Europe and the UK has a strong position in the creative industries, which have been one of the fastest growing parts of the economy and one of the fastest growing sources of employment in recent years. The UK also has one of the highest shares of the workforce in Europe employed in the creative industries. The project CAIR 4 YOUTH aims to support professionals in the youth sector in acquiring and developing creative sector skills in working with Coding, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. There will be a focus on youth workers' skills development in fun and game-inspired, non-formal educational methods in these areas. The youth population is a particularly vulnerable group with regard to emerging technologies. Very little has been done to empower young people to critically engage the discourse surrounding the next generation of technologies that have a marked potential to shape their lives for better or for worse. Questions involve the intersection between artificial intelligence (AI) and youth (ages 13-30), in the context of domains such as leisure, education, health and well-being, and the future of work. The main objective of the project is to encourage various stakeholders — including policymakers, youth workers, and parents and caregivers — to consider how we can empower young people to meaningfully interact with AI-based technologies to promote and bolster learning, creative expression, and well-being, while also addressing key challenges and concerns. The objective is skills development for youth workers and subsequently up-skilling young people through non-formal methods. CAIR4Youth project methods include the development of three main outputs: 1. A hands-on fun-packed training curriculum and workshops with non-formal approaches to Coding, A.I. and Robotics. Learning by building and Coding Robots and understanding A.I. through gamification in a non-formal and fun environment. The workshops will be the gateway for Youth workers to understand how Robotics, Coding and A.I. are used in the industry and why they need to teach these futuristic skills to the young people and how they should make learning fun for their students. 2. A set of resources for youth workers on how to stimulate interest in coding, A.I., and robotics and how to support the introduction of these topics through non-formal educational methods– This will help professionals in Youth work to develop their own skills base. 3. A Methodology and Implementation strategy that promotes cross-sectoral dialogue and the involvement in the youth sector, in terms of supporting the training of staff, managers, youth workers at a local and regional level. A DIFFERENT APPROACH The term “non-formal education” and its recognition on a global scale came about in the 1960s, when consolidated educational institutions had to face an economic crisis and received questions about their lacking ability to adapt to a new society. Since then it has been a driving force in education, not least in the digital age where young people have literally "learnt how to learn" and have taught themselves to become digitally literate. We believe that the project can contribute greatly to upskilling youth workers as facilitators. These methods, together with our approach to embedding transferable employability skills (as redefined key competences; EC, Jan 2018) within the informal learning content, will deliver an innovative practice to benefit young people in this digital era, and provide a project legacy of open educational resources for youth workers THE NEED & DEMAND The dynamic of the labour market has changed greatly over the last few years, and many jobs that are currently in demand didn’t even exist 10 years ago. The EC’s “White Paper on the Future of Europe” states that “young people enter society today will end up working in job types that do not yet exist”. Policymakers and employers put more and more pressure on educational providers to challenge them to adapt to the digital age and help their learners build transferable skills in order to respond to labour market demand. In order to respond to such a daunting future scenario, as youth organisations working with young people, we need to do more to equip young people with the appropriate skills for entering the labour market, address "the need for an inclusive, lifelong-learning based and innovation-driven approach to education and training" (EC, 14 Dec 2017), and provide them with the appropriate recognition for such skills whether gained non-formally or formally. The problem identified is the lack of skills, competencies, and knowledge in the area of Robotics, Coding and A.I. for youth workers and that the normal channel of consideration in the national school curriculum in most countries to support its introduction has failed to materialise. In its place, many youth organisations have filled the gap.
The project achieved the following objectives Set up a continuous professional development course for Youth workers (CPD) with a Learning Outcome Matrix (LOM) Devise a Methodology for the non-formal implementation of C AI and R through Youth organisations. The emphasis is on the flexibility of non-formal education and how it allows for more personalised learning to be developed for each person. Identify good initiatives and programs throughout Europe where there is the introduction of A.I. , robotics and coding through youth organisations. Create a set of eLearning and video tutorials and other resources to be used by Youth workers to enable them to introduce coding AI and robotics in a fun non-formal way Create a set of resources for young people to enable them to introduce coding AI and robotics in a fun, non-formal way Enlarge on an implementation strategy for municipalities, regions, youth organisations, etc
Europe and the UK had a strong position in the creative industries, which had been one of the fastest-growing parts of the economy and one of the fastest-growing sources of employment in recent years. The UK also had one of the highest shares of the workforce in Europe employed in the creative industries. The project CAIR 4 YOUTH aimed to support professionals in the youth sector in acquiring and developing creative sector skills in working with Coding, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. There was a focus on youth workers' skills development in a fun and game-inspired, non-formal educational methods in these areas. The youth population was a particularly vulnerable group with regard to emerging technologies. Very little had been done to empower young people to critically engage in the discourse surrounding the next generation of technologies that had a marked potential to shape their lives for better or for worse. Questions involved the intersection between artificial intelligence (AI) and youth (ages 13-30), in the context of domains such as leisure, education, health and well-being, and the future of work. The main objective of the project was to encourage various stakeholders — including policymakers, youth workers, and parents and caregivers — to consider how they could empower young people to meaningfully interact with AI-based technologies to promote and bolster learning, creative expression, and well-being, while also addressing key challenges and concerns. The objective was skills development for youth workers and subsequently up-skilling young people through non-formal methods.