘Gameboy Pedro’.
I was not directly challenged by the idea of using the experiential nature of games (in this case board games) as a tool for reflective learning with young people, but I was challenged and developed in my understanding on how to develop a solid experience within a game for a solid debriefing. From the concept of the balance needed between Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. The fact that it was not just about having intense versions of these, but having usable, realistic and understandable aspects within these.
If there is one thing I have learnt from this whole process its #testing #testing #testing! The game will be a failure if it is not tested properly, you need to test it with everyone and everywhere possible. This is probably one of the largest learning curves on the project for me and one I will continue to use well into the future.
I am also hugely impressed by the organisation and its family of members. At the testing event in #Tallinn, every single one of their young people turned up in a #StayShokkin T-shirt or Jumper. There were so warm with each other and happy to see each other; and as a recent migrant to #Estonia, this is not something I see often in the culture. I am glad I took the choice to become a member and hope to get more engaged with them soon. Again, I will just thank them as well as the participants for a fantastic experience (even if I did cut my foot in the river and grabbed a wasp) and great learning opportunity! I hope to see you all again soon.
#Eduboards #Gamification #Erasmusplus #Estonia #StayShokkin #YouthProvision
Daniel John Carter
- What were the topic and objectives of the project?
The training course was about educational board games purposes and development. The objectives were to teach youth workers what are the games, why we need those and how to create our own games for education.
- What were your main learning points?
My main learning points were getting to know everything thoroughly about educational games and their background. I thought that I knew much about games, but hearing the trainers knowledge, I was impressed by how much I could learn more. My big learning point was also the board games development. It was a huge part of the training course and gave me many ideas for the future.
- How were the methods and activities used during the week?
There were the lecture part where we learned about games. Then practical learning through different active games. We also had three days for game development and testing and the evenings were good with different activities.
- What surprised you the most about the interpersonal connections?
I have been to training courses more. So there were nothing much to surprise me. But I learned that creating a game with two people who I know only a few days is hard, cause i don’t know their abilities and so on.
- How was the group of participants and the time in between sessions?
The participants were great, everybody was there with one purpose and this connected us all. Everybody got along well and the united feeling was from the first day. The evening activities were also great with the others.
- Do you think anything in you changed after having attended the project?
I think I got the courage to create an educational board game. I’ve been dreaming of this for a long time already. I also felt how good are training courses for youth workers because you can learn so much in so less time.
Kristel Lina