On July 2 – 3, 2018, the fourth national (un)conference EdCamp Ukraine was held in Kharkiv in the “Beit Dan” cultural center.
The EdCamp initiative was created in 2010 in the United States. This initiative focuses on innovative improvement of educators’ skills. EdCamp has already covered 32 countries. Ukraine is no exception. EdCamp Ukraine was organized 4 years ago and it had been actively developing during this short period. More than fifteen thousand educators from all over the country joined the EdCamp Ukraine movement.
The symbol of EdCamp Ukraine is a bird – a white crow. And this is not by chance. “White crows” are those who have a different opinion, who are open to new experiences and have aspirations for changes in the education system.
The fourth (un)conference was attended by a thousand teachers and experts in the field of education from Ukraine and 11 other countries. Among the honored guests are Minister of Education Lilia Grinevich, Head of the Kharkiv State Regional Administration Yulia Svitlychna, and Mykola Kuleba, Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
The main emphasis of the national (un)conference this year was on the ways of learning process improvement and value system creation. “New Ukrainian school and tools for the civic competences development” – this topic was presented by the NGO OUM team. In our presentation we showed why the value basis is important and how the concept of effective citizen development is based on this value basis, what instruments can help to implement this concept and how the needs of the modern school can be taken into account .
On July 2, 2018, we launched the new online course “How to Build an EdCamp for Your Community”. The authors of the course were educational activists, members of the EdCamp Ukraine team – Olexander Elkin, Olena Masalitina, Iryna Minkovskaya, and co-authors were the most active coordinators of mini-EdCamp communities from different parts of Ukraine. The main goal of the course is to deliver information about EdCamp and help the “white crows” to unlock potential and start changing our education system for the better.
The course is free and open to everyone. We invite everyone to cooperate!
The Open University Maidan team thanks EdCamp Ukraine for the fruitful cooperation. We wish all the “white crows” success and inspiration.
Lilia Grinevich, Yulia Svytlichna, Oleksandr Elkin
Oleksandr Elkin and the NGO OUM team – Ostap Stasiv, Kateryna Batsenko
