Prior Preparations:

Having the art session online posed many issues especially while planning it out. It was difficult to  gather everyone to join the thursday session to plan it out or even to just overall communicate with everyone online. We started off with planning by deciding on what different activities we will conduct during this day. (LO3 Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.) I sent emails to the head teacher at RCCI about different times they can accommodate us online, and after a bit of emails back and forward, we decided to hold the online session on the 25th of March, which was good for us mainly because normally service runs on thursdays and the 25th being a thursday we didn’t have to lose time on other days. We had many different ideas other than the online art session, but we came to a conclusion that since this was being held online, it would be easier to conduct an art session as all the students had access to basic art supplies and paper. After deciding the main (which was a challenge) activity that will be conducted during the session, we decided to plan out what specific activities based on the main activity we could do. (LO2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process) We first thought about doing an t-shirt design competition where the students could design their own t-shirt design for the RCCI service group where we would choose the best t-shirt design and create a t-shirt around that design. Where we could also use that for a charity t-shirt sale in which the money generated could be used to fund the sensory deprivation room at the RCCI school. We talked about this option in a lot of detail, but we thought that having a competition might possibly hurt some students mentally. (LO5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.) So we decided to shift this focus into having a mini art exhibition online where they would create any art piece they want and at the end of the session we would as their parents to take photos of their art pieces and send it to us where we will create a presentation showcasing all their art pieces. We thought that this would be more of a confidence booster for all the students in which they would be proud all their art pieces will be showcased. I also emailed this to their teachers where they could also share it with the students parents.

Online Session:

We started the online session at 3:30 and we planned it to end at around 4:30. That thursday I had been at home, so I had to make sure to join on time at sharply 3:30 before the students join just for the final preparations. (LO4 Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences) Once the students had joined, we had split up into different breakout rooms with at least 1 english speaker in each group. But after about 5 minutes we had found out that the students were quite shy and they didn’t speak to us at all over the zoom with only us in the B/O room. So we all decided to close the breakout rooms because they felt more comfortable with everyone in the room especially the teachers and continue the session. As they all were drawing their art designs, we also planned to draw some of ours because it would show that we were also more engaged in the art session with them. For some students we also guided them with what to draw as they  Time went by quickly with us drawing with them and at the end of the session at around 4:20 we decided to show all our art pieces (Figure 1).

Learning Outcomes:

There were many learning outcomes that I accomplished during this process, to state it shortly they were, LO2 which is demonstrating that I have undertaken challenges. Some of these challenges were planning out the session with the rest of my peers over zoom. Another learning outcome that I used was LO3 and LO4 which is demonstrating how to initiate and plan a CAS experience and showing commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences. I would like to think that planning out the online session is like a CAS experience as it involves many of the learning outcomes but also helps you with many of the real world circumstances like planning out an event. I think also another learning outcome that we accomplished was LO5 demonstrating the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively as essentially the whole planning process was done with other peers, and especially doing it over zoom really made it harder to work together. Lastly and most importantly LO6 was seen everywhere during this process as this learning outcome is, demonstrating engagement with issues of global significance. The idea of disabilities and spreading awareness about them is on global significance about these ideas is demonstrating engagement with issues of global significance.