SITUATION AND CHALLENGE Since the entry of the assembly line, we have segregated our ‘head and hands’ so to say, both in education and in the field of work. On the other hand, we now witness a growing interest for producing local products and circular and sustainable design and an increasing demand for skilled workers who can think and act. This shift demands a new young professional. AMBITION By using both our HEAD and our HANDSs, we reach our HEART. The student who is inventive, knows about material, is skilled, is focused and has a team spirit, has the future. We aim to create a recommitment to the vocational arts, in education and in life. Students learn to follow the path of their tendency and talent, rather than relegating everyone to a college prep tract.By challenging students to take their time, perform trial & error activities, we appeal to them to be clever and crafty. This also includes prolonging their attention span and be able to work in a focused manner on long term assignments, viewing an assignment from all angles. Our ambition is to educate skills in a cross subject manner to create context for students. The combination of alpha, beta and gamma subjects in one task challenges students to be more exploring, creative, ingenious and inventive. Important aspect here is to create the circumstances for students to “learn to learn” this way. STUDENTS IN THE LEAD The youth unemployment in the EU underlines the necessity to spark a dynamic and positive attitude among young people towards enterprising behaviour, networking skills and pro-activity. Learning by doing and educating students to take initiative and investigate opportunities themselves, will increase employability. Smart Hands addresses this need by the key focus on the initiative of the student. OBJECTIVES Smart Hands recognises that young people in Europe must look outwards and proactively engage with the challenges and opportunities that our modern world provides. Concretely, Smart Hands aims to: • Ensure young people have the power, knowledge and competences to become creative, inventive, social thinkers, co-operators, problem solvers, and makers all together. • Equip teachers with a multidisciplinary student training programme based on our HANDS-HEAD-HEART approach directly involving the world-of-work and the local community. • Increase the pool of work based learning opportunities and ‘real-life’ assignments for students in order to develop their competences for future working life. • Provide school leaders with the tools to embed the HANDS-HEAD-HEART approach throughout the school and support to inspire their peer school leaders. • Provide parents with insights into modern ways of education and opportunities of further education or work for their children, fitting their own specific talents. • Reinforce secondary school-VET colleges-HE institute network by setting up a cooperation with regional stakeholders. PARTICIPANTS Smart Hands is primarily aimed at the final beneficiaries: secondary school students from all fields of education. Secondly it is aimed at their teachers and school leaders, family and world of work stakeholders (local authorities, (social) businesses, etc.). Smart Hands puts students in the lead with their HANDS, HEAD and HEART to 1) investigate challenges and opportunities on the cutting edge of 1) crafts, design & arts, 2) math-physics-chemistry and related trends & new technologies and 3) cooperation & leadership skills. Smart Hands enables students to work on multi-sided real-life assignments in the class room, online and on location. Bringing students closer to and more engaged with the outside world, consisting of: their region and community, further education opportunities, and (the world of) work. OUTPUT Our activities consist of training weeks Smart Hands will develop the following tangible products: - IO1 - Smart Hands - Student Training Programme - IO2 - Smart Hands Cascade Training Materials & Handbooks for School Leaders - IO3 - HANDS-HEAD-HEART in the classroom - Teachers Guide - IO4 - Smart Hands AT HOME! - Parents’ Guide METHODOLOGY Smart Hands is a true Strategic Partnership involving 5 secondary schools, 3 expert partners and 1 pan-European education innovation network. All partners provide their key input that contributes to the realisation of the project goals and concrete deliverables. IMPACT & LONG TERM BENEFITS The Smart Hands project enables schools to adopt an integrated multidisciplinary HANDS-HEAD-HEART approach to student talent discovery and development, putting students in the lead and involving the world-of-work and the local community directly. This to ensure young people have the power, knowledge and competences future working life to become creative, inventive, social thinkers, co-operators, problem solvers, and makers all together.
Smart Hands recognises that young people (and schools) in Europe must look outwards and proactively engage with the challenges and opportunities that our modern world provides. We wanted pupils to get a clear context how abstract (school) topics all have a direct relation with practice and the outside world, directly within their own region. Traditional subjects such as history, math, art, and crafts were therefore integrated in our multisided approach as a way to embed multidisciplinary teaching and learning. Concretely, Smart Hands primarily aimed to: • Ensure young people have the power, knowledge and competences to become creative, inventive, social thinkers, co-operators, problem solvers, and makers all together. • Equip teachers with a multidisciplinary student training programme based on our HANDS-HEAD-HEART approach. • Provide school leaders with the tools to embed the HANDS-HEAD-HEART approach throughout the school and support to inspire their peer school leaders. • Provide parents with insights into modern ways of education and opportunities of further education or work for their children, fitting their own specific talents.
Since the entry of the assembly line, we have segregated our ‘head and hands’ so to say, both in education and in the field of work. On the other hand, we now witness a growing interest for producing products more locally, enhancing circular and sustainable design and an increasing demand for skilled workers who can think and act. This shift demands a new young professional. By using both our HEAD and our HANDS, we reach our HEART. The student who is inventive, knows about material, is skilled, is focused and has a team spirit, has the future. We aim to create a recommitment to the vocational arts, in education and in life. The Smart Hands project was primarily targeted at secondary school students, by stimulating them to learn in an exploring, creative, ingenious and inventive way, students are educated to become positive, independent, entrepreneurial and pro-active individuals that can flourish as practical world citizens, both in cities and remote areas. With Smart Hands we addressed the need to facilitate the above learning approach at secondary schools: to have schools, school leaders, teachers and parents all on board this approach and educate skills in a cross subject manner like how the real world is organised.