21 Century Education: Bring technology to anywhere in the world
I ran into this amazing TED talk video this afternoon when I was looking around on the Internet. The speech maker Neil brings his talk all the way from San Francisco, where he is
based. He tells the story of how he 'stumbled' upon the need to recycle old Internet technology in order to create educational systems. Neil will also share his deep passion for improving education worldwide, and explain why it is critical that we all care about education in underprivileged countries.
While I was watching his speech, I started to reflect on my first impression of 21 Century Education. When I heard this topic I instantly have a image of modern, well developed, advanced technology applied to education in a small size class where they have freedom of speech and opportunities to present opinions under the instruction of a knowledgeable professor with a doctoral degree. This might be the outcome in a few years' hard work of all the elite educators, the trend has been set towards my imagination. However, the real big steps will take places not in the privileged countries, but the countries with poor education conditions.
In some countries in Asia, Middle East, Africa, education is still access limited. Not all the classes are equipped with modern technology teaching tools, Internet and even electricity.It has been really hard for people from these areas receive adequate education resources since their government simply will not be financially supportive, obviously they have way more problems to deal with as priorities. Let's picture this, on one hand, students from developed, privileged countries are experiencing the benefit of high technology in classroom and keep improving their 21st education skills, on the other hand, students from some less developed areas are denied of access to the use of Internet and technology and thus creates a vicious circle making them falling behind even more as time goes by.
Neil Dsouza had came up and practiced his own way to help the students from such situations to get access to the Internet. He decided to use " Old Technology for a New Education" , Nomadedu, a portable cloud server providing hot spot wi-fi in a local area network. The students then are be able to use their computers to reach the data, vids, and Khan Academy content from the server and interact with the teachers with Dropbox. Teachers will carry the server to the nearest Internet access and update the information every once or twice a week. This amazing idea had been working within Mongolia and helped a lot of kids to get updated to the ever-changing world and also have their voice heard.
In one particular case, a 16 year old girl Zaya from Lotus Children Center in Mongolia, has use the power of technology to change her life and many others'. Zaya is among the first group of students who tried this system and benefited from it largely. She then decided to help more students from her country to have a better chance to touch the world and started to volunteer to translate all the useful content. This become a successful model for a lot of students, scholars and educators. Once Zaya hold the power of knowledge, she came to know her ability to change not only her life but people's around her. She is a inspiration for all the other kids from children's shelter. As an orphan in a less developed area with limited education resources, she missed the 21st Century Internet education revolution. But when she finally get in touch with Internet, she realized the importance by comparing her personal experience from present and past, and the leadership she possess to help other people. The realization is precious.
21 Century Education is not all about what we see in the top liner in technology magazines, in advanced education practices, but also how education is bringing equality to every students and guarantee everyone a chance to learn and lead the world.
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Very interesting topic and very important. D'Souza is doing important work. What does this mean to you personally? How does it connect to others in your group?
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