3.3 CREATIVE LEARNING | “DOORS — Porte aperte al desiderio come opportunità di rigenerazione sociale”

The third experience we present in this section is characterized by being an online pathway, created within an even larger national project entitled DOORS – Open Doors to Desire as an Opportunity for Social Regeneration. The course examined here was organized as a 5-week online course, held between January and March 2021. There were 50 students involved, all adults, divided into groups of 25. Specifically, the participants involved were primary and secondary teachers, museum educators, and students. The course focuses on issues related to Creative Learning and constructionism, thus starting from a solid theoretical framework but including a whole series of practical activities necessary for the purpose of understanding some key concepts. The course in question appears interesting because before the online edition that we will recount here it had always been held in presence; for this very reason, the trainers had to completely redesign the experience, to adapt it specifically to the online environment, with the aim of maintaining the quality experience, trying to involve the participants as much as possible.

For this very reason, we will present the development of this experience from the choices made by the trainers; therefore, in the first instance, we will see what kind of tools were chosen and why.

The tools:

So, the first essential decision that had to be made was related to the type of platform: which platform to use that could ensure the best enjoyment by the participants but also ensure that break rooms could be created to be able to work in groups? So already the element of ensuring a quality collaborative experience was essential. Not only that, an additional need for the trainers was related to the possibility of being able to share multiple screens at the same time, so it was also necessary to evaluate the performance of a platform that could effectively support the group in this direction. The choices fell on two platforms:

• Jitsi;
• Unhangout.

In this perspective, an essential element was also related to communication; for, as we know, it is necessary to use effective tools to be able to stay in touch with the participants with a view to engagement and guidance. Not only that, it is also necessary to be able to use appropriate tools that can allow easy and direct contact between participants, for the development of a real community.

Then, for communication with participants, the trainers started a newsletter (which was managed with Mailtrain) and started a website. Instead, in order to connect participants with each other, they invited everyone to take part in a Telegram channel. The choice of this platform was also not immediate as each tool presents challenges and opportunities. In this case, however, Telegram turned out to be an appropriate platform since:

• does not involve joining a social network,
• can be used from both smartphones and computers very easily,
• has a single channel of conversation allows each contribution to be valued (without scattering between numerous thematic threads, as can happen in a forum).

That said, practical methodology was central; given the tools, during each online meeting participants had the opportunity to work on a project, divided into groups and supported by the presence of several facilitators. Thus, the conduct of the meetings was characterized by project-based teaching: that is, each participant had to carry out a small project for each meeting. Just in the spirit of scaffolding, at the beginning of each meeting the trainers would present an initial demo version of the project to be implemented, provide a series of examples through a gallery of examples, and then, proceed in their own implementation in the subgroups (then in the break rooms) for the duration of an hour and a half. All this, always under the guidance and observation of the classroom facilitators (5 for both groups). Then, after the individual production phase, there is the plenary sharing phase. Again, once the meeting was over, the participants received an email with some proposals to deepen the course themes: a video or reading, a project proposal to be carried out during the week, some guiding questions to reflect on the experience in a personal learner’s journal.

Let us now look at the organization of each week in detail, in order to understand what kind of dynamics and strategies were put in place by the trainers.

As already introduced, prior to the start of the actual course, actions were put in place, which allowed for an approach and an initial ice-breaking on the part of the participants. We will call this Before Phase – Week 0 phase.

Settimana 0
The week before the first meeting, the trainers sent an email to everyone with a short clip introducing the course and introducing themselves (thus highlighting the course objectives, content, and how to participate). Attached to the same email was a video-tutorial and a PDF step-by-step guide for creating a teacher account, with an invitation to make and upload to a gallery a project in which to make the kitten do something surprising (Scratch Surprise). Then, the proposed content guided the participants to create an account needed to carry out the projects and more importantly, to create a first project that could allow them to become familiar with what they will later need to do together during the course.

Not only that, given the importance of the functioning of the technological supports, a couple of “technical” appointments were organized during the week before the departure to test the functioning of Jitsi and the creation of the Scratch account with those who needed support.

Settimana 1
Thus, the first meeting aimed to break the ice both among the participants and with the actual platform. Not only that, given the particularly active mode of participation and thus not mere fruition, the first meeting also aimed to allow participants to get acquainted and familiar with the mode of participation. At the end of the meeting, the trainers assigned tasks, namely exploring each other’s projects and leaving a comment. Not only that, with the aim of providing participants with spaces for insight and engagement, the trainers had shared with participants a video clip where we narrated Creative Learning through the spiral of creative learning and the 4Ps.

Settimana 2
For week number 2, the online environment expanded by aiming to engage participants in an even more hands-on approach, offering them the chance to create a project in the wake of the opportunities to connect physical and digital. In this sense, participants were invited to “augment” their reality by trying to animate an object or the environment around them. This is a particularly relevant perspective, as it gives us an opportunity to think about ways of activating participants-pretty much bodily and physical-in their online presence. Contextually with such a hands-on activity, the trainers proposed as a home task, to be done independently, the reading of the article “What we mean by learning” by Aaron Falbel and Edith Ackermann.

Settimana 3
Subsequently, at the third event, the focus always remained on actual hands-on construction, allowing participants to experience the scope of Creative Learning through Tinkering. In this sense, the trainers proposed real construction to the participants through the use of materials found at home (again interaction with elements found in their home environment). Thus, the activity of building a spinning top was proposed, starting from the things found at home. Instead of a gallery on the Scratch site, we used a padlet to show some examples, useful resources and finally share the participants’ creations. In this sense, the use of the padlet tool can be very effective, in providing a synchronous collective sharing multimedia whiteboard, a real space within which everyone can interact at the same time, even while maintaining anonymity. Along these lines, to keep engagement high, as experiences and activities that can be completed at home, the trainers assigned and shared an activity from the Exploratorium repertoire (Shadow Remix) and a reading to accompany “It looks like fun, but are they learning?” by Mike Petrich, Karen Wilkinson and Bronwyn Bevan, as a theoretical framework.

Settimana 4
The fourth week, as well as the penultimate week, was characterized by a particularly active experience based on sharing: in fact, the activity that the trainers proposed was pass it on!, an activity within which participants were invited to invite a small project on the Scratch platform for half the duration of the meeting, and then have it continued by another participant while they in turn continued someone else’s project, in a deeply collaborative way.

Settimana 5
Finally, the last meeting was organized differently from the others. The trainers proposed 4 thematic breakouts to the participants:

• one dedicated to designing a course for their own students to put into practice the creative learning principles they had encountered during the course.
• one to delve into the use of blocks that were less thoroughly covered during the course, such as variables, messages, clones, sensors, through the creation of a Sprite Art project.
• one to work on debugging personal projects (or ones you were working on with your class) that have already been done but are not working
• one to reflect on the role of the teacher, reading together and commenting on an excerpt in Italian from the book Lifelong Kindergarten by Mitchel Resnick

That said, it is possible to refer to some reflections brought forward by the trainers, regarding the resources put in place to support participants. Certainly, the creation of an ad-hoc website, newsletter, and experiential sheets facilitated the involvement of all participants, especially to support the different styles of participation within the groups. Not only was it an opportunity for those who did not always have the chance to participate in the live meetings, but it allowed them to use the (little) time available in the weekly meeting to experiment concretely, postponing the more “theoretical” in-depth study to the readings or videos. Thus, leaving the collective and online space for actual construction and work.