Didactics

Didactic analysis is a model to prepare an educational activity. It takes you through the steps and elements of the learning experience. 

Designing a Teachers' Training college starts with coming up with a catchy name like: Aardwerk Academie. Just kidding. No, designing a teachers' training college starts with the realisation that people learn best by doing and that systems (people) have an innate ability to learn, i.e.: the ability to change behaviour over time in response to (changes in) the environment.

ETP Spain Session with Rakesh Rootsman Rak delivered on 25 Sept 2013. 

The video shown below capturing this session was shot and edited by Mihail Kossev. 

This workshop led by with Alessandro Ardovini was held on 26 September 2013 at the Barcelona meeting. Below is a 4 min video of the session in English (shot and edited by Mihail Kossev)

Permaculture teacher Helder Valente, based in Portugal, has created a collection of educational videos about how to relate to ecological and social landscapes. They are freely available on YouTube. The topics include, for example, food forests, kitchen gardens, pedagogy in education, celebration, design, soils, water management, permaculture events, teacher training and more.

In this session, I use Open Space Technology as an inspiration to design a session about the teaching of the design principles for large groups, where some of the participants may have some prior understanding of them, and can help the others who don’t.

Every participant takes a piece of paper on which the name of his/her secret friend is written. You keep this in secret as your secret friend does. You can use the time of the course to make nice things for this person like prepare a hand-made present, write something nice and hide it under the pillow, and so on.

Aims: To help participants know the area Conduct a treasure hunt around the town/farm/village/center where the course is held. Hide various objects in important locations such as the closest shop, post office, bank, pharmacy, toilets, showers, swimming pool…  use a map of the area to plan this.

There are lots of different ways of doing this, here is one example: 

Raw vegan candies race: 

In this type of treasure hunt the task is to make raw vegan candies.

Silhouettes 

Aims: Getting to know each other and creating a “gallery of heads” together (for decorating the rooms) Numbers: 10-30 participants in pairs Materials: Sheets of paper, cardboard, pencils, scissors, lamps (or candles) After a short introduction, silhouettes are made in pairs; the outline of the head of each person is copied and then cut out. Possibilities for continuation:

Aims: getting to know each other from the first day and remember the names of everybody Numbers: Any Length: 10-30 minutes depending on group size/s