GEM Final Dissemination Seminar

GEM Final Dissemination Seminar

Think Tank Development Solutions Organized “Game for EuroMed” Final Dissemination Seminar on 17^th of August 2017. Attendees were curious about the game and after the seminar they became excited about the game and are waiting for the final version to be available for everyone!

About the project

The GEM Project aimed at promoting learning about intercultural dialogue through playing. The project went through 4 phases: the first phase was an online training in Gamification and intercultural citizenship. The second phase was the development of the game and translation into 4 languages. The third phase was the pilot workshops in schools and youth centres. The fourth phase was the dissemination seminar internationally in Palermo, Italy and locally in Egypt.

The project partners

4 organizations from 4 countries have participated in the GEM project; “CESIE” from Italy, “ADICE” from France, “WASEELA” and Think tank from Egypt and “JOHOUD” from Palestine.

Event description

• Presentation about GEM project; the idea the rationale, the phases of the project in details and photos from the pilot workshops
• Explaining the rules of the game to the audience
• Playing the game with two different groups

Attendees

The number of attendees was 32 from local organizations, non-formal educators, students who attended workshops, teachers, or just people curious to know about the game. Organizations such as:

• Y-PEER Egypt which is working with youth peer education network of organizations and institutions has been pioneered by UNFPA in 2002.
• “Fadilia” Foundation is a social enterprise, which is working in community development field for the sake of building the virtuous city community (Utopia community) in slums through launching social entrepreneurship in slums differentiated by sustainable development.
• EduVation which is working in innovation in education and technology
• “Selmya” which is a network working in Peace education and activities
• “Egyptian association for development” which is an NGO working in the development field and has an interest in education.

Output

• Facebook Event was Created 221 people interested
• 32 attendees from youth and organizations
• 4 copies of the game were given to the participant organizations
• Partnership with EduVation to participate with the game in EduVation Summit 2017
• Partnership with “Selmya”; as we participated in the International Day of Peace with the Game, more than 20 attendees were watching the 8 players while playing.

Opinions

• “the game is an innovative tool for education about intercultural understanding” – Ahmed Shawki – One of the participants
• “I’ll go and check the website of the game to know all the questions and know more information about these countries” – Radwa Ammar , One of the participants
• ” I wish there could be a game like this for the whole world as we need to understand other cultures better” – Aya Elshafey – One of the participants

Game for EuroMed

Article on GEM : Game for Euro Med

During the month of February Think Tank along with its three partners from Italy, France and Palestine have been cooperating through the GEM project for the purpose of creating a board game as a learning tool for intercultural citizenship in the Euro Med region, with the support of Anna Lindh foundation.

At this point of the project we have hosted an online training course for the 4 national teams on the concepts of intercultural citizenship and gamification. The training course was designed by a team of Italian experts in the field in addition to an Egyptian Trainer. The Italian team consisted of a project manager, project coordinator and trainer.

Team profile

Serving the diversity of the target groups who will play the game in the experimentation phase, teams had to include a diversity of educators, youth workers and project coordinators. The Egyptian team, consisting of 6 members, was equipped by an educator, 2 youth workers, 2 facilitators and 1 project coordinator. Their diverse input was imperative to the creative process to cover all aspects of intercultural citizenship and a comprehensive point of view toward the game. The team as well had a gender balance of 2 males and 4 females.

Dates

Training took place in think tank’s office connecting all the other 3 teams from Italy, France and Palestine. The training was held on 21^st, 24^th and 27^th of February, where the training days were separated by a period of reflection, research and preparation tasks related to the subject.

Content

The content of the training course was built on 3 pillars (3 sessions). The first was the context of the game. In this first session participants explored the need of such a game and the purpose of the project. Through an inclusive presentation by the Italian coordinators on the mission and the objectives of the project, participants had the chance to get familiar with the process and understand the purpose behind it.

Participants got a kick start by acknowledging good practices in board gaming for learning, collected by project coordinators from all partners. These good practices listed several games designed for similar purpose in the 4 countries, exploring methodologies, analyzing elements and getting inspired by their results.

Second session marked the beginning of the creative process and the road map of our collaborative creation. The use of the 6 thinking hats facilitated the process and provided us with a map of thinking patterns that we should consider in our creation.

Third session was entirely dedicated to connecting the “play” and the process of gamification with the intercultural citizenship concept provided by the toolkit of intercultural citizenship published by ALF.

Participants had a chance to design their learning model of the game, structure game elements, list the added values and relate the game to their target groups.

Challenges: online and creative process

The training course was an obvious challenge in two dimensions, first the online virtual setting proved to be a challenge, yet a very efficient tool if planned properly. Internet connections varied from very weak, adequate and super strong from time to time. However, the team managed to maintain proper communication through the entire three sessions thanks to few rules we have established from the beginning. Simple things like turning off the mic  and camera when you are not speaking, sharing documents on Dropbox to follow the presentations from local computer rather than online feed, using chatting at some points to explain tasks clearly and avoid confusion and misunderstanding due to varying English levels or different English accents.

Second dimension was the creative process itself. It is hard enough to get a group of 16 people working together to create one game, never mind doing it online without actually meeting. The process had to be structured in its simplest forms to be efficient and productive. Different views had to be considered and included while maintaining the main frame of the board game.

Thanks to the thinking hats methodology and the form of listing priorities, the creative process went smooth and produced outputs that defined and outlined the board game.

Outputs

4 Thinking Hats Map

4 lists of game elements needed in the game

4 lists of relevant intercultural citizenship elements to our target groups

4 lists of added values we expect from the game