UNESCO Young Digital Creators – Educator’s Kit

We just got from printing house two packages of books and CD-ROMs on which we have been working on for a several months. I hope UNESCO headquarters also already received their 20 boxes. A well-designed physical object feels very good in your hands.

We also have an online version of the Kit – a full text PDF and the CD-ROM – which you are free to copy and use for educational and other non-commercial purposes. UNESCO is making a HTML-version of the book and I am also planning to publish some selected section of the book on this blog.

The UNESCO YDC Educator’s Kit is a book and a CD-ROM. The Kit is designed to help teachers and educators working in schools, youth clubs, community centres, and training institutes to generate and manage project-based learning activities with young people. The focus is on the creative use of information and communication technologies, global challenges of development, cultural diversity and inter-cultural dialogue.

The kit is based on the pilots implemented in the UNESCO’s Young Digital Creators program implemented with several partners, schools and youth clubs around the world. The book summarises the best practices from the pilots and the CD-ROM contains free and open source software to be used in creative projects. The Kit was made in collaboration between UNESCO and the Media Lab UIAH. The kit was published by UNESCO.

UNESCO is also working on to translate the book and the CD-ROM to French and Spanish, and maybe to Arabic, too. If you are interested in to sponsor translation and printing of the book into some other languages (e.g. Finnish, Swedish – hint!) please contact us.

The release event takes place at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, Media Lab, 4th floor lobby on Wednesday 21st of June 2006 at 15-16. Our dean Philip Dean, the writers of the book Teemu Leinonen and Joanna Saad-Sulonen and the illustrator Anna Salmi will present the project. Strawberry juice and fruits are served. You are warmly welcome to join us!

Introduction section of the book

“Being creative and collaborative” is the motto of UNESCO’s Young Digital Creators (YDC). YDC is designed for young people of different cultures to collaboratively construct deeper understanding of each other’s cultural values and shared perspectives on global issues of our time. In YDC, the digital tools are used to carry out creative projects, to show them and to talk about them with people from different cultures. YDC is a programme that makes the Internet and the web work to the benefit of young creators around the globe.

This YDC Educator’s Kit is designed to help teachers and educators working in schools, youth clubs, community centres, and training institutes to generate and manage project-based learning activities with young people. The focus is on the creative use of information and communication technologies, global challenges of development, cultural diversity and inter-cultural dialogue.

The first part of the Kit explains some basic concepts of the initiative. It starts with a brief introduction on project-based learning, then discusses creative thinking and expression, as well as cultural diversity. The last section of the first part gives an introduction to online cooperation in creative projects with Internet and web learning environments.

The second part of the Kit introduces a detailed lesson plan with a number of learning activities that are expected to be implemented in sequence. The lesson plans are designed to help educators carry out a full project-based learning process with young people, starting from brainstorming and framing of the themes of the project to presenting the results of the project through exhibitions or concerts.

There are several ways to use the Kit. It is recommended that you begin with reading the first part and then start to implement your own project with young people by following the lesson plan of the second part. You may also use the lesson plan just as an example and design your own process and project. The implementation of the full lesson plan takes several months, so proper planning beforehand on what will be done with a certain timeline is crucial.

(© UNESCO YDC Kit)