MakerEDU - Handlungsorientierte Medienkompetenz für pädagogische Fachkräfte

In an increasingly digitised world, action-oriented media skills are a key competence. It combines the practical with the theoretical acquisition of knowledge and is promoted above all in makerspa...

With the MakerEDU project, we wanted to create opportunities throughout Europe to train educational professionals as multipliers in the field of making and maker education in order to pass on action-orientated media skills to children and young people. We wanted to develop learning and support programmes for educational professionals in rural areas so that they can work with children and young people in a makerspace in a practical way and without a great deal of preparation to carry out maker activities. The plan was therefore to develop a training manual for educational professionals and make it available digitally. As the number of existing makerspaces is often very low, especially in rural areas, the further plan was to create a catalogue of requirements with a space utilisation concept that would make it easier for stakeholders to set up their own makerspaces in the future. To support the concrete pedagogical work of the specialists on site in the makerspaces, the development of practical instructions on various topics in the field of making was planned, which were also to be made available digitally in several languages.

In addition to an intensive exchange of information on the various approaches to making activities in the partner countries, the joint development of the planned products was a central activity. Multiplier events were organised at the end of the project to develop and review the developed products/results once the drafts of the project results were available. The multiplier events were carried out in all partner countries with the target group and supplemented by stakeholders from the areas of public and private education, such as kindergartens, schools, youth and social institutions or youth welfare offices, as well as representatives from politics and society. The feedback from these events was incorporated into the creation of the products/results in order to ensure relevance for the target group. In total, more than 80 people took part in these events in the participating partner countries. In addition, a one-week training event was organised at Technolab Leiden in the Netherlands. In this intensive series of workshops, the participating educational professionals had the opportunity to test the practical instructions that had been developed and to try their hand at making under supervision.

To begin with, a professional training manual for educational professionals on action-orientated media skills was developed. The handbook contains the basics of action-orientated media work, applied methods and didactics as well as learning experiences and learning objectives for children and young people in the field of maker education. Through easy-to-understand training units, specific basic knowledge is built up among educational professionals in order to impart basic knowledge about maker education in rural regions of Europe. The project team created a catalogue of requirements with a space utilisation concept for makerspaces in order to promote the independent establishment of such creative workshops and facilitate them in as many regions of Europe as possible. In addition to the detailed presentation of best practice examples and other basic solutions for setting up a makerspace, recommendations for financing such a location for making were listed. Finally, the project developed a total of eight practical lesson plans for concrete application in makerspaces, for example upcycling & making or coding & robotics. They were tested both in the joint training week (LTTA) and in four multiplier events.