Activity

During the last 6 years of my life as a teacher in the Dental Hygiene Program and also in Health School, I always tried to find new ways to connect people to the lecture, to the teacher interaction, to the topic and to the “reality after class”. The words of Robert Frost are the best way to describe what I was doing: (…) two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.
I spent a lot of time reflecting on learning methods, did my duties reading books and papers about the traditional methods used: lectures, seminaries, discussion groups… None of them was fitting enough into my idea – I wanted something more challenging and something which could explain and show the processes and which could materialize somehow the construction of learning realities.
Between balloons, tennis balls, role playing, painting and many other materials to activating learning, one day, I found the Lego Serious Play®. In fact, the bricks were always there, I used to play with Lego® all my life. I simply realized that small and unique tool it is an amazing tool in education.
After I start working for the government my team, and me we create, based on the Lego Serious Play methodology a workshop called “Bring the Ideas, we give you the pieces”©. We have 6 years of experience in active learning strategies, based on the constructivist model and also in Problem Based Learning, so in away were very easy to understand the basis of Lego Serious Play; in that way we could see how powerful is this tool in Health Education. Where do you need strong teams? You will need it in hospitals, in health centers, in clinics, not only in a management world, but also in healthcare world.
We would love to go to Spain, but the price of the workshop is far to expensive for us (we do not work on private and our workshop are free for the public service professional) but we will continue writing, reading books and this blog, chatting and trying to use Lego Serious Play Philosophy in the best way we know.
Thanks for the sharing and for the inspiration.
Mario Rui Araújo
Lisbon
Portugal