What is La Aldea and why was it created?
School closures necessitated by COVID-19, created an education crisis, but also a unique opportunity to conceive how children can home-school by harnessing existing and emerging resources. La Aldea, the project, is an education strategy, designed to provide schools, government institutions and cooperation agencies with the necessary tools to implement a ready-to-use and scalable educational emergency strategy which involves students, teachers and families.
At the beginning of April 2020, 15 days after the national government announced the total closure of schools in Colombia, La Aldea began to be disseminated as UNICEF Colombia’s strategy for education in emergencies, while it continued to propagate in different regions of Latin America with diverse stakeholders and users. By the end of April 2020, a comprehensive printed, digital, and radio emergency curriculum was extended to students, teachers and families around the country.
The project uses an imaginary universe, a make-belief village of animals called La Aldea, which allows children and associated caregivers a safe haven in which to face, acknowledge, reflect on and accept themselves and the world around them. Inspired by Orwell’s Animal farm, its characters and situations become a metaphor of real life, involving critical social emotional elements that are associated with resilience, and critical thinking.
It is a multi faceted platform. It includes printed books, radio programs, songs and digital content. La Aldea also supports teachers in different contexts with orientations, hand-holding, printed and digital content, lesson plans and virtual accessories to implement La Aldea as well as to integrate it into the magic they already weave in their classrooms.
The objective of La Aldea is to demonstrate that real-life, current themes can be integrated into the mainstream curriculum through carefully crafted stories for children in a playful manner. The stories and activities create a springboard for integrating interdisciplinary learning: socio emotional, curricular in different areas: language, maths, science.
(See more in www.LaAldea.co )
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How is La Aldea innovative?
- Learning is relevant for kids, parents and teachers: La Aldea is a deep, accurate and informed educational content that is also fun and aligned with the interests of both children and adults, which encourages thinking and conversation in users for them to better understand, question and transform the world around them. Through the stories and the activities in the book, kids explore issues related to their times and contexts.
- Learning by having fun: La Aldea stands out in the midst of educational materials, as it looks like a game full of colors and challenges. The stories and its characters mirror kids and create an emotional relationship that breaks into family challenges and fun activities. Children don’t feel at school with La Aldea. The interaction concentrates on experimentation and discovery, thus completely shifting the relationship between a teacher or a parent and a student. Play, conversation and engagement become the inner teacher, curiosity arises and self confidence appears. Children navigate the contents at their own rhythm which gives them the freedom needed to learn.
- A transmedia educational strategy: Most territories where the strategy is being implemented face considerable connectivity challenges. Book distribution to over 120.000 students served as an anchor of the learning process, becoming the link between teachers and families. We also produced audiovisual and radio content to grow our reach and make the learning experience more powerful.
- Books: www.LaAldea.co
- Mindfulness videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-8tXPYYDAs
- Songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypNJwbnpbl0
- Partnership with UNICEF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypNJwbnpbl0
To check all our videos of La Aldea in english and spanish, click here: Youtube Channel
- Focus on 21st century skills: The contents we produce are related to a pedagogical approach that favors self-evaluation, emotional value, empathy and teamwork. They generate a dialogue which transforms the child’s role in learning: whether they are content consumers or spectators, they become agents of change, able to make their own decisions and influence their family and community environments. The fact that La Aldea created a mirror effect on children: the same questions, doubts, fears and challenges faced by the animals had the possibility of empathising while processing their own answers, made learning easy, engaging and joyful. The biggest challenge has been dealing with emotions during the pandemic: fear, uncertainty, stress, etc. La Aldea provided simple physical exercise for teachers, kids and parents through animated videos by whatsapp.
Gallery: http://bit.do/laaldea
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How did we respond to COVID-19?
- Design curriculum & contents: In the COVID-19 scenario, strategies aimed at delivering entertaining, quality educational content which foster curiosity, socioemotional wellbeing and connection with others are much needed. ClickArte created a flexible, fun, engaging and easily adaptable emergency curriculum accessible by print, radio and digital platforms to cope with the emergency and become a tool for teachers and families. (www.LaAldea.co)
- Distribution of books & digital contents: Internet connectivity is a problem for more than 85% of Colombia’s rural areas. To tackle this problem, in partnership with UNICEF Colombia, we delivered more than 112.000 books to kids in 17 regions (a logistical challenge in the midst of the pandemic). We also distributed digital resources and grew partnerships with local radios to broadcast audio contents.
- Build teachers communities: We organised 1000 hours of training with 4500 teachers in 600 school communities, making La Aldea relevant for them for distance learning and to foster the autonomy of their students. Those teachers experienced a high degree of belonging with the strategy.
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Impact
- 150.000 children (aged 6 to 14) benefited, belonging to primary and secondary schools, from communities in conditions of poverty and low connectivity, including Venezuelan migrants. Of these, 87,667 were reached alongside UNICEF Colombia.
- 150.000 books were distributed in 17 regions of Colombia (15 of them with UNICEF Colombia), in formal and non formal education environments, making La Aldea's one of the most printed and distributed books in Colombia.
- We developed a 1000-hour training process with 4.500 teachers from 600 public education institutions as well as 130 tutors of the Ministry of Education.
- La Aldea has built a network of 23 partner organisations including UNICEF, Save The Children, IRC, World Vision, the Lego Foundation, the World Bank to implement this nationwide emergency education strategy.
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What's next?
- We plan to increase the number of students using La Aldea to 250.000 in 2021
- We are creating 20 radio programs for migrant children in Venezuela and Colombia for IRC and the Lego Foundation
- We are publishing two books in 2021 to accompany school communities in the transition home-school
- We are creating our first La Aldea's Tv show
- We are consolidating our Digital learning platform (MOOC) for teachers
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Who is behind La Aldea?
ClickArte has assembled a multidisciplinary team of educators, writers, journalists, political scientists, psychologists, artists and designers who, together with a team of consultants are dedicated to producing objects of learning and crafted editorial material, video, audio content and apps.
Standing alongside partners including UNICEF, the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, Corpoeducación, the International Red Cross and the UNHCR, Click’s work has impacted more than 180.000 students and 5.000 teachers.
For further information about our work visit us at: www.clickarte.co
