The GAME of PHONES project seeks to develop a compendium of educational materials and resources to support adult educators address the needs of the most difficult to access ‘Sustained’ NEETs who might be characterised as the 'don’t want to learn, unable to learn' sub-set. The GAME of PHONES consortium believes that if the most difficult to reach target groups can be re-engaged by the approach and resources developed then it is fair to assume that the ‘easier’ target groups will also be re-engaged. Partners are committed to addressing disadvantage, combating failure in education and enhancing pedagogic and didactic approaches in adult education. Digital technology enriches education and offers new learning opportunities by enabling access to additional learning environments and resources that can be used to attract and integrate reluctant learners. The primary objective of the project is to design and develop a bespoke challenge-based educational intervention aimed at re-engaging NEETs and supporting them to build skills and competences to assist their reintegration to education or employment. The proposed resources will be developed as webquests which will be designed and produced for access on smartphones. These resources will use inquiry-based and project-based learning embedding the acquisition of key competences into the individual webquests. To ensure that this approach is sustainable partners will also develop a bespoke in-service training programme to support adult educators to harness the full potential of this compendium of new mobile learning resources and integrate the new resources into their everyday activities. In-service training will place a significant emphasis on online learning and exploring the roles of educators in these dynamic environments ensuring that they are comfortable working with the new resources in these non-traditional learning environments; fully bought-in to the benefits that online learning can bring for working with marginalised target groups; and aware of the risks that pertain when working in online environments. For the partner organisations involved, namely Meath Partnership, Callidus, FFE, StorytellMe and CARDET, the intellectual outputs of the GAME of PHONES project will have a positive impact on the skill sets of adult education staff involved who will considerably improve their service offering for NEETs and enhance their awareness of the potential of dynamic online learning environments and bespoke challenge-based learning resources for re-engaging marginalised young people. The organisations involved will be afforded the opportunity to build a reputation for being at the cutting edge of analysis and understanding of the evolving digital society we live and work in. GAME of PHONES is a win: win project that will produce positive impacts for different people, for different groups of stakeholders and for partners both individually and collectively.
The GAME of PHONES project seeks to develop a compendium of educational materials and resources to support adult educators address the needs of the most difficult to access ‘sustained’ NEETs who might be characterised as the 'don’t want to learn, unable to learn' sub-set. The GAME of PHONES consortium believes that if the most difficult to reach target groups can be re-engaged by the approach and resources developed then it is fair to assume that the ‘easier’ target groups will also be re-engaged. Partners are committed to addressing disadvantage, combating failure in education and enhancing pedagogic and didactic approaches in adult education. Digital technology enriches education and offers new learning opportunities by enabling access to additional learning environments and resources that can be used to attract and integrate reluctant learners. The primary objective of the project was to design and develop a bespoke challenge-based educational intervention aimed at re-engaging NEETs and supporting them to build skills and competences to assist their reintegration into education or employment. The Game of Phones project consortium, lead by Meath Partnership and comprising Callidus, FFE, StroytellMe and CARDET, has developed, piloted and implemented a new in-service training programme complete with a training handbook to support the continuous professional developemnt of adult educators working with NEETs. An educator's toolbox complete with a full suite of 32 webquest challenges resources in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek and Croatian. All resources developed as part of this project can be found on an online learning environment at https://gameofphonesproject.eu/elearning/login/index.php. These resources will continue to be available until 2025 to all interested parties without restriction in keeping with open access requirements of the Erasmus+ programme. In late 2020, early 2021, the project partners hosted a series of major community learning festivals in their local areas with the specific task of engaging NEETs to interact and experiment with the webquest resources created and provide access opportunities to re-engage with lifelong learning. The final conference which was held virtually on the 28th of January 2021 presented the resources developed by the consortium and engaged 78 adult educators and youth workers. 10 front-line adult educators from across the partner countries attended the Transnational Training Activity virtually in October 2020. This event supported the realisation of a cascading model of training with a further 56 front-line adult educators completing the first iteration of the in-service training in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Croatia during 2020 with the support of those, that participated in the transnational training event. The local regions where partners work have benefited from the increased social inclusion achieved and the new opportunities to engage with the projects' target groups. The potential savings to service providers may well be significant for every young person who has engaged with the Game of Phones project and may ultimately be reintegration into education and learning. Game of Phones has developed, piloted and presented a best practice example and has demonstrated that even the most hard to reach target groups can be encouraged to get involved and participate in learning of the opportunities to engage are well conceived and appropriately communicated. Increased participation rates of NEETs in education and training will have considerable effects on the social inclusion objectives of Member States and the realisation of a fairer and more equitable society for all in Europe.