Education Today
“Finnish Lessons” by Pasi Sahlberg is an enlightening summer read for all those passionate about education. Pasi tells us a success story – how, in less than three decades, Finland built a very successful education system – but above all he shares key thoughts regarding innovation in education.
I had the chance to spend some time last week with Lord David Puttnam, chair of our Open Education Challenge jury. Lord Puttnam is one of the most fascinating people you could ever hope to meet. He spent thirty years producing some of the best films of our lives, and then abruptly reinvented himself as an education expert. As education itself is also in a phase of reinvention, it is worth listening to him. (more…)
Are you a football fan? Did your national team qualify for the World Cup? If your country is not among the top performers in the PISA test, you are more likely to win the World Cup. Among the 10 top performers, only four made it to Brazil (South Korea, Japan, Switzerland and the Netherlands) and only two qualified for the second round (Switzerland and the Netherlands). (more…)
Over the last few weeks, millions of students around the world have taken their final exams, desperately struggling to attain good grades and access the universities of their choice. The Chinese Gaokao, the French Baccalauréat, the British A Level… are all symbolic of the hyper-competitive nature of our education systems. (more…)
How keen are we to raise awareness about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) among Open Education Resource (OER) communities? As long as open means ‘free to use’, one may understand that IP is not relevant. “As long as it is available on the internet, it is free to use”, or “As long as it is for educational purposes, it is OK to use” are some of the claims that are most often given. IP concern is not so much about the IP of the OER itself, rather than the IP of the content used to create the OER. And all this content is IP protected in a way or another. (more…)
Education innovators – among them many teachers – have the ability to reinvent the art of teaching in the classroom.
Yishay Mor in his new book talks about teaching as a design practice that can change the world. The French daily ‘Le Monde’ just published an inspiring portrait of a young teacher who wanted to change his class… and the world. This story makes you believe in the inspirational dimension of teaching. (more…)
It is striking to observe how robotics influence and determine innovation in education. One of the first MOOCs ever was on robotics – ‘An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence’ – and the tens of thousands of students that registered online at the time told us of the fascination one feels in front of a machine that can think. The success of robotics education programmes worldwide (VEX for instance) is other evidence of the importance of a hands-on approach to science. (more…)
How do you measure the success of an innovative learning experience? One of the key indicators is the degree of commitment from learners.
This is obviously true in the classroom and the number of school dropouts reminds us that this is not easy to achieve. This is also true online, and at least as difficult to achieve as the availability of interactive tools doesn’t mean that they are fully used for this purpose.
Over the last few weeks we have been evaluating the hundreds of proposals we received for the first round of the Open Education Challenge. The process is complex, as each of these proposals is evaluated simultaneously by two evaluators. The quality and passion that are present in each proposal is remarkable. Key concepts that I thought were only shared by a few experts are widely spread across this new community of ‘education entrepreneurs’. (more…)
One of the many lessons learnt from the first round of Open Education Challenge applications has to do with our responsibility to sustain and widen an education entrepreneurship community.
Why not exclusively proceed with the selection of the ‘10 best European startups’ and just work with them as planned?
Having received 611 applications has made the OEC much more than a ‘competition’. The 611 entrepreneurs from 74 countries that submitted a project in less than 2 months send a powerful message: education entrepreneurship exists! This powerful movement can’t be seen as an extension of the ‘traditional’ startup incubators. It should be one of the main drivers of change for our education systems.