OD ZERA DO HAKERA Erasmus Project

Project Title

OD ZERA DO HAKERA

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, in her speech delivered in Vilnius on November 7th 2013 underlined that even though economy based on digital technologies develops in Europe, it still struggles with the problem of computer competence not matching market expectations. According to Eurostat data the unemployment rate among young people ranges from 19,7% in Europe, 20,5% in Poland, to 30% in Portugal. Moreover, the report of the European Commission done for the Opening Up Education initiative claims that approximately 90% of all job offers will require digital skills. Even now Europe lacks about 270 thousand IT specialists. The data demonstrates that the difficult situation of young people on the labor market is mainly a result of two things – lack of experience and qualifications that do not match the needs of the employers. Surprisingly small number of young people decides to start an adventure with web development nowadays. The only way to shift this trend would be to create methods that will change the mindset about programming not only among teenagers but also, what is probably even more important, among people working with teenagers. The point should not be to teach the very basics of a few programming languages, the point should be to convince the society that programming is for everyone and that it has already become and apart form one’s first language and foreign language, a third language that everyone should know to better understand our constantly changing world is computing. “I would urge you to become one of them! Programming skill has become an essential skill for interacting with the world- and it separates the population very clearly between the literate and the illiterate” Program or be Programmed – Douglas Rushkoff. Inspired by the words of Douglas Rushkoff we proposee and developed in our project a different approach to teaching programming – hacker’s approach.The word “hacker” has a negative connotation because of the cyber crimes. However we should remember that “hackers built the internet. Hackers are the best administrators. They always work on their imagination, they possess the skill to improvise as well as flair and knowledge unattainable for ordinary people, the nature of hacker is not restrained by any work environment. It can be for example Art or Science. Hacking is a way of life. From Zero to Hacking Hero was a project for middle and high school teenagers, teachers, and people working with young students. It included programming workshops for pupils which ended with a 5 day long hackathon – international meeting, where participants were able to work intensively on their own projects, teaching methodology workshops for teachers and people working with young students [both took place simoultanously in Kalisz (Poland) and Espinho (Portugal)], An educational internet platform was created. Knowledge and practical programming skills were only the starting point. The real value of the project was in teaching how to self-learn. The participants were able to gather information, they were introduced to an international community of hackers, they learned how to work in groups and divide responsibilities among people and teams, they worked with open source programs and they were involved in developing new or existing open source projects. Moreover, students used acquired practical skills for their hobbies, they could treat them as a starting point for future careers. It was not another project about basics of programming but a project that tought cooperation and intercultural dialogue, a project that underlined the importance of improving language skills and raised awerness of the world without barriers and borders. It prepared the participants for being a part of the world in digital era. All learning materials created during the project are available under Open License in three languages: Polish, Portugeese, and English, on an educational internet platform created for the purposes of the project. The platform was prepared for remote teaching and learning with functions like sending tasks to a given group of participants, monitoring their progress, commenting and assesing. The fact that the project was international resulted in versatility of created and shared educational materials, thus it increased their value not only for the participants of the project, but also people that will benefit from it indirectly. We think that the creation of the platform should be, in a longer perspective, a starting point for developing another open source of public educational materials to teach programming and share thoughts created by programists and teachers based on the idea of OER (Open Educational Resources).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 59203 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fundacja Rozwoju Inicjatyw Kreatywnych & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Associação de Desenvolvimento do Concelho de Espinho