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Digital Innovation & Recognition: Aligning Youth Work Expertise with Cities of Learning
dinsdag, 4 november 2025, 13:00 - 15:00
Digital Innovation & Recognition: Aligning Youth Work Expertise with Cities of Learning
dinsdag, 4 november 2025, 13:00 - 15:00
Inhoud
As key members of the Youth Work Team, you are the experts in building skills and supporting young people in your community. The goal of this activity is to explore how three powerful frameworks—Cities of Learning, Digital Youth Work, and Open Badges—can immediately amplify the impact of your existing work and ensure that every skill gained by a young person is formally recognised. Your professional expertise is the foundation for this.
Cities of Learning: The vision for visibility
The Cities of Learning framework is a comprehensive vision that aims to transform communities into interconnected learning ecosystems. It is a structure that ensures all learning—from formal education to casual, non-formal activities—is visible, accessible, and inclusive within a community.
Why this matters for Youth Work:
- Validation of experience: It broadens the definition of learning beyond school walls, allowing the incredible achievements and soft skills young people gain through youth work activities to be seen and valued by the wider community, including employers.
- Values Alignment: The core Cities of Learning values (such as Inclusivity, Innovation, and Open Recognition) provide a strategic blueprint, ensuring that all learning opportunities are designed to be equitable and future-focused.
Digital Youth Work: The strategic foundation
Digital Youth Work is not a new field, but rather the essential integration of digital tools, spaces, and technology into your existing youth work practice. It is about meeting young people where they are and using digital methods to achieve traditional youth work outcomes. This session begins by collaboratively defining what Digital Youth Work means to our team.
Why this matters for Youth Workers:
- Enhanced access: It uses technology to overcome geographical and social barriers, making essential services and learning opportunities accessible to more young people.
- Skill relevance: By embedding digital tools (such as Virtual Reality) into your work, you naturally help young people develop the 21st-century skills (digital literacy, critical thinking, collaboration) that are crucial for their future careers. We will explore the potential of immersive technologies to reach and connect with young people.
Open Badges: Making skills and experiences portable and recognised
Open Badges are the trusted, digital credentials that capture and share evidence of skills acquired through any form of learning. They are the essential link between non-formal achievement and formal recognition.
Why this matters for Young People's future:
- Micro-credentialing: They are ideal for validating skills (like facilitation, teamwork, problem-solving, or digital empathy) and experiences that are often missed by traditional qualifications but highly valued by employers.
- Credibility and trust: Every Open Badge adheres to a global technical standard and is backed by a specific set of criteria and verifiable evidence. This commitment to quality, sometimes reinforced by the Quality Label endorsement, ensures the badge is taken seriously by employers and educators on the Cities of Learning platform and beyond.
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Hulpmiddelen
Ontvang een activiteitenbadge
Digital Youth Work Catalyst Behaal deze badge
This badge confirms the earner's active participation and expert contribution to a strategic session exploring the future of youth work. The earner has engaged with core concepts of Digital Youth Work (DYW), critically assessed Virtual Reality (VR) for youth engagement, and provided valuable input on how these innovations can be effectively recognised through Cities of Learning (CoL) principles and Open Badges.
Criteria for Earning the Badge
- Participation: Full and active engagement in the 120-minute session (including all group discussions and hands-on activities).
- Reflection (optional): Completion of the brief, post-session reflection task below.
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To enrich your badge you can take a few minutes to complete this brief reflection exercise.
Please answer the following three questions based on your experience today:
- Feeling/emotion: Describe your primary feeling or reaction to using the Virtual Reality (VR) tools today.
- Idea/insight: What is the most valuable insight you gained today about using the Cities of Learning framework (values, Open Badges) to recognise skills in young people?
- Action/future: What is one practical step or new technique you are considering implementing in your youth work practice next week as a result of this session?
Organisatoren
Cities of Learning Network
Badge-uitgever erkend met
Awero host dit platform en ontwikkelt het samen met toonaangevende educatieve organisaties. Het programma Erasmus+ van de Europese Unie heeft cofinanciering verleend voor de bouw van de eerste versie van dit platform. Neem contact op met support@awero.org.
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