A CHILDREN’S FESTIVAL DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Abstract
The DESECE Children’s Festival was launched in 2010 at the Department of Educational Sciences and Early Childhood Education (DESECE) of the University of Patras. It is organised annually by the DESECE students in collaboration with their professors and comprises a variety of educational and creative workshops for children of a preschool age. To date, it has hosted over 10,000 children, and 300 institutions and schools, and has expanded its activities into other areas as well, such as teacher training. In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and in order to support the children, parents and teachers, the Children’s Festival sought alternative ways of carrying out the event, creating online activities and a thirty-hour virtual festival over five days. This unprecedented experience offered great satisfaction to the Festival’s Organising Committee, which managed the crisis, and to the volunteer students, who improved their digital skills and gained experience in e‑learning. At the same time, it offered the possibility to people, both in Greece and abroad, to participate in the event, which until then had been limited to local society.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v9i5.4266
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