Yesterday we were receiving the first group of 7 participants of the year 2018 at the Global School with whom we will organize steemit workshops at Hug Inn Vienna hosted by Option 2.0. After a great talk and sharing pizzas with our superhost Christoph (@manncpt), the bell was ringing around 1 p.m. It was Peter from Austraining Gmbh. I opened the door and we welcomed the group.

Peter is project coordinator at Austraining Gmbh, one of the Global School partner companies organizing the venue of participants applying for practical work experience in various domains & sectors. We are collaborating successfully with him and the team of Austraining from nearly a year now.

Finally 4 IT students and 3 economics arrived today. We invited the group to come in the community room to drink some water, tea or coffee.

Credit photo: Peter introducing the group - Global School.

Getting the impression that Peter was feeling stressed, I asked him how his day was. He explained me that he get some difficulties with a group of 2 girls he placed earlier. The company where these 2 girls should work contacted him to cancel, as it seems they can't even communicate with the participants. Obviously the two students can’t speak with their tutors. Understanding the situation and as the topic of participation is at the center of our focus at the Global School, I made Peter understand that if they need we could for sure take these 2 additional students. @manncpt agreed and said:

“Peter don’t worry, Jean performed miracles last times with the participants not able to talk in english or german. Did you see the 3d model of CoSpace they coded together in this three weeks? The outcomes are incredible. If you need help, I am sure 2 students more shouldn’t be a problem for us.”

Agreeing, on these words I decided to talk with the participants. While @manncpt introduced the #HugInnVienna to Peter, in the Community room, I started to try to get to know the group and make some stupid jokes. Giving my best to let everybody feel relaxed. The group is visibly young, so I am really curious to get to meet them, I am motivated to understand their interests, to find out about how motivated they are and why they decided to visit Vienna.

At the first presentation round, everybody seemed to be a little stressed and uncomfortable. Maybe it was just an impression. However I can imagine the challenge to present yourself in a language you are not mastering. So I started to say “First I would like to present you my apologies, I am speaking too fast! I am Jean, I am coming from Belgium and I am speaking french, and french speakers are talking fast, so in my case I'm speaking english as I am speaking french. All of this to say, don’t worry about errors, just by talking we’ll learn!”

Dávid, Virag, Martina, Robert, Gabor, Fabian and Elizabeth present themselves one after the other. Curiously, the three girls are studying economy and the four boys are learning IT. One is interested in languages and would like to become a translator/interpret as his big brother. The second would like to learn more about hardware, a third about web development another about video games. The girls of the group are clear, they don't know yet what they want to do later after school and for the moment improving their language skills is important. They seem to be motivated to collaborate within the group. Two are learning english and one other student studies german.

After the presentations, Fabian, one of the participant, made a point. It seems everybody has another motivation.

I made a little summary of the project we will work on. And shared the required documents of their new projects via google docs.Then I showed them the 3d model which was made by the last participants. Explaining them, that these students were nearly not speaking english and learned and produced this in around 10 days by understanding the motivation of everyone and find a way to make these different interests beneficial for achieving more with the group.

”Wow, will we also be able to do this?”

By finding synergies with your different motivations, interests and skills we can try to take such challenge. As it requires a lot of skills, so it can be enjoyable for everyone.

I presented fast steemit and explained them how to create an account, everyone register and are waiting for the confirmation code in the next day(s). Some of the student are already checking the steemit api doc.

As the time runs, I decided to share the case studies @WolfgangSieberth sent me earlier to prepare the participant to meet him and get ready.

@Wolfgangsieberth joined for a short introduction of the project we will be developing with Generation Europa. To the teenagers Wolfgang presented himself, the organization he is representing and their requirements for the project.

The projects we will work on with Wolfgang are the the Erasmus+ app and more 3d maps of special places combined within the discovery and integration of steemit.

Because the first session was relatively short and successful, most of the participant expressed their enjoyment before to leave us. I am really curious to see the results of these three weeks soon.

Second day

First things first... Coffee time ;-)

This morning I arrived around 10:30 a.m to the Hostel were our participants are hosted to start the second day.

Today, we got 2 additional students: Veronika and Anoushka. After greeting everyone, I am introducing the planning of the day. We will divide the group in three sub groups to work on MapChanger (the 3d map project). In order to achieve the challenges, each group will be composed by

• a researcher to gather the data
• a designer to design the interactions, display the data and create textures with photoshop
• a developer to produce the 3d model with the editor and code

The 3 teams are now composed and the participants found fast each her/his role in their respective team.

Each team already decided which map to work on, the 1st group decided to work on the creation of the WUK, the second group on Impact Hub and the third on making the Hofburg.

Group 1: Working on the WUK map

Group 2: Working on the Impact Hub Map

Group 3: Working on the Hofburg Map

The challenge is big as it is the first time that we are experimenting with small groups composed by 3 skills. It seems the groups are taking it seriously and are seeing the opportunity. We will keep you posted. Stay tuned.

Credit photo: lerning new media - Global School 2018.

All the best,

Jean