The story of our SDinED network
We have just turned ONE!
On 25th June we celebrated our 1st birthday. What a year it has been!
It started with these three enthusiastic and passionate ladies who were navigating the complex education system with one single objective on their minds — make the learning journey an enjoyable experience for all — students and staff! In their own worlds, they had seen a lot of frustrated students queuing for forms to be passed to another department or another section, and again, and again…..drawing the energy and enthusiasm of the learners and slowly muting the humanity of those involved in these unproductive and mundane processes. “Why, why, why, why and why?”. These three women were not afraid to ask and challenge, but they rarely found the constructive response they were after. They didnt give up and kept reaching out through their networks of like minded people who were trully commited to change education for better. Their own paths finally crossed in the Service Design Academy in Dundee. BOOM!
The Service Design Academy is Katie’s world that she kindly invited Jean and Radka into. And what a world that is. It makes you want to jump, change the world, shout about it and smile. The SDA team are kind and committed. They have provided our network with unconditional support from day 1, which has been absolutely paramout for our growth. Katie is the Tornado that we enjoy swirling around with. Our first meet up gave us loads of energy and confidence that we can pull of something big and significant. Even the V&A Dundee joined us on that first day and supported us with our ambitious vision of a design weekend in the spirit of, and inspired by the Global Jams Family, an Education focussed Design Jam #EDUJAM, that we set ourselves to achieve, already then, when we first met.
Those couple of days together in Dundee left us not only with a fuzzy feeling of happiness, but also with a zest for more. All of a sudden we felt so much stronger and more confident to let the whole world know about our ideas and our plans for the future. We went for it — we tweeted, we linked in, we mediumed, we trelloed, we sessionlabed, we google docsed, we wordpressed, we youtubed, we mailchimped, and we kept meeting up, challeging oursleves with Lego exercises and animated debates. Before we knew it, we had over 100 subscribers globally. And importanly, we also kept learning about more education challenges of our newly acquired SDED friends. The vision of the EDUJAM was growing stronger and stronger.
So things were nicely bubbling under the surface. Jean, Katie and Radka were no longer three separate worriers. They were now surrounded by an exciting support network who kept encouraging them to dream big. And so they did. They started dreaming really big, really really really big!
The EDUJAM has become a planning reality, a drive and a joint effort. Despite the pause in cuddly network meetings due to COVID19, the network has been stronger than ever. Those who have been with us will know how this story continues. The EDUJAM seeds have started sprouting in our exciting co-design event with Andy de Vale from WorkVisible! If you missed it, catch up HERE!
So what’s next for our network? Our journey continues…
COVID-19 have given us many new digital tools and has brought us closer to many colleagues who may not have otherwise joined us. The pandemic has created an opportunity to reach out, learn to facilitate fun online interactions with other enthusiasts and simply made us realise that we have outgrown the capacity of the three original warriors.
SDinED and SDA — Partners in Crime (aka Education Design)
The change is upon us and yes, we are coming back home!!!! Back to Dundee where it all started. Our unconditionally loving host, Service Design Academy, is going to take us under their wings to provide us with more structured operational support, better meeting refreshments (Ha!) and most importantly, a platform to continue to grow. Together, Service Design in Education and the Service Design Academy, feel that we will be able to reach out to more complex levels of the education sector in the UK and globally to make a real impact, to continue to actively improve the world of education for all.
We are excited to see where this new partnership will take us. First stop EDUJAM. Save the Dates, 11th, 12th and 13th September 2020.
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