Alliances

Rural Hackers – A New Way Of Learning

Andreea Rusu

Young people and adults sitting at tables on a sunny stone patio under a balcony, some wearing face masks

Rural Hackers is based on the power of inspiration. We aim to create a place where you can find people who become your reference for change.

We seek to move towards a more just and equitable society where all people can develop integrally. Our mentors are a fundamental part of this change; they share their expertise to support the realization of our ideas.

Rural Hackers - A New Way Of Learning Rural Hackers Mentors

New Ways Of Learning

TECH LEARNING

The learning process is personalized. The participants learn technology according to their level and interests.

MENTORING SUPPORT

Members of the Anceu Coliving community and its partners support the students in their tech and professional development. 

RURAL CHALLENGES

Each participant develops a project to help rural development. 

DO ACTION HACKATHON

We are part of the organization of the first Do Action Hackathon with WordPress, helping charitable organizations with their online presence. It was scheduled for Friday, 23 September 2022, in Pontevedra, as part of the WordPress Camp. The details are still online at this link.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Members of the Anceu Coliving community and its partners support the students in their tech and professional development. 

CREATIVE COMMONS

All our materials and methods are based on the Creative Commons license; we love to share and support new initiatives. Creative Commons (CC) is an internationally active non-profit organization. This organization provides free grants for creators to make their work available to the public.

What are some activities our international community helped our Rural Hackers students with:

  • Video gaming with Jordi Roca

One of our colivers, Jordi Roca, is the video game creator of Everhood. He shared his inspiring life story of dropping school at 15 to pursue his dream as a video game creator. He shared his seven years of trial and error story and what it took him to succeed. The primary purpose for our students was to get inspired by Jordi’s account and to play his game. This day was a total success! After this moment, our youngsters felt encouraged to share their big dreams and not be afraid to dare that high.

Rural Hackers - A New Way Of Learning Video gaming with Jordi Roca

Pottery with Maria

Our interior designer, Dr LivingHome, created one day a pottery workshop where colivers and a couple of interested youngsters could join.

One day, our students spent an hour doing Zentangle, a meditative and freestyle drawing – where they enjoyed disconnection from their day-to-day, living a new experience surrounded by nature and beautiful people**;**

Rural Hackers - A New Way Of Learning Drawing workshop

  • Robotics with our colivers and students Ivan, Edouard, Agustin, Pablo and Carlos – They run different robotics and technology programs.

Pablo, Ivan and Carlos are working on a prototype for monitoring water consumption in small villages. Check more here: Rural Makers. Ivan is working on developing an intelligent chicken house using robotics: a smart room that controls temperature and humidity levels. On this project, Agustin and Edouard are the mentors helping him with the learning process.

Life experience exchange with our colivers Learning about robotics projects

  • A New Way Of Learning with our colivers

In one of our sessions of Rural Hackers, we asked our community if they would like to share their life experiences with our students. We created different groups that sat at other tables. For about 15-20 minutes, our students would find out more about each of our colivers and ask questions that they would like to find guidance or answer to;

Learning through colivers exchanges Knowledge exchange with our colivers

Gardening with Se.

At the beginning of spring 2022, we started a permaculture garden. Our coliver Se led the entire process of planting a garden with vegetables;

Journalism with Andreea

In one of the sessions, we organized an interview-journalism action with the students. They were trained to take photos of our mentors/colivers. They learnt how to ask questions and create a digital profile of our mentors or colivers. This workshop was meant to embrace the fear of asking questions to people. In this process, they became friends with our colivers. They learnt how to edit photos and how to digitalize the information collected.

Cooking together

We cooked something for our students in almost every session or bought the ingredients. Andreea was teaching them to bake or make pancakes. This activity was meant to bring fun and joy to cooking and to eat together.

Having fun together.

We want to transform our coliving into a learning space and a space where students can enjoy and feel happy. At every session, in the end, we sat by the pool and had fun together.

Language exchange.

Part of the Rural Hacker project was to teach people in the community English and Spanish. We taught them English or vice-versa, and they would teach our mentors Spanish. We had a group of elderly women that learnt basic technology, and Curro was teaching them basic English. Andreea taught Ivan English as well. He is a brilliant young man passionate about coding and robotics, and she is helping him to make his voice known in the English-speaking world.

English Lesson with Curro English lessons

After reflecting on all the activities we have done in the past months, we feel grateful we can contribute to people’s lives with the things we love doing the most. We almost cannot believe how many things have happened already, and we’re just halfway through this project. 

In our next post, Rural Hackers – The evolution, you can read more about how the project developed.

If there are any challenges that we can help you with, contact us, and we can discuss more with our Rural Hackers.

What came next: Rural Hackers – The evolution

See also: Welcome to Rural Hackers · Rural Makers at Anceu