Between September 6-9, 2023, Ms. teacher Soare Constanța, from Colegiul Tehnic Energetic Sibiu participated, within the EduTrans21 Educational Transformation for 21st Century 2021-2-DE02-KA210-VET-000050732 project, in training, teaching and learning activities at the partner school in the project – ITECH Technical College, Hamburg.
The activities where our teacher assisted in the 3 days, were part of a larger event – Hackathon 23 – a marathon event, under the auspices of a Design Thinking workshop, in which for 10 days, students from the school in Germany and a team of students from Ming Chi University in Taiwan worked in groups to find real solutions (in the form of prototypes or applications) to real problems existing in the community of Elbinsel Wilhelmsburg, where the ITECH school is located. Working on real problems in the community where they live was a good motivator for those involved, so the activities in the project were animated, full of involvement and seriousness.
The activities were coordinated and facilitated by teachers from the German school (Diane Hülsmann and Heiko Meiwes) as well as by Professor Kelly Chen from Ming Chi University of Technology in Taiwan.
Starting from the 11th Sustainable Development Goal of the UN 2030 Agenda – Develop cities and human settlements so that they are open to all, safe, resilient and sustainable – and working in teams using the AGILE technique as well as other innovative methods such as the SCRUM method, AGILE games, the project method, students have designed mobile applications, prototypes for various devices, or websites.
AGILE is a flexible approach to project development that focuses on collaboration, communication, and adaptability. This brings a number of advantages to project management, such as resource efficiency, flexibility, continuous improvement of the final product, and the improvement and quality of team work.
These collaborative working methods and the concept of Design Thinking have the role of better preparing students for the labour market and have a positive impact on the project participants.
