The new Chess in Education portal by the ECU EDU Commission is released. The portal is a guide to creating chess projects – from the inception of the idea, through the funding, to the final execution of the project. The Chess in Education portal also contains a library of successful chess projects from Europe. Visit the official website here
We are here with Jesper Bergmark Hall, Chairman ECU Education Commission. Can you share with us the latest developments and initiatives of the EDU commission
The ECU EDU commission has the basic idea to support the countries, federations and organizations with Chess in Schools. In our analysis the best way is to take the knowledge of how to teach chess to a new level when the goal is not primarily to develop chess skills but cognitive and social skills. That is why we focus on developing courses. We have the basic didactic course ECU101, but beside that we have courses on chess and mathematics, chess for younger years, chess and logic, and so on. We continuously try to develop the courses and create new ones depending on what is needed. Beside that we have a newsletter: “First rank”, and we arrange and visit CiS conferences. We also want to support with research, statistics, surveys and not the least the knowledge on how to fund and run CiS projects.
The Chess and Education portal of ECU has just been launched.
The goal of the Chess in Education portal is to be a spider in the net for CiS in Europe so that all people that work with CiS can get inspiration and hands-on advices on how to structure and run CiS.
The SMART Method to Teach Chess Seminar is coming soon. What can the participants expect?
This course gives the participants hands-on tools on how to teach chess, specifically in a class room with school children. So far the course is recommended by 100% of the participants that have participated.
Now that we transition from the pandemic period back to normality, what will change for chess education? What methods and experience from the pandemic period will you continue using?
In the first three months of the pandemic chess took a ten-years-step into the digital era, by necessity. Now it is the time to evaluate and find the right hybrid. The human contact, not the least in CiS, can not be underestimated as social interaction is one of our goals, but still many experiences from the last years should stay.
