The Big Idea: Reset the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem with Education
When we surveyed fresh graduates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) about their lives, hopes, and challenges, two things stood out. First, 75% of fresh graduates in the Middle East and North Africa say that finding a job is the biggest challenge faced by their generation. Second, when asked about the greatest challenge they […]
Redesigning Educational Systems for the Future
Today, more than ever, significant academic institutions should focus on molding and shaping young people by providing them with the necessary tools for being able to respond to the fast-paced, complex, and multi-dimensional challenges of today’s society. This is imperative in order for youth to not be somehow conditioned by these changes, thus become devoid […]
Simple Questions, Complex Challenges
We have spent too many years now speaking of the need to transform the education model, a model that is failing to meet the needs of the third millennium. While many sectors are suffering disruption of their activities, the education sector seems to be comfortably ensconced in its ancestral ways. The small adjustments that […]
The Death of Education, But the Dawn of Learning
Education is dauntingly complex. There are simply SO many variables. Even a windy day changes the whole school. We also know from today’s greater knowledge of physiology and cognition that relatively small changes in temperature, hydration, noise, light levels and more can profoundly impact on attention and learning in one part of a room, […]
How Movement Improves Intelligence
Want smarter kids? Let them move! In too many classrooms around the globe, children are expected to sit through the day while passively absorbing huge amounts of information. A quiet, almost petrified student has been synonymous with concentration and productivity. Sometimes, even sitting up is not enough; children are required to avoid any “unnecessary” noise […]
Designing the Future of Education
Most agree that schools have struggled to keep up with the pace of society’s changes. Although it’s easy to point to the “industrial” nature of the way schools are designed or make lists of the skills we need to foster for the future, actually creating the new models for learning is a daunting task. […]
Using Less to Do More to Achieve Equity in Education
The average education budget in developing countries amounts to just $416.87 per child per year to cover everything from buildings to teacher salaries to books and administration. In the United States that budget is $12,296 per child per year. Meanwhile in Afghanistan the budget amounts to only $100 per year. As the majority of the world’s children live […]
Ensuring Equitable Access to Quality Education for Nomadic Populations
The proliferation of low-cost motorised transport, and the revolution in information and communication technology are rapidly making the remoteness of pastoralist and nomadic populations a thing of the past. Today, pastoralist associations call meetings over the phone. Herders charge their mobile devices directly in the bush from USB-equipped motorbikes. Market prices of livestock are […]
Risk-takers Needed: Scaling Innovation For Equity in Education
The American computer scientist and Rear Admiral Grace Hopper apparently had a clock on her wall that she deliberately ran anti-clockwise. A pioneer programmer, Hopper has been probably misquoted as saying, “The most dangerous phrase in the language is, “We’ve always done it this way.”‘ Hopper understood that nothing can progress or improve if […]
How Design Thinking Supports Innovation in K-12 Education
This article is a preview introducing the WISE-IDEO research report, “Thinking and Acting Like a Designer: How Design Thinking Supports Innovation in K-12 Education”. The WISE-IDEO report was written by a team of authors led by Dr. Laura Moorhead and Ms Sandy Speicher. The needs of the twenty-first century demand new approaches to learning. Today, […]