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…)
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…)
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.
Le Monde, the French daily newspaper, recently discussed in an article the French mania with MOOCs. A few weeks after its launch, the French MOOC platform FUN had already registered 226,000 students. The ‘best (non) seller’ among the 30 MOOCs on offer is ‘From Manager to Leader‘, with 36,000 registered students and a 20% completion rate. Its author, Cecile Dejoux, a teacher at CNAM, qualifies this success as a complete – yet pleasant – surprise: a serendipity!
We are just a few hours from the end of the first round of the Open Education Challenge. In less than two months, 500 applications have been submitted. This is new evidence of the changes taking place in education worldwide: each proposal we receive is a proxy for new contents and teaching practices, innovative devices, technological assessment tools… And a promise to give users the opportunity to learn what, where and when they want. The Open Education Challenge demonstrates that education is no longer limited to curricula and degrees – it’s about innovation, creativity and… entrepreneurship. (more…)
Are you too old to go to school? Are you too young to innovate?
Pierre Dubuc and Mathieu Nebra, co-founders of Openclassrooms, created their first start-up when they were 11 years old (although they had to wait until they turned 18 to register it). They are now one of the main publishers of MOOCs for web skills in French. Xavier Fontanet, on the other hand, started selling his strategy courses for entrepreneurs on the Apple app store at the age of 64, and made them into digital bestsellers.
Innovation in education is very simple: it is about sharing the right knowledge with the right people using the right tools. It is not about age. (more…)
$19 bn for a smile (credit – WhatsApp)
Is learning worth $19 billion?
Facebook just bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. Insane, isn’t it? Is chatting worth $19 billion? Is the possibility of sending a two word message (often badly spelled) worth $19 billion? Is a collection of emoticons really worth $19 billion?
WhatsApp converted a very simple idea – of sending and receiving messages – into a huge social and financial success. 500 million individuals depend on WhatsApp to remain connected to their beloved, their friends and their colleagues. Why? Because being in touch is essential to our lives.
And what about learning? Isn’t it that essential to our lives? (more…)
“I am preparing a project for an innovation approach to learning. I am a PhD student in the UK. We are very committed with education and teacher professional development as well as a PGCE program. What I do not know is if the team has to have a company already established for submitting? And the team for the moment is composed of two PhD students one in computer science and me in math education with the support of one faculty member. Would that be ok?”
This is the first query we have received, and it comes before the Open Education Challenge has launched. No and yes are the answers. No, you don’t have to have a established company to start submitting. And yes, it will be OK.
However, this potential applicant’s questions made me think more in depth about who the true innovators are in education.