It is a sunny day in the Berliner Max-Bill-Schule, a secondary school in the sector of construction and creativity. 100 students and their teachers are moving tables around, discussing vividly which chair should go where. Some of the students are already chilling in one corner, others are running around to build their team of 4. Italian students, who are doing an internship training with the agency Berlink and were invited today, are looking interested to the German students of the school – and vice versa. Maybe the next activities will bring them closer together?
On September the 22nd the leading partner BERLINK agency together with the Max-Bill-Schule organised a Multiplier Event for the “Playing4SoftSkills-Project” to present its outcomes and play together the “Soft Skills Tree Game” as well as test out the “Soft Skills Training App”.
100 students and their teachers came, most of them from Germany, some of them from other European countries. After introducing itself, the team of Berlink presented the aim of the project, the partnership and its methodology. Special focus was set on the Gamification approach, a method to experience and understand different topics through play.
Then the different results of the project were shown. The speakers concentrated especially on the concrete implementation of them into a school lesson unit.
After this more theoretical part, the game session began. Students were dividing themselves into teams of 4, reading the game manual and sorting the game materials. In the meantime, they could ask questions to the game moderators. When everybody finally started to play, the atmosphere in the big hall became intense. For the ones that were not playing, it was funny to watch: some students suddenly started to stand by a wall, other were building a monster figure from their bodies, some others were screaming excitedly around because the time was ticking. All of them were experiencing in this moment the 5 soft skills: Motivation, Teamwork, the Desire to Learn, Dealing with Stress and Critical Thinking.
The playing session took about one hour. After that the participants were invited to test out the Soft Skills Training App to be able to train the 5 Soft Skills in their everyday life.
At the end of the day a big thank you was given to everybody who participated in the event, especially to the Max-Bill-Schule and its students and teachers who made it happen.
Looking back, it was a great day and Berlink and its project partners are hoping that students and teachers can experience the Playing 4 Soft Skills results in many, many more further activities.
To get more information about the project and download its results for free, visit: www.playing4softskills.eu
Silvia Dudek, Berlink ETN GmbH