Listovatel.cz / Open Workbook of Karel Placka
Concept & Design: Karla Gondeková, Karolína Šebková
Typeface: Nuckle
Launched in: 2021
Listovatel is a free web platform distributing worksheets for children aged about 7–11 beyond teaching or for leisure time. Letters develop fine motor skills, logical thinking, self-reflection, creativity and thinking in an interdisciplinary context. The project was created as a diploma thesis at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague at the instigation of a pandemic situation, the current setting of the technological world, the ever-widening generation gap, ecological crisis and visual smog arising due to insufficient visual level of teaching materials.
The content of the worksheets is things around us intertwining with our daily lives divided into five thematic areas: Communication, Light, Time, Construction and Movement processed by logical and creative games.
Games and tasks in the sheets are intended for pupils/children aged about 7–11, who want to develop, but also have fun with the main protagonist Karel Placka, who arrived from the past in his hand-built time-flying machine. The children are guided through thematic areas and alternated with them in the position of teacher–pupil / narrator–listener. Grandpa Karel looks for connections between the present world and the past, which he experienced, and sheds light on historical events. He learns from the children to know the presence and functioning of the technological world. The website is then intended for a wide range of audiences, including teachers and parents who want to give their children some kind of toy which could teach them something or as an accompanying tool for school teaching.
Our goal is to take children in the world of interesting facts, to give them the opportunity to take a break from the technological world, to connect aspects of everyday life, and thus give them meaning in a scattered overinformed time. To give children space for their own opinion, to develop in them a visual level and creativity not limited by the given visual environment of the digital world. To teach them to observe things around them and to look for connections in between them. Point out to the advantages of the technological world, but also point out to its possible risks. Mitigate the ever-widening generation gap between our grandparents and new generations through an inquisitive protagonist, grandfather Karel Placka.
The basic condition of the project is easy accessibility to schools or families with insufficient financial resources, the possibility of editing and development and, last but not least, cheap costs with a low ecological footprint. The distribution of sheets is therefore through an online environment, where sheets adapted for normal black and white printing are available at home, at school, at work or, for example, in the library. Users have the option of printing individual sheets or the entire workbook (Karel Placka's Open Workbook) based on their requirements, and therefore there is no unnecessary overproduction. The whole project is available free of charge for the public at www.listovatel.cz.
Worksheets are currently available in Czech or Ukrainian languages.
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www.listovatel.cz
