TAKEOVER DAYS – ONLINE MULTIPLIER EVENT BY Spektrum Educational Center
Maggio 25, 2020
On 21 May 2020, in rather different circumstances than it was planned half a year ago, amid the Covid19 crises, the Spektrum Educational Center, Romania (SEC) organized an online event to look back at the results of the Takeover Days in Europe – “TO:Day” – project and reflect on how the competences we developed throughout this project help us now to face this unexpected and sudden digital turn in education.
The biggest recent concern for all the education and youth sector all over Europe is how to cope with the new situation, how to assure meaningful education, purposeful youth work and how to keep young people engaged and motivated.
When looking for strategies and competencies we can use in this new situation, we have come across quite a lot of skills and competences that have been developed during the Takeover days in Europe project: flexibility, cooperation and collaboration skills, creative problem solving, international cooperation and the ability to learn from other organisations are just some of the competences than make the TO:Day experience connected to these days.
Therefore the Spektrum Educational Center decided to make a connection between our TO:Day learning experience and the skills that are needed nowadays for all educators, teachers and youth workers, and we announced our webinar with this title:
On the same
(online) page with young people. A multiplier event organised with the Takeover
Days in Europe – “TO:Day” – Erasmus+ project
The event was announced via the social media and the institutional newsletter of SEC and we used a Google Form to register participants, where 70 people registered for the event..
Participants were from schools, civil organisations, the regional Directorate for Child Welfare and Social Assistance, youth centres and local authorities.
All participants got an information e-mail on the day before the event, where we shared with them not only the online meeting’s access link, but also links to the Takeover Days in Europe – “TO:Day” – camp video and the testimonies of the Romanian participants.
The event started at 3.00 p.m. local time. The event was moderated by Csilla Lazar, the executive director of SEC. We started by asking where participants came from, and what devices they use, so that we wanted to make sure that they can follow all our interactive activities.
We use polls to ask about their jobs (educator/teacher/youth worker/parent/other) and this way we also introduced the participants to the interactive features (chat, poll, quiz) of the online webinar tool.
The event started with a keynote speech by Dr. Katalin Baracsi, trainer, jurist, expert in online safety, the Safer Internet Programmes former Youth Panel leader, The title of her pre-recorded video presentation (available also on the project’s Youtube channel) was
How can we support and help young people to stay safe under the present situation. Practical tips for everyday youth work
After the presentation there was a discussion about the topics they raised, the participants asked questions via the chatroom of the video meeting.
As the keynote speaker mentioned the use of emojis as a special, much preferred feature of communication among young people, we made an emoji quiz where the youth workers, educators attending the event could test their understanding of emoji communication.
Kocsis Mihály Csongor (trainer, teacher) was one of the local trainers providing workshops for the young people involved in the TO:Day project. The title of his pre-recorded video presentation (available also on the project’s Youtube channel) was
“The main conclusions of the training experience we had in the national workshops within the Takeover Days in Europe project”
Hitter-Kovács Andrea, trainer in the international Takeover Days youth camp, teacher, made a presentation about her experience with online teaching and especially with engaging disadvantaged young prople in online lessons. The title of her pre-recorded video presentation (available also on the project’s Youtube channel) was
“Engaging and motivating young people – offline and online”
After Andrea’s presentation the participants were invited to breakout rooms to discuss the current issues they face in online education and online youthwork.
Ferencz S. Katalin, the national project coordinator of the Takeover Days in Europe project: The results and transferable outcomes of the Takeover Days in Europe project presented the project, its results and outcomes in details, including the project website and Takeover Guide.
After her presentation Csilla Lazar executive director, the Spektrum Educational Center Foundation presented some conclusions regarding the TO:Day Camp, the central competence building with young people
The video testimonies of young people involved in Takeover Days (Gábor Gyöngyvér, Balázs Bence) have been seen by the participants before the webinar, so here we discussed how the experience they underwent in the project helped them to prepare for their future, and how they used their competences inclusively to make and record the testimony videos.
Bedő Gabriella (psychologist, the Regional Directorate of Child Welfare and Social Assistance in Hargita County, Romania) spoke about her experience as a host ofa takeover Day.
As a final topic, participants asked the speakers about their experience in the project and other professional experiences, discussions around employability skills, engagement and motivation of young people.
As a final, evaluation moment, the participants shared some feedback using the Whiteboard function of the online meeting tool.
