An “Edu Project” story
AD and PR Lab is mainly a workshop, including different classes and sessions each time, created and coordinated by Betty Tsakarestou, our Assistant Professor at the Department of Media, Communication and Culture of Panteion University of Athens in Greece.
This semester’s workshop, known as “Social issues, Social innovation and Corporate Responsibility” was way demanding than the previous year’s, as this time not only do we had to test our creativity and innovation thinking, but also we had to put our thoughts into real practice.
My team decided to go for a project that has to do with education. We were deeply concerned and interested in this matter as in one session we watched the Nobel price speech of Malala, which really touched our hearts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOqIotJrFVM). After lots of thinking on how we are going to proceed and following OpenIDEO’s steps for startups, Danae suggested that our major challenge should be platform in which people could have access to educational material.
We faced a lot of problems and we changed our minds many times about who is going to be our target group and who could be able to upload material or how this material will be distribute. We did our own research about other similar portals, how do they work and we interviewed teachers in order to see things from their own perspective, be sure that our platform would be user-friendly and cover their and the students needs. But how many of our thoughts could actually work?
However, we actually came up with the whole plan. We decided that the platform is targeting primary school students that live in the countryside and due to their location have limited resources and opportunities in knowledge. Teachers from all over Greece could be able to share their knowledge through live e-learning videos using our Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLR_QnQHOu5NHZLLbsHfYzQ) , in order to capture students attention, but also be able to answer any questions through live chat. If teachers want to, they can upload useful notes based on their video, which would be saved and can be found in our platform.
This semester’s workshop wasn’t easy at all, but somehow we made it. What we actually learned throughout this process was that, although as a team we had same thoughts and beliefs, every single idea needed a pivot in order to be achievable, while many of our thoughts were difficult to put into practice. Moreover, what made us really proud was that our potential users, both teachers and students, are satisfied with the platform and the way that it works, while they are looking forward to use it. Also, both of our target groups contributed to the development of this platform as they taught us that they need different treatment. For example, through the interviews with the teachers, we learned that 6 to 12 years old students would not be able to focus for a long time on their screens and understand what they are hearing , so we added live chat in order for students to ask any questions.
Our next goals include collaboration with as many teachers as we could in order for this platform to be developed more, while we will try to build a community around the platform through our Facebook page so as for users to share their experience and help us take our vision a step further.
Education is a more complicated issue than we ever thought and we discovered it though our project. We do believe that education is not a privilege of the Western world and adults and children from all over the world should have access to it. People should stop taking things for granted and be more active about social issues that basically should concern all of us. We hope that our platform will help children that are in need and, who knows, it might be a small, but important change.
*The EDU project is an initiative taken in the framework of the course Social Issues, Social Innovation and Corporate Responsibility ordinated by Assistant Prof @Betty Tsakarestou. The initiative is taken by four Panteion University students who wish to challenge the social matter of illiteracy and provide the society with a solution that could bring a little progress to the problem. Specifically, The EDU project is an online platform with complementary, educational material of primary school uploaded by expertised volunteers .
The Team: Ioanna Thanasi, Danai Kontitsi, Xenia Ntavranoglou, Katerina Tsigarida
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