The Grow Trails project
Imagine an amusement park in which going for a ride enriches you with knowledge about living in today’s busy world. Here you learn tips for long-term wellbeing, there you train critical thinking, and over there you practice navigating your own path and growing into a person you want to be. You experience a day in the park full of (self-)discovery and all of it while having fun, immersed in the moment.
This was the vision that prompted the start of the Grow Trails.
Grow Trails aspires to be a hub for grown-ups where you can keep learning and developing yourself in topics related to the digital era via games and hands-on activities.
Why Learning?
Learning is a necessity
Much of what you learn today is going to be outdated in 10 years' time. The times when people performed a life-long profession are mostly gone. We need to keep adapting our skills to the technological change and learn continuously.
Learning as personal growth.
Continuous self-development is a way to understand who we are, what we feel, and how to get where we want to be tomorrow. So that we stay true to our values and become the best version of ourselves.
Learning because we want to know.
The world around us is fascinating and there is no reason why grown-ups should stop exploring it. On the contrary, science has figured out many intriguing facts and it's cool to get to know about them.
Learning to advance the community.
Learning means progress. It empowers us to change things. By sharing our skills with others, we can help advance the world around us.
And why Games?
Playing is doing 🙂
And we learn best by doing. Kids try out new hands-on activities daily. Grown-ups are much more aware of possible failures and social norms. A game offers a safe environment to try, fail and to try again. And it is fun!
Grow Trails' materials and games are for...
…all curiosity-driven grown-ups who want to keep learning via hands-on activities. You can either do an activity by yourself or use the materials to organize a fun event for your friends or colleagues.
Think of Grow Trails as a hub that exposes you to a variety of topics and then offers pointers to further resources. So that you can keep exploring the topics from great sources.
Which topics do Grow Trails explore?
A broad variety of topics related to developing MINDSET for the DIGITAL ERA.
Science-based approach to wellbeing, growth mindset, rationality, critical thinking and their interplay with technology. Drawing on sources from math, computer science, neuroscience and psychology. Topics that will motivate you to become the best version of yourself.
The unique combination of topics to be explored is described in this post.
Grow Trails' Values
Science-based
Hands-on
Continuous Learning
Moral values
Community oriented
About the author and her very personal motivation to learn
Hi there!
I’m Zuzka and I love playing games, especially those via which I can in some ways learn or improve a new skill: games that trick my mind or those that challenge my dexterity are the best.
Playing means much more to me than just having fun. It is an opportunity to experiment and to grow with no external pressure. Via hands-on activities, I can be in the moment, follow my curiosity and even return to my values. It simply is a reset from a busy adult life.
As an education and science student, and then a researcher, I have been determined to find out more about how humans learn.
Children have an innate drive to find out how the world works. They learn full-time, often by play, and almost always by doing, failing at it and trying again. When do we lose this ability? This curiosity and endurance to learn?
As we get older, the variety of new stimuli we are exposed to decreases. Sure, we develop professionally, but otherwise we are left to find our own path, and no one really expects us to be trying out many new things.
Learning as an amusement park
Imagine instead that there was this cool information centre where you turn up and get a digestible tutorial and a hands-on engaging session on any topic from an expert in that field. A tutorial that feels like taking a ride in an amusement park. You could point your finger at anything that interests you and try it out. Just like a kid in a kindergarten. How much would that ease the lifelong learning process!
For me personally, I am trying to grow into the best person I can. There is still a lot to learn, of course, and I want to keep working on it. How to be more empathetic, how to listen, or on the other hand how to know when I am right and I should step into an argument. I want to live a happy, meaningful life while at the same time take the initiative and contribute within my own community. I am fascinated by the human brain, its ability to learn, (ir)rational thinking and its interplay with technology. And as a mathematician, I obviously love solving puzzles and sharing the beauty of math with others 🙂
Science seems to have many answers that could be presented in such an ideal information centre and have a great impact on our quality of life. Neuroscience principles, tips from positive and behavioural psychology, mathematical models, and many others. Have you known that there is, for example, a theory of cooperation where mathematicians model how people in a society are inclined to cooperate with each other? Fascinating stuff that is slowly making its way to popular science books.
And contrary to what you may believe based on your school experience, science is for everyone. Well, for everyone who has that inner child’s curiosity and the motivation to continue even if one initially fails. Just get into that mindset of trying and growing. …How? By playing and hands-on activities!
Learning is doing, having fun, failing, and improving. It’s getting your hands dirty when trying a new skill, no matter what others think so that tomorrow you become a better person.
For over 10 years, I co-organized science camps for teenagers in Europe and Africa and had a blast. In my quest to make science activities engaging, fun and relevant, I realized the following:
The most beautiful moments we had in the camps were when we got intrinsically immersed in a playful, yet meaningful activity with friends around and no sense of time passing. Being jerks, sharing together, having honest discussions and learning from each other.
Learning is doing, having fun, failing, and improving. It’s getting your hands dirty when trying a new skill, no matter what others think so that tomorrow you become a better person.
I believe that once we work on ourselves, we can next be the catalysts in changing the wider community for the better.
I am now preparing similar treasure-hunt trails and hands-on activities for you.
Each trail consists of a series of tasks on a given topic. Some trails will guide you through self-discovery, values, life-goals, tricks that our mind plays on us, growth mindset or ways to a happier life; with tips and exercises inspired by neuroscience, positive and behavioral psychology. Let yourself experiment, be playful and curious.
Other trails give a sneak-peak to topics in quantitative sciences, and share the fascination and detective feelings scientists themselves experience when searching for answers — again it is all about a personal experience and understanding the world around us.
Whether for just fun, or to find a deeper meaning, I invite you to unleash your curiosity and dive into self-discovery and learning with Grow Trails. Have fun!
Grow Trails author
Zuzka Masárová studied Education and Mathematics at University of Cambridge, math at McMaster University, cryptography at University of Waterloo, and has a PhD in computational geometry from IST Austria.
For about 5 years, she co-organized two correspondence mathematical seminars and their camps for high schoolers in Slovakia. Later she tutored in the master’s program at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Ghana, and also volunteered co-organizing science camps with the African Maths Initiative in Ethiopia and Kenya.