“Bricks are coloured, durable and come in a variety of shapes. They can represent any thought and become a precious ally to describe and quickly represent any situation, episode or idea that deserves attention, further investigation – or even a fear or nightmare.”
“Heavy Hands” is the workshop that will be held by Cecilia Stajano, certified Lego® Serious Play® Method and MTA Learning Methodology Coach at the 4th International Conference on Flipped Classrooms, promoted by the Flipnet Association. The "Collaborating to Learn" Conference was held last Saturday, February 24, at the University of “Roma Tre.”
And the hands of 42 teachers and professors – members of the Flipnet Association – from schools throughout Italy worked for nearly an hour with the Lego Serious Play Construction Kit, a tool devised to promote creativity in business teams.
"Thanks to her great personality and enthusiasm, Cecilia held an hour-long lab with various exciting activities,” explains Debora Cavallo, who followed the training session as a classroom tutor. "Cecilia created strong synergies amongst the participants. Activities started with a brief warm up exercise - the construction of a simple tower – before turning to the true workshop: a nightmare outing.”
"All the participants had to recreate a typical scenario of a disastrous outing – and their creativity truly blossomed! From the tiger-like determination of a school manager to the antics of the student-monkeys eager to explore,” Debora adds. Hands were used to represent new or experienced scenarios that helped the teachers to understand, creatively, how to control a feared didactic outing.
"The Lego bricks become true allies to train the class for a competition, to complete an assignment, to prepare for an event, to remember an episode or create a new challenge, as well as to establish and delineate clear objectives to overcome a challenge, share ideas, integrate and create inclusion,” explains Cecilia Stajano.
Brick after brick, guided by the coach, the participants created individual and collective scenarios, observed them, narrated the situation and asked questions on how to improve or modify it. In the end, the landscape remains as a witness, guide and milestone of the evaluation process.
The Lego Serious Play Methodology unveiled ideas, thoughts and stories that helped the workshop participants to imagine how to use the kit with their students for a seriously, fun flipped didactics with which to defeat pre-exam tension or bullying situations.
"I would like to thank the many teachers who “seriously played” with me last Saturday. Thanks for the great memory. And I invite you all to write to me, so that we can co-design activities for your classes and schools.” This is the message sent to participants from Cecilia’s e-mail address: c.stajano@mondodigitale.org
