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Designathon: Teaching for creative changemaking

Professional development to cultivate creative changemaking in children

Our mission is to unleash the creativity of children, empowering them to design a better world. Together with teachers, parents, schools, clubs and through challenges, children on every continent, learn about, investigate, create prototypes and present their solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals. Step by step with their teachers and communities co-creating a better world.

HundrED 2022
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Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

HundrED 2022

Creativity

Web presence

2014

Established

101K

Children

39

Countries
Target group
All
Updated
October 2021
When adults discover their own agency and ability to empower the creativity of children, then things really start to flourish.

About the innovation

Teachers empower children to design a better world

For 7 years Designathon Works has been advocating for a radical rethink on how society and education systems see children. What if we all saw children as creative changemakers, engaged humans, scientists and inventors? What if we then helped them to develop those abilities? By working with teachers, parents and after-school educators, helping them to grow their creative mindset and in turn enable the next generation of changemakers!

Why we want to educate a million changemakers
Our work is driven by the belief that two highly important abilities to have for our complex and rapidly changing world are creative thinking and changemaking ability with digital and technological literacy as a close third.
That is why Designathon Works designed training and tools for teachers to foster creativity through a Design Thinking approach applied to the Sustainable Development Goals and backed up by Maker Education.

Key points in teacher and after-school facilitators professional development
Having a user-friendly method that fully engages children is one thing, enabling teachers and educators to adopt new approaches and facilitate children's growth towards unknown outcomes is a whole other journey. Our online and offline training include, of course, a DIY process where teachers rediscover the joy of inventing their own solutions and making prototypes, but just as important has proved to share an understanding of creativity, its development and tools for assessing its development.

Here follows an overview of the foundational aspects of the professional development experiences we work with:


  1. Mindset reframe: The child as a source of ideas and vision to be taken seriously.
    Moving from ‘I will tell you’ to ‘I want to hear your ideas’.
    Moving from ‘I answer’ to ‘I ask questions to help you formulate your own ideas’.

  2. Explaining creative thinking, creativity and that it can be cultivated. Using models and studies, from Teresa Amabile, Guildford, Torrance and Dialogical education, Rubert Wegerif.

  3. Encouraging teachers and facilitators to practice their own playful creative development.

The learning model behind the professional development
Moving from the foundations above the second module includes tips and tricks for teachers so they can develop their ability as a dialogical practitioners, meaning: prompts for feedback on ideas, suggested questions they can ask to elicit children’s ideas, becoming aware of the tone of voice we use when talking with children so that we don't influence their choices by subtly indicating our preference but instead help them explore their own imagination.

We focus on navigating the following shifts:


  1. How can you as a teacher help your students explore routes to finding potential answers?

  2. How can you teach the students a process versus asking them to come up with the right answer?

  3. How can you co-create an environment in the classroom where the focus is on collaboration instead of hierarchy?

  4. How can you shift the focus from narrowing down to one right answer to a celebration of the abundance of different ideas and outcomes?

  5. How can you assess the childs’ process outcomes qualitatively?

  6. How can we create conducive environments for creative and collaborative work?

  7. Mapping the designathon project contents to the national curriculum.


What are the various teacher training and tools


  1. (online) training: how to work with the Designathon method and lesson materials

  2. (online) lesson materials and tools to use while teaching in the classroom

  3. Assessment tools for qualitatively assessing the child’s work

  4. Community platform as a dissemination point and meeting point for the global Designathon community of teachers and educators.


And of course last but not least learning together from experiences in our classrooms and after school program with settings, materials, groups size, themes, warm-up exercises, peer feedback, new technologies among others.

What makes the Designathon approach different
The Designathon method is different from other existing education methods, lesson materials and ways of learning because:


  • A Designathon is a structured process with an open-ended assignment on the SDG's, this promotes student agency as proposed in the OECD 2030 Future of Education and Learning Framework 2030.

  • The students gain knowledge on the topic, a variety of 21st-century skills (i.e: creative thinking, complex problem solving and global citizenship), and empowerment to take action in whatever shape or form they feel best.

  • The method works for students despite their socio-economic background, ability or country, which means it is a universal and inclusive way to create the next generation of changemakers around the globe.

How we create impact at scale
The organisation operates through a global network of regional partners and community organizations, facilitated by our HQ in Amsterdam. Together we have worked with more than 100.000 students and have trained over 600 educators who use the method in classrooms and workshops. To support our work and our network partners, teachers and facilitators, we have created a community platform. A dissemination point and a meeting point for the global Designathon community of teachers and educators. The annual Global Children’s Designathon, has 40+ global cities participating on all continents and keeps growing. We work with students of all backgrounds in all situations, from shanty towns in Africa to private schools in Europe. The method recognises that all children have something of value to contribute. Our beneficiaries are the students we impact, the educators who work with them and the organisations we work with.

We believe this is just the beginning of this creative teaching movement, but it is definitely a great sign of the type of educational experiences and mind shifts that we wish to see in the classroom and beyond.

Impact & scalability

Impact & Scalability

Designathon empowers educators and schools to cultivate a creative mindset among young learners. Through this curriculum or framework, every classroom across the globe can integrate design thinking among students.

HundrED Academy Reviews

Wow! Giving students the chance to create with their teachers and communities co-creating a better world, groundbreaking!
So many creative elements infused to create prototypes and present their solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals.

The project’s global reach is already apparent so it clearly has high scalability. I like the way in which creativity is embedded into teaching and projects in such a way that students are encouraged to develop creative skills and a creative approach for later learning.

- Academy member
Academy review results
High Impact
Low Scalability
High Impact
High Scalability
Low Impact
Low Scalability
Low Impact
High Scalability
Read more about our selection process

Implementation steps

Join our community platform

Designathon Works community platform

Founded in 2014, we have been working with more than 100.000 children worldwide, spreading the Designathon method through local and global Sustainable Development Goals challenges. Through our global network, we are teaching children new competencies and empowering their agency to co-create a better world and thrive in it!On this platform, you can find the designathon projects, current ongoing challenges, guidebooks, workshop materials and libraries of children's ideas. Our wish is to enable you to run the workshops self-sufficiently, and to connect you with each other in order to collaborate and exchange your experience. We have regular Community Cafe gatherings during which we come together as a community, to highlight new and old members and their experiences.

What do the designathon projects entail?

A designathon workshop is a design hackathon where children (8-12 years old) tackle complex global problems (aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals), use their creativity and develop prototypes (with simple technologies) and present their solutions to an audience. During a designathon workshop, children are guided through a 7-step experiential process, linked thematically to a bigger global challenge such as clean energy, plastic pollution, water scarcity, etc.

By doing a designathon workshop, many children discover that their possibilities are unlimited and they think beyond their borders, literally and figuratively. Children gain knowledge on the SDGs, develop 21st-century skills, creativity, readiness to deal with complex futures and embrace a changemaker attitude. The method focuses on building the inner abilities of all children, regardless of their gender, race, class, skill level or learning situation.

Costs?

Free of charge.

Training

If you are looking for more in-depth knowledge and skills regarding the Designathon method, we offer group training.

Follow our teacher training

Professional Development during training

Join an international group officially trained educators by following our (online) teacher training!

The core competencies of our (online) training are:


  • Mindset reframe: The child as source of ideas and vision to be taken seriously

  • Moving from ‘I will tell you’ to ‘I want to hear your ideas’

  • Moving from ‘I answer’ to ‘I ask questions to help you formulate your own ideas’

  • Explaining creative thinking, creativity and that it can be cultivated, using models and studies, from Theresa Amabile, Guildford, Torrance and Dialogical education, Rubert Wegerif;

  • Encouraging teachers and facilitators to practice their own playful creative development;

After the successful competition of the training, you will receive a Designathon method license, access to the designathon workshop materials and our global network.

Costs?

Online training: € 150,- per person ex VAT

Offline training: €1.995 for a team of 10 people ex VAT.

Join our Global Children's Designathon

What is the Global Children's Designathon?

The Global Children’s Designathon is our annual educational challenge dedicated to celebrating what the world could be like when children design better futures for people and the planet.

Each year more than 1.200 children in 40+ cities worldwide work in parallel to design and develop innovative concepts for a better planet. The theme children tackle is drawn from the Sustainable Development Goals. The children will use the Designathon method to develop their own ideas, then design and build prototypes.

During the Global Children Designathon, children from more than 40 cities worldwide work in parallel to design and develop innovative concepts around the Sustainable Development Goals. Through the Designathon method, they develop their own ideas, design and build prototypes, and exchange their ideas with their peers, experts & professionals.

Watch here the videos of the Global Children's Designathon 2021.

Browse here the children's Library of Ideas.

Download here the Impact Reports.

When?

The next edition will take place from January to April 2022.

Costs?

Free of charge to join and host the event in your city/region.

More info?

Email ina@designathon.nl

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