MakeApp Club: supporting young people to develop as digital makers Erasmus Project

Project Title

MakeApp Club: supporting young people to develop as digital makers

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: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Creativity and culture; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

MakeApp Club project is a strategic partnership of two organisations from Poland and the UK: Education Centre EST from Wadowice (www.est.edu.pl) and Wavemaker from Stoke-on-Trent (www.wavemaker.org.uk).

Our world is getting increasingly digital and it is those who can manipulate and create technology who are able to shape it. For most young people digital technology is an everyday part of life and many of them are eager to learn how to creatively engage with it. In view of this fact it is surprising that there are so few learning opportunities for this group of young enthusiasts who are usually left alone when they venture into authoring their own ‘apps’. In Poland there are very few learning spaces for young digital makers and none in the region of Wadowice. The UK is leading developments in this field, still the learning experiences on offer are much below demand. Wavemaker is the only such initiative in their area.

Our main aim was to engage young people in collaborative digital making and foster their technical and social competences relevant for employment. We were addressing two priorities of the 2016 call for proposals.
– Horizontal priority: open and innovative education, training and youth work, embedded in the digital era
– Youth field priority: promoting high-quality youth work

Our main target group were young people with fewer opportunities, particularly those who:
– Go to school but have very few opportunities to get involved in extracurricular learning activities due to their location, accessibility, price, etc.
– Finished school but neither continue education nor work, still are deeply submerged in the digital world

We provided a range of new learning experiences for the young people. We gave open access to a social learning space with an informal workshop atmosphere distinct from school environment. The young participants could manipulate both hardware and software to co-create their digital laboratory. They co-authored an online platform testing various plug-ins to customise it to their needs and preferences. They created apps with support of qualified staff and colleagues who had already started work in the industry. This direct contact with professionals helped them better understand career routes in this field and their own progression. The support was thus complementary and innovative at the same time: usually ICT learning opportunities for young people, if available, include onsite computer workshops teaching specific technical skills and online materials for self-teaching. We aimed at a much wider range of benefits than those gained from (self) development of technical expertise. Our baseline research findings highlighted this point: progression into digital creativity with prospects to real jobs means not only mastering a set of specific technical skills but also developing social competences in a community of practice.

Besides offering digital making activities in both our centres we developed the following results.
– Online platform: the platform has been serving as a learning and communication tool for young digital makers and facilitators from Poland and the UK thus bridging the two sites. Sample digital objects developed by the participants are shown on the platform as well as links to external resources supporting the learning.
– Community of practice: face-to-face and online communication around a set of shared interests led to emergence of an authentic community of practice. Through the process of collaborative learning the young people had an opportunity to develop themselves both professionally and socially.
– Digital stories: we encouraged young creative and successful people to share their career experiences in the form of digital stories.
– Digital Makerspace Toolkit: we distilled effective approaches from our initiative and other good practices on how to set up a social learning environment for young digital makers and presented the concept of such a makerspace to educators and youth workers.
– Research report: we explored young people’s progression into digital creativity and jobs in Poland, where there are very few datasets on this, and presented conclusions to stakeholders in the field of youth work and education. The report is based on an analysis of biographical interviews with Polish young digital makers at the threshold of their career in different sectors of IT industry with an aim to examine how they developed competences needed for work in this sector.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 57005 Eur

Project Coordinator

Centrum Edukacyjne EST & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Wavemaker Stoke