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Input lunch format in April 2020: “Open- digitization as a yardstick”.

Since the outbreak of COVID 19, social life has been severely restricted, especially educational institutions face the challenge of suddenly and almost exclusively working online. To counteract social distancing somewhat and to keep the exchange alive, the Open Education and Software Association e.V. invites. (OESA) invites you to a digital input lunch format around digital education in times of COVID 19. Every Thursday in April 2020, from 12 to 1 p.m., a fifteen-minute input on a topic area will be given by us, and you will receive valuable advice on practical methods and programs, new impulses and contacts. On this common basis, an exchange with small discussions, questions and suggestions will take place afterwards.

Dates: 

02.4. Open Mind

The first day is there to get to know each other: The input serves to introduce the association and the format in more detail and the subsequent exchange should give space to place topics and questions that currently move the participants*innen.

09.4. Open Education

What does “digital education” mean, what does “open” mean? Why do we need it- and why not? How can this be implemented? What opportunities and difficulties does this present?

16.4. Open University

How can lectures and seminars be designed online? Which platforms and programs are suitable for this?

23.4. Open Schoolyard

How can class council be designed online? Which learning softwares with review functions are available? How can tests or similar be carried out?

30.4. Open Society – Let’s keep volunteering going!

Our last event is dedicated to the question of how volunteerism, community service and participation can continue and what opportunities can even arise as a result. How do we deal with the lack of Wi-Fi among children and young people in our care? What tools and tips are there for collaborative work? How can board meetings and general meetings be conducted online?

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PLAY 19- Creative Gaming Festival

Your spaceship is stranded on an unknown planet. You have to explore your surroundings to survive, but you quickly realize: danger lurks everywhere. Darkness. Ominous silence. And out of the silence, strange creatures burst forth and monsters!

Scenarios like these can be found in a number of games: Dungeons & Dragons, a classic pen-and-paper game, has delighted many game lovers since the 1980s, while role-playing games and first-person shooters add interactive graphics to the gaming experience. Virtual reality games go one step further.

VR glasses create a different reality in which it is possible to move and react. For the game scenario described at the beginning, the controls of the game were explained in a preparation room at the creative gaming festival “PLAY 19” in Hamburg. Afterwards you dive into the world in which you have to escape from your spaceship and put monsters to flight. For the person wearing the VR goggles, this creates a realistic game, intuitively dodging, taking a step back, ducking. All bystanders see only someone with a black box on his head, who staggers around in an absolutely unpredictable way and bumps into all kinds of objects and people. The game could also be controlled calmly and standing in one place, but the physical and emotional reactions are much more intense through the 3D experience than in computer games, for example.

Another game was about playing in a group and in a confined space: One person lies down in a coffin with a smartphone and headphones, and other players stand around him. The goal is to solve puzzles together with other players standing in front of the coffin and finally free oneself from the coffin. Creative Gaming is therefore by no means always the same, but enables very versatile experiences through a wide variety of methods.

More and more people are enjoying trying out such methods themselves. Tables and instructions on a wide range of topics were available in a makerspace: Graphic design, sound effects and small programming. A virtual figure could be programmed with the help of a low-threshold construction kit. In German language, one can thus learn the logic of programming languages and at the same time directly see the results of one’s own programming, which makes programming itself a kind of game.

Of course, the Speakers’ Corner is a must at such an event, as are the numerous training sessions, artist talks and workshops. On one of the four festival days, there was a special offer for schools, which was well attended. The highlight of the event was the Game Award, which is presented every year to innovative games, productions or prototypes. All in all, the PLAY is a versatile offer to get a taste, to inform and to try out, but also to deepen and to network. We are looking forward to the next PLAY…

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Successful pilot project at Hamburg vocational school

With a training preparation class (AVK) of the vocational school H13 in Hamburg- Eppendorf, the project week “Discover programming with the micro bit” took place in June 2017. During a three-day workshop to promote interest and potential in the field of computer science, the students were able to test their knowledge and skills. On the first day, most of them could hardly explain what python is, but at the final meeting, all of them were able to control a BBC: micro bit using the python programming language. The project offers educational institutions, regardless of age, origin and gender, free of charge, the opportunity to choose from various topics in computer science and to discover a new world with experienced and enthusiastic people and to network with an international community. An integral part of the project, which is supported by the Python Software Association, is, among other things, the critical examination of digitalization and openness. Further projects at Hamburg schools are being planned.