Network for European Citizenship
and Identity
The Full Story
Digital Facilitators
Trikala Greece
Training Course
25/02/22 - 7/03/2022
A few about the experience
From 25 February to the 7th of March, Andreas, Boghos and Emili had the opportunity to attend CET Platform Hellas’ “Remote Control - Digital Facilitators” training course. This training course served as a sequel to a training course from November of last year and expanded upon the digital tools the participants learned the previous time. The Cypriot team were joined by participants from Portugal, Croatia, Italy, Poland, Romania and North Macedonia and learned how to use digital conferencing tools such as Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet in order to achieve the same efficiency while being outside an offline office.
As the participants learned about all the different tools in the first half of the project, they were then set into different groups in order to work on a project together. These groups were each tasked to use a different conferencing tool they learned about, and combine them with presenting tools in order to teach something to the rest of the participants.
As an example, Emili and Boghos happened to be in the same group and they used Zoom as their conferencing tool of choice with Google Slides as their presentation tool, to teach the other participants about modern ways of recycling. Another group used Google Meet alongside Prezi (a presentation tool focusing on animated transitions)
As such, participants were able to figure which tools worked best for the hardware they had as well as the internet speeds they were able to achieve. For example, Microsoft Teams had the best-looking video stream out of the bunch, yet had a lot of latency issues on hotel Wi-Fi making it unsuitable for such venues. Participants also discovered that Prezi actually doesn’t work on iPadOS but instead only on Windows or MacOS thus forcing them to stick to other presentation tools.
All in all, it was a very successful training course, with a lot of things learned that would definitely become useful and viable if anything else aside from COVID-19 causes us to go back to online classes, jobs or meetings
Digital Youth Work: TC "Virtual Facilitators" 25.2 - 7.3.2022. It was a project that consists of two mobilities, 2 residential Training Courses that take place in the region of Trikala, Greece one on November 2021 and the second February 2022
A project Based on the needs raised especially during the Covid-19 crisis that has severely stricken all parts of the world, during which technology has been a clean supporter. The clear aim of this project is to raise the capacities of organizations in youth work and remote youth work with the use of IT and new technologies by developing/upgrading Digital competences for youth workers, in digital management of organizations and distance learning. Universities, schools, jobs and NGOs start to use different platforms, to gather the participants and have a smooth switch from physical meetings to virtual. Especially last year this happened very fast and a lot of people have difficulties using this New for them platforms. A huge gap between the generations makes the process hard.
I feel grateful That i have the chance to be part of the second training course, when 25 Youth Workers gather to create online tools for distance education. We were glad that half of the participants were in the first training course and helped us to catch up and have a smooth continuation of the evolution.
The Goal for us was to create ways to improve Distance learning, online activities and workshops, using different platforms. The first days we start with icebreakers, name games and team building activities. We split into smaller groups and started using different platforms like zoom, Microsoft Teams ,WebEx. We analyze positives and negatives for each platform and spend time experimenting with them. We understand that easily at this online meeting , you can lose your attention especially if they go too long. We breakdown the problems and through discussion we agree that us the youth workers and the power of non formal education have the ability to feed the gap and solve this issue. We Develop workshops, with name games, and icebreakers. Start Adding Tools and Techniques with energizer, that can be easily adapted to online education and make the process fun and easy.
Some of them:
* sli.do to (creating polls),
* slack (collaborate workshops),
* Prezi for (funny presentations),
* kahoot.it (games and for learning evaluation)
* Forms (google applications forms), of course with combination with zoom, Microsoft Teams and WebEx , can make the learning process easier, nicer and interactive.
These 10 days of this life learning experience was mind blowing for me. Now I have more confidence to use online platforms. We created workshops and a list of activities for youth workers.
The preparation is the key especially if you have a team and you split the tasks. Having a structure in mind and including different methodology on the learning can make online meetings very proactive. I strongly believe that Non formal education its the solution for digital education, and the best way for youth work to have a bigger voice in Formal education What is left behind is the memory of great time spent together.
The project was precious as well and a great lesson of the power of non formal education. Neci.eu was an official partner of this incredible project and you are more than welcome to get in touch with our team to learn more for other upcoming opportunities !
Andreas Stylianou
NECI EU
In the second mobility, the Training Course "Virtual Facilitators" had as the main objective to introduce the participants in distance education techniques in order to enhance distance learning and remote youth work through common working spaces and learning platforms.
This program had an important peculiarity, as it involved the... (click for more)
Emili Kafetzi
NECI EU
