Month: March 2023

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Interview Karen Maeyens

Directora de Diseno de Experiencia Educativa en la Universidad de Hespérides. (Design Director in educational Experience)
Director de Formacion Continua/Ongoing learning for faculty at UFM

Karen Maeyens has worked for the past 8 years at the Universidad de Francisco Marroquin as a teacher of teachers. UFM describes its mission as “to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal, and overall economic principles of a society of free and responsible persons.”  Karen moved to Guatemala 10 years ago to work there. Until recently she has been in charge of teacher training. She introduced new methodologies for teachers to improve their teaching into a more proactive and immersed way of teaching. Introducing a wide array of techniques. Design workshops, team based learning, Socratic Dialogues as well as improvisation, among other things. Today she works in Universidad de Hesperides, a new Digital University based in Canary Island. There she is helping the university and the teachers develop the curriculum using “Backward Design”. Backward Design is where you design the course backwards. You choose the learning objectives first and work yourself backwards to content design that will lead you to those objectives. She is helping train teachers  to use the above mentioned methodologies and new ones in the new digital university. 

Karen has three ways of implementing this training.

1. She invites experts in different fields to conduct her workshops,

2. She develops workshops herself in specific areas,

3. She has her teachers share experiences and conduct their own workshops. 

Suggestions of references she suggested:

  • March Church from Project Zero at Harvard university. Mark Church has been studying how to change Thinking routines. How to Learn to unlearn (https://vimeo.com/97547671). He states “are the questions we are asking opening windows or closing doors?”
  • “I used to think…., And now I think….” http://pzartfulthinking.org/?page_id=2
  • Making thinking visible, students verbalize: I see, I think, I wonder.
  • Visual Thinking – making thinking visible
  • The Doodle Revolution – Sunni Brown
  • Visual Doing – Willemien Brand
  • Visual Thinking – Willemien Brand
  • The back of the Napkin – solving problems and selling ideas with pictures
  • Design for how people learn – Julie Dirksen
  • The Brain that changes itself – Norman Doidge
  • Brain Rules – John Medina
  • Made to Stick – Chip Heath and Dan Heath
  • Originals – How non-conformists move the world – Adam Grant
  • Unleash your creative monster – Andy jones
  • Impro – Keith Johnstone
  • The Creative Contrarian – Roger Von Oech
  • Creativity Inc.-  Ed Catmull

The benefits of her workshops are numerous. Teachers are invited voluntarily to assist, teachers come from different backgrounds and different fields. She is constantly checking on how to improve them through constant feedback and involves the students’ feedback into the workshops. 

Some tips and challenges she has encountered while doing the workshops:

  • Open with an ice breaker or Stoke (how they are called in Stanford U), this lightens up the mood, it helps people to be more open to learning.
  • Mistakes are gifts
  • What they do in your time is under your control
  • Give them time to work
  • Have them make a verbal commitment to applying the resources
  • Creates a community of teachers
  • Change requires time
  • Humans resist change
  • Make it voluntary
  • Workshops create communities, you are not alone in your challenges. They create vulnerability.
  • Support them after
  • Have them share how they see a particular “game” being applied to their class or business

Her biggest struggle is the level of creativity in the teachers. When asked she said what I would find most valuable is a method where I can push teachers to work the creativity muscle. 

Some teachers are keen to learn but others resist it. She states that she believes everyone has creativity, just not everyone has developed that part of the brain. “We need to give them tools to awaken their creativity, people are scared to make mistakes, scared that they are being judged therefore do not take creative risks.”

Ice Breaker Ideas:

Works Cited

Big Wind Blows Game – Group Games, Team Games, Ice Breakers. www.group-games.com/ice-breakers/big-wind-blows-game.html. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.

Borchardt, Sue. “Unlearning to Learn – Year End LILA Summit 2014.” Vimeo, 6 June 2014, vimeo.com/97547671. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.

Project Zero. “Thinking Palette : Artful Thinking.” Pzartfulthinking.org, pzartfulthinking.org/?page_id=2.

“PZ’s Thinking Routines Toolbox | Project Zero.” Pz.harvard.edu, pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines#ExploringArtImagesandObjects. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.

“Universidad de Las Hespérides.” Universidad de Las Hespérides, hesperides.edu.es. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.‌

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The Brixton Library

BRIXTON LIBRARY

There is a before and and after to my visit to the Brixton Library. A place that I had passed by before and had not given it a second thought. I grew up in Venezuela, a place where luxuries such as public libraries are scarce and the ones that existed have been ransacked by the current government. The visit was enriched by the people we met that work there. Neill, Amanda and Aviva among others. We spent three hours there. I came in thinking that libraries would be a thing of the past, since most books would soon be digital and came out with knowledge of the significance of what a library really is. 

If we look up the definition of Library it says: a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for use or borrowing by the public or the members of an institution. 

This definition needs to be redefined. Let me tell you what I learned on my visit and what definition I would give after my visit. 

As you walk in there are two cutouts of black heroes, so visitors can put their faces in them and take photos as the heroes they are. To the right there is this beautiful room that serves as an art gallery. Every month they have a different exhibit, they try to theme it with important topics happening that month. (i.e. Black history month, Women’s day, etc) They had Hew Locke in this month talking about his creative process. Every week they have over 100 children under 5 for reading groups. You can get a library card from the moment you are born. Over a million people visit the library every year. They have physical books, audiobooks, databases, computers, unlimited internet. They have English conversation classes. They also have a VIP (Visual impairment project), which also get together for reading groups another day of the week. They have a club for the deaf. On Tuesday you can come with your guide dog. They have IT equipment that can scan a text and read it out loud, they also have Ipads so you can read the newspapers and magazine articles. They also help the prison and their library with books that prisoners want. They provide sim cards for people with need, they have period products. They help prepare people for interviews, they provide clothes for job interviews. They help people navigate through the system, how to get housing, the freedom pass, how to fill out the passport requirements, and many other things to help. They help bridge the gap for people that have no internet access and are not good with technology. The pandemic has made almost everything electronic which seems like a great thing for some, but this has taken a toll on people that have no access nor knowledge on how to use it. The library has become a space where they can go to get help. 

Our visit to the library

If I had to redefine the word library today I would say: A community building, safe space for all. A sanctuary for all human beings, a place where you can find kindness. Thank you to Neill, Amanda, Aviva and especially our tutor Diana for opening my eyes to all the wonderful things happening in the Brixton Library.