What is hackathon?
“Hackathon (noun): an event at which a large number of people work together developing computer programs, usually over several days” Oxford English Dictionary
Hackathons were initially established within the tech world, bringing specific people together to work intensively to find solutions to particular ‘challenges’ set for them, usually involving computer software. Furthermore, in order to influence the best possible solution, these events were (and still are), delivered using multiple teams competing against each other, usually for a cash prize. This race to achieve a number of results within a short space of time has carried the word ‘hackathon’ into other domains outside of the tech world, such as youth work. Of course, this adapted hackathon methodology is just a means for collaborative working where each young person can contribute as much as they can, creating a vibrant and exciting dynamics of teamwork.
1. Hackathon implementation:
As already explained, Youth Community Hackathon is a methodology that goes beyond the competitive spirit of traditional hackathon understanding, taking its best and bring it to the community setting for inspiring joint collaborative work on idea creation for addressing social challenges. These hackathons welcomes the interactive and engaging real-life experience driven from the living library format, allowing for adjusted learning from other people’s experience and expertise. More concretely, there are several inevitable elements of these events:
Hackathon Kick-Off: Introduction Session
We should kick things off with a chill intro session. We’ll gather everyone together to say hello, lay out what the day will look like, and break down our objectives. Think of it as setting the stage for a day full of learning, creating, and tackling some tough topics around fake news.
Meet-ups Session
Participants will have the chance to meet and chat with some MPEs—that’s our media and policy experts. These aren’t your typical Q&A sessions. We’re talking about something way cooler, the Living Library approach. Participants will get to ‘check out’ experts like they’re books, diving into real conversations about tricky fake news cases. It’s a chance to pick their brains and get the lowdown on how to spot and analyze media that might be trying to trick you.
Here, you should divide participants into small working groups on the topics of fake news – to the number of MPEs which you have engaged. These small working groups will engage into living library experience with MPEs, learning about the fake news and how to critically assess, decompose fake news and finding the correct and truthful information. You can implement up to two rounds lasting for 15 minutes each, with participants changing and going to another MPE for learning about next fake news after the first round. During these 15 minutes MPE should:
- Present fake news and engage into discussion with participants whether this is or not the fake news and why they think so.
- Allow participants to share their own experience when facing fake news.
- Teach them how to analyze fake news on concrete example and recognize fake elements.
- Educate them on responsible consumption of the media content.
