Winter works

Like Santa's little helpers, the teams of Hob's Adventure had its busiest period yet this winter. As we have mentioned in previous posts, we've been working on finalizing lesson plans and activities for the handbook.

Recall that last autumn, teachers from all countries tested the lesson plans and activities at their own schools. The feedback gathered from this testing was compiled and reviewed in Slovenia, in October, at our transnational meeting. After the meeting, the feedback was taken back to each country for discussion, so that the lesson plans could be improved and finalized. Everyone was working on a tight schedule, so each country organized national meetings quickly after the Slovenian trip. Teachers and project members looked at how results differed across countries, modifying them to be as universally applicable as possible. The process was also very enjoyable, as the feedback was generally positive and encouraging, with mostly polishing out rough edges. This process was finished early in December.

After the review process, the lesson plans were compiled into a single document, streamlined and standardized as much as possible. While there’s great value in producing lesson plans organically in each different country and context, the resulting lesson plans differed greatly in style and format. This made the handbook draft difficult to read. To make it as easily accessible as possible, we re-wrote most lesson plans, keeping the substance but trying to present them using a single voice. This process took all of December.

In January, while I write this blog post, the handbook draft has been handed to a professional for typesetting and illustration. While the resulting handbook will look like the final product, there are undoubtedly more regional intricacies to account for before it can be finalized. On the one hand, you have simple problems such word lengths differing across languages, but there are also more in-grained questions such as which requirements do national curricula pose that the presentation of the lesson plans could mitigate.

All of the above questions and topics are going to be discussed at the February transnational meeting in Estonia, where we will discuss the handbook draft at length and hopefully reach a version which we can quickly finalize so that it can be translated, and we can begin the last phase of the project in which we publicize and disseminate the handbook.