NECE's conference: Reconnecting in a post pandemic world

From 5 - 7 November 2020, I got a chance to participate in NECE (Networking European Citizenship Education) conference - with a focus on sustainability and citizenship education. The experience brings great insights on not only sustainable and citizenship education issues, but also how an online conference would operate.

My overall experience

I participated in 2 activities: a parallel session “Workshop: Creative Approaches to New Democracy - Project CANDIICE” and the NECE’s Stakeholder’s Challenge, which was a very unique experience since this year’s format is completely online. However, interactive elements are smartly organized and succeeded to make the conference as ‘real’ as possible, with the combination of live and parallel sessions. Organizing series of online events is the first thing I can really learn from. I was surprised how smoothly the conference went on despite the distance and online format. All the online tools are fully made use of, not just Zoom meetings but also the platform Howspace with detailed agenda, discussion threads and reminders via email, which I think does not only supplement the activities well but also introduced to people the new way of citizenship education.

The Stakeholder's Challenge

The first activity that I attended was the NECE’s Stakeholder challenge with the proposal for a sustainable Europe. Luckily, I had a chance to present my idea in the live conference in the form of 1-minute pitch video, in addition to listening to many innovative ideas by other people. I would say it was a very exciting experience, and I am very grateful to receive encouragements from my fellow honours students and lecturers (thank you all!). Besides developing some knowledge on sustainable Europe, the challenge also taught me about how to come up with new ideas, and to me most importantly how to BRIEFLY deliver them to people in a given time slot.

Workshop: Creative Approaches to New Democracy - Project CANDIICE

The second activity is a parallel session with project CANDIICE, which was about creative approaches in education. The workshop truly captured my attention in the way it was organized.

The session starts with a question “What does ‘keeping quiet’ mean to you?”, which I found really captivating and thought-provoking (answers are very different, to some it means peace, meditation, or listening; to others it means not being able to speak it out, or suppression). Then instead of being exposed to a lot of information, participants were given a poem and some abstract pictures to freely react to and discuss with each other, using Howspace.

The session ended with the question of whether education should be reduced to just ‘black and white’ paper and how to make use of other visual materials, in order to avoid imposing certain ideas on students’ mind and let them freely reflect on the materials on their own. The session highlighted the importance of democracy and how to embrace it in the educational environment, by using creative elements beyond the traditional way of teaching. To me, the workshop was surprisingly pleasant to follow (!) and activities truly reflected the topic that was discussed.