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Avec Esprit Navigation: Project
overview | Background
and challenges | The
avec quartet | Stealth
learning | Intended
audience | The
avec concept model | Design
project | Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) project | Future
directions | Acknowledgements
Project overview
avec esprit - new thinking for better results
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Merv Edmunds, Youth Programs Coordinator & Len Wiseman, Centre Manager, Corangamite District Adult Education Group
View Transcript |
Design projects that reduce evaporation or conceal pyro-technicians on a rock concert stage are not usually undertaken by inexperienced and unqualified young people. Nor are the young and unqualified usually engaged on a fee-for-service basis to provide training for teachers in online course delivery. Nothing to say they can't be, in fact the avec esprit project has proved they can be.
The avec esprit project used current brain research to develop strategies
for the teaching of four personal and workplace skills: awareness, visualisation,
emotion management and creativity. Effective strategies are needed for it appears
these 'soft' skills resist most other forms of teaching.
The avec esprit vision
The avec esprit program is a multi-faceted curriculum model that promises to develop the personal and work skills of awareness, visualisation, emotional management and creativity through a carefully staged sequence of 'real world' tasks. These tasks include hand-modelled and online design projects.
The vision offered by the avec esprit project is that if leaners pursue a particular learning pathway centred on serious creativity and higher-order thinking, that they will develop a quartet of powerful personal and life skills - namely awareness, visualisation, emotional management and creativity. In terms of vocational education, it is these skills that will ensure that the learner is not only 'work ready' but also very attractive to employers.
The program is particularly suited to young people whose pattern of learning
is likely to limit their post-school opportunities. Intervention holds a greater
chance of success because it addresses the individual's view of themselves
and their world. While the model appears somewhat left-field, with its emphasis
on 'non-normal' learning experiences such as relaxation, visualisation
and emotion management, these aspects are considered an essential framework
for programs endeavouring to make a difference in personal effectiveness in
relationships, the community and the workplace.
For avec esprit, two projects based on design and information and communication technologies (ICT) were used to provide the context for the development of awareness, visualisation, emotion management and creativity.
Students first complete the design project phase, then present their design to a panel before beginning the ICT project phase. During the ICT project, student worked with teachers to develop resources for online delivery; during this phase, students provide fee-for-service professional development to the teacher.
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