With the help of this section professional educators can learn how to teach young people of various age groups in »their« own way.
The appropriate teaching strategy for today’s net-generation is contextual, creative and cooperative practical learning using digital technology. Learning by doing with personal involvement and experience, such as in educational gaming, are essential didactic techniques.
The learning route is a constructivistic tool, because the learner constructs his own identity and knowledge in cooperation with others. Each route is a self-standing module for reuse in multiple contexts. All five routes are designed for separate age-group: 3-6, 7-11, 12-16 and 17-25 years old and developed progressively through 7 steps.
“Do you have an ID?”
This route is about the own identity in relation to others. The others may be children or students in the own class or from other countries. e.g. It may also have to do with children and human rights.
Nursery school children (3-6 years old) play various roles such as the lion, director, magician or clown. They create masks themselves. Thus their multiple intelligence is stimulated and they learn their own “multiple choice identity” concept.
“I’m from Holland, where .....are you coming from?”
For the age-group 7-11 an educational game is designed. In the educational game ‘The European House’ the learner-player discovers the history and actual situation of different countries with the help of an avatar. In the virtual environment of the game he can gather information about other countries from different perspectives.
Only when he has acquired sufficient knowledge and insight into the country’s history, he may enter the “European house” of that country to watch a video clip, solve a problem, communicate with another avatar or become a video jockey. There he also meets and gathers with children or pupils from other countries or houses.
The age-group 12-25 years focuses on the various youth cultures and makes a mix with their own identities.
The aim of this educational game is that young people gain knowledge about other countries and thus get to know, understand and respect each other better.
Children from 3 to 6 years play different roles
Fear, hopes and dreams of young people in the present will create their future
Enter ‘The European House’ game
Additional materials: Teacher’s route for the European project ‘Multiple Choice Identity’
“Listen to the music”
In the musical role-play ‘The table talk’ different family members and their roles are represented by different instruments. Pupils choose a role and try to communicate with each other through music. In doing so, they can understand different family roles better. Furthermore the learners visualize the situation with drama and masks and try to find a solution for a quarrel. Furthermore they can communicate with other students about differences and similarities. In the age group 3-6 real instruments are used and they play a role-play themselves. The older groups make music and drama themselves out of ‘The Table Talk’.
The meaning of the family
An audio-collage of what could happen in a family? What to do now?
“Meet at To-gather-park”
Good work is something that is meaningful to others, ethical and looks beautiful. In this route ‘The To-gather-park’ is created, where learners may be involved in activities to protect nature and to deal with climate change. Learners become ecologically aware and develop their ecological identity through various actions (that are conducted in cooperation with Greenpeace).
“Thinking outside the box”
This route is about people and thoughts that are moving globally. It’s about the meeting of ‘the self’ with ‘the other’ in order to develop an own ‘multiple choice identity’ that’s open, flexible, active, creative and empathic and that’s inside the framework of human rights. Special attention is paid to minorities and to people who are not like everybody else.
Learners ‘migrate’ in the route, get to know other young migrants and thus come across various identities .Their own mix of multiple identities is put in a ‘box’. They also will recognize the problem of violation of human rights. In this route music, dance and art are very important as sources of knowledge and ways of communication with ‘the other’. Learners symbolically collect various objects: photos, music or images as representatives of their own ‘multiple choice identity’, put them in their “open box”.
“Let’s go shopping”
Learners become familiar with different life philosophies (for example Buddhism, Christianity etc.) through music, a video clip, drama and dance.
In the workshop “Let’s go shopping” young people create “shops”, where they put ‘on sale’ various objects, which represent their philosophy. At the same time they can also ‘shop’ for objects, that are characteristic for philosophies of others. Thus learners make up their own philosophy of life: ‘theofiction’.
The last step of route 5 is about reflecting on route 1 to 4 and also the first step of the next route 1 by making a clip of the own ‘multiple choice identity’.
song: 'Let's do it today or maybe tomorrow'. Everybody has his own Go
The ‘Field of view’ is also useful conceptual tool for understanding the interrelatedness between society, education, codes of behavior and European identity.
