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Launch of Eden Reward Scheme
We don’t need to tell you all that the world was a very different place BC (before Covid) and you may be aware that the Eden Play Centre ran the largest school’s reward system donating thousands upon thousands of free entry passes to students who had received 100% attendance during each school term, then every child was off school…
The return to “normality” and opening the play centres is a very different landscape to before with booking systems and apps etc. so we have been working with our amazing tech team to figure out how we can still celebrate these amazing young people who have had to battle a LOT to get their education.
So, we’re thrilled to announce that as part of the Eden Reward Scheme, we will donate to any local participating school 100 free entrance vouchers but this time we want to celebrate resilience, courage and much, much more… In line with the Welsh Government’s Four Purposes the school can reward their passes to the students that have shown to be:
Ambitious, capable learners
Enterprising, creative contributors
Ethical, informed citizens
Healthy, confident individuals
These vouchers need to be awarded and sent home during the last half term and the parents/carers need to book online and use the voucher code to claim the free session.
We hope that with all the stress, anxiety and bad news of the last few years can be put aside for a few hours of fun activity and making lovely memories to treasure!
For more info about the scheme and to register, click the button below.
The Eden Education Centre has won a silver award at the Careers Wales Valued Partner Awards after demonstrating its commitment to helping students prepare for their future careers.
Over 40 companies from across Wales attended the award ceremony, hosted by former BBC news anchor Sara Edwards.
The Careers Wales Valued Partner Award recognises the important contribution made by businesses who consistently step up to support the workforce of tomorrow by participating in Careers Wales facilitated activities in schools throughout Wales.
22 companies picked up gold awards, 18 companies won silver and 13 companies took home a bronze award.
Nikki Lawrence, Careers Wales Chief Executive, said: “This is the first time we have hosted an event for our Valued Partners and the reception has been amazing.
“Celebrating businesses who have gone above and beyond to help spread our message and provide young people with a platform of opportunity and guidance is essential to our work.
“We hosted this award ceremony to show our gratitude to our Valued Partners and to recognise that we value their support every day – this is our way of saying thank you.
“We’re glad everyone enjoyed and we hope all of the companies will continue their vital work with students.”
Pete Jones founder of the Eden Education Centre commented that “we are so thankful to be recognised for our work by Careers Wales and very grateful that we are able to give so many students opportunities to develop skills that are transferable into the world of work in our STEM Challenges, we look forward to continuing this partnership in 2019.”
For more information on how to become part of Careers Wales’ Education Business Exchange programme, visit www.careerswales.com
How do we prepare the children in the classrooms today for the world of work tomorrow?
A study published in 2013 asking children what they want to be when they are older revealed that the top answer was to be a doctor (9%) closely followed by teacher and footballer (both 8%) and whilst they may be predictable answers the question still remains how do we inspire our children today for a career tomorrow?
In a world that has seen the pace of change move faster than ever before in history, the realization is that we may be preparing children for futures in careers that may not even have been invented yet. Those of us reading this may have grown up without the internet, there maybe some that remember a more industrial society when the majority of the ‘bread-winners’ went to work in heavy industry. All these changes in a relatively small period of time, so what changes are ahead for the children in our classrooms today, and how do we equip them for these?
With so many questions and very few answers as to what lies ahead the simple answer is to equip our children with skills that are transferrable, that include logic and reasoning, encouraging exploration and inquisitiveness; to instill in them confidence not only in themselves so they feel safe to try, to investigate and learn not only by winnings but by failings too, but also in giving confidence to be proactive and innovative and able to reflect on their experiences. Sounds simple? The reality can be much harder, especially in a results driven society.
LEGO® Education has been creating solutions for classrooms for 30 years. The skills and techniques that the LEGO System for Learning embodies meet many of the needs of 21st century learners.
LEGO Education solutions enable students to be active, creative and collaborative solution-seekers. In this way their instinct to learn is stimulated, and they are motivated to apply their learning in new contexts, which means that they embark on a self-directed learning process. We call this being ‘LEGO Smart™’.
LEGO® Education solutions lend themselves to both the sciences and the arts. LEGO robotics and mechanisms solutions tap into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and allow students to engage with these subjects authentically. Practicing STEM in the classroom calls for problem and project-based lessons as well as considerable social interaction; allowing students to refine one another’s ideas, to articulate their own and to achieve new and valuable insights.
Other solutions, such as LEGO play themes, LEGO Education WeDo™ and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY™ are powerful tools which children can use to express emotions and responses to nature, poetry, literature and concepts in the humanities such as citizenship. Working together to build shared expressions of their hopes for society and culture helps children to develop confidence and self-esteem.
The best part to all this? The children are equipping themselves for their future without even realizing it, in ways that are memorable and most importantly fun, let us prepare them with LEGO Education today.
Winston Churchill is once believed to have said, “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught”.
Many of us could echo this comment, to have knowledge brings innumerous benefits and opportunities but the acquiring of that knowledge can often be a long, arduous process. It doesn’t take libraries full of research to come to the conclusion that individuals benefit more and apply themselves greater when they enjoy the task in hand. This sentiment is true about many aspects of life, in fact Confucius said “choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” can this same principle be applied to learning and if so how?
In the 21st century, despite political agendas and the debates on the effectiveness of the latest rating systems the focus of education and the educators has shifted to find ways of teaching and inspiring students in ways that will leave them engaged and inspired. Twenty first century learning is about providing children with opportunities to experiment with their surroundings as a form of problem solving. The ethos of LEGO® Education is “about creativity and collaboration, motivation and self-direction. It is about improvisation and discovery, and interacting with meaningful tools that expand mental capacities.”
And whilst new technology; computers, digital information and online communication, are helping to expand the way we acquire and use knowledge, this too is paving the way for more dynamic and effective teaching and learning experiences.
The Eden Education Centre is at the very forefront of this ethos. As partners with LEGO® Education providing South Wales’ first LEGO® Education Innovation Studio the vision is to give students opportunities to create collaboratively, engage in learning and inspire them for the future. This is done using the universal language of the LEGO® block and LEGO® Education software, teaching them not only the basics of building and refining motor skills but the workshops improve their ability to take measurements, make predications and observations, recording outcomes and data logging through to complex robot building and in-depth engineering and programming.
This isn’t just about using new technology; it is the realisation that these technologies have brought easy access to knowledge and greater opportunities for collaboration and creativity. As James Paul Gee emphasises in ‘Learning Games’, technology eases information sharing, co-creation and the crossing of new and more distant borders, not just geographically, but also between physical and digital realms. Digital interfaces give us new ways to express ourselves, new ways to research ideas, new ways to experiment. They allow us to take risks safely, to make and remake, to repurpose, recycle and trade in ways we could barely have imagined just a few decades ago.
These developments and opportunities are changing the way teaching and childcare professionals view their roles. As one newly qualified teacher said: “I was looking at all these tools and thinking, ‘How can I get good at using them in order to teach?’ But then I realised that what I needed to do was to give them to the children and let them learn by using them”. The ‘hands-on, minds-on’ ethos of LEGO® Education is the key to getting students to create, engage and be inspired.
For more information on our school workshops contact us on info@edeneducationcentre.org
Hands-on learning
The effectiveness of hands-on learning, for example through construction, has been well documented for many years. Today neuroscience is able to document even more precisely how physical and active involvement in experiences stimulates the brain and improves the quality of learning.
There is a growing recognition that people primarily think and learn through experiences they have had, rather than through abstract calculations and generalisations. We store our experiences in memory and use them to run simulations in our minds to prepare for problem- solving in new situations. These simulations help us form hypotheses about how to proceed in the new situation based on past experiences.
It is difficult to store and reflect upon abstract thoughts, as the brain does not have a memorable experience to retain and work with.
And yet a significant proportion of teaching efforts still rely on delivering knowledge in this disconnected way.
While the LEGO System for Learning cannot solve all of the challenges that educators face, it is a fact that building representations of ideas, problems, and knowledge with LEGO bricks and digital tools provides students with an experience that is concrete and with learning that is memorable.