Wise Words

Do children need to go back to school? And is it time to reassess or reconceptualize the traditional school model? Vice President and Chair of Learning Through Play of the LEGO Foundation, Bo Stjerne Thomsen joins us to share some of the insights from the foundation’s recent research findings in its white paper titled learning through play in schools. ------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: LEGO Foundation white paper on learning through play in school: https://bit.ly/2RXmFyi LEGO Foundation Report on Children, Tech, and Play: https://bit.ly/3mQe8LO Read Bo Stjerne's article - Do Children Need to Go 'Back to School': https://rb.gy/vw1rlv Follow Bo Stjerne: https://twitter.com/BoStjerne ------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wise-qatar.org Twitter: twitter.com/WISE_Tweets Instagram: wiseqatar Facebook: www.facebook.com/wiseqatar/ Linkedin: bit.ly/2JKThYf

Tunisian entrepreneur, blogger, and human rights activist, Amira Yahyaoui joins us to discuss what the edtech space is doing to support and change the higher education landscape amid the back-to-school season. Amira is currently the Founder & CEO of Mos.com, an online platform that provides easier access to more than $135B available in college financial aid. Before starting Mos and entering tech, Amira set her sights in the nonprofit world. In the past and the present, she has worked tirelessly to promote human rights in Tunisia where she founded Al Bawsala, an award-winning NGO that continues to promote government transparency and accountability in Tunisia. ------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Mos: https://www.mos.com Follow Amira: https://twitter.com/Mira404 ------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wise-qatar.org Twitter: twitter.com/WISE_Tweets Instagram: wiseqatar Facebook: www.facebook.com/wiseqa

Dr. Dimitri Christakis joins us again to discuss recent developments in global education and the many implications of lockdown on early childhood cognitive development. Dr. Christakis is a pediatrician, researcher, a parent, the George Adkins Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, Director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and an attending pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He is the author of over 230 original research articles, a textbook of paediatrics and The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television work for your kids. (September 2006; Rodale). In 2010 he was awarded the Academic Pediatric Association Research Award for outstanding contributions to pediatric research over his career. He was also a speaker at the WISE 2019 Summit. A new season of #WISEWords focusing on back to school will begin in early September 2020! Subscribe to our social media channels to stay tuned. ------------------------------------

Strategic Director and European Co-Founder/CEO of the Wolfram Research, Conrad Wolfram joins us once again to discuss how today’s maths may need to experience a fundamental redesign., through the lens of his newly published book ‘The Math(s) Fix’. A key part of Conrad’s work has been understanding the underlying scope of our technology and communicating what we have. He is interested in how technology and computation can move our lives and economies forward and in turn how this affects education. ------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Buy Conrad's book: http://themathsfix.org Conrad's other episode: https://bit.ly/2DaOvmQ Conrad's website: http://www.conradwolfram.com ------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wise-qatar.org Twitter: twitter.com/WISE_Tweets Instagram: wiseqatar Facebook: www.facebook.com/wiseqatar/ Linkedin: bit.ly/2JKThYf

Co-Founder of Brazilian edtech startup, Geekie, Claudio Sassaki joins us to discuss how schools in Brazil have been utilizing personalized adaptive learning technologies in a bid to keep learners active from home. He has been recognized by Wired UK as one of the most important social innovators of the world and awarded by Schwab Foundation as social entrepreneur of the year in 2014. Since 2016, Geekie has had more than five million students taking advantage of the personalized adaptive learning platform. ------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Geekie: https://www2.geekie.com.br WISE profile: https://bit.ly/2Ddn2Rl ------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wise-qatar.org Twitter: twitter.com/WISE_Tweets Instagram: wiseqatar Facebook: www.facebook.com/wiseqatar/ Linkedin: bit.ly/2JKThYf

Register for Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined Part II: bit.ly/3cA8uqY ------------------------------------------------- Education Columnist and Director of Instructional Design at Abilene Christian University, Berlin Fang joins us to discuss China’s shift to online learning and how it has evolved compared to other places that have made the jump around the world. Berlin’s major interests are faculty acceptance of educational technology, the diffusion of innovation, managed change, academic integrity, the ethnography of technology use in higher education, and cross-cultural comparisons of education. ------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Berlin Fang's website: https://berlinfangblog.wordpress.com Ten Common Myths about Educational Innovations: https://bit.ly/2UT08Vs ------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wise-qatar.org Twitter: twitter.com/WISE_Tweets Instagram: wiseqatar Facebook: www.facebook.co

Register for Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined Part II: https://bit.ly/3cA8uqY -------------------------------------------------- COVID-19 continues to affect many systems and societies around the world. Many charities and NGOs are facing challenges in providing their services through the global pandemic, yet many continue to persevere and bring aid and learning to those in need. We’re joined by Nayla Al Fahed from Lebanese Alternative Learning (LAL), and Mike Dawson from Ustad Mobile, to discuss the role of the third sector in the pandemic. LAL’s Tabshoura and Ustad Mobile are both cohorts of the WISE Accelerator program and use technology with the aim to provide education to remote areas. -------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Tabshoura: http://www.tabshoura.com Ustad Mobile: https://www.ustadmobile.com/lms/ -------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wise-qatar.org Twitter: twitter.com/WISE_Twee

We’re joined by Dwayne Iserief, Co-founder and CEO of Uptale, an immersive learning platform that utilizes 360-degree technology and virtual reality to facilitate training and learning modules. It’s an e-learning and training platform that allows you to simulate real-world environments, and interact with objects in the virtual space. Together with host and CEO of WISE, Stavros Yiannouka, they’ll be discussing more about the implications of such technologies, and what augmented learning brings to the fore. -------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Follow Uptale: https://twitter.com/uptale_io http://uptale.io -------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wise-qatar.org Twitter: twitter.com/WISE_Tweets Instagram: wiseqatar Facebook: www.facebook.com/wiseqatar/ Linkedin: bit.ly/2JKThYf

We’re joined by Kiran Bir Sethi, the founder of Design For Change which is the world’s largest movement for change of and by children, operating in 44 countries and impacting millions of students and teachers. She is also the Director of the celebrated Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India. Kiran is a designer who became a teacher, a principal who grew into an education reformer and subsequently morphed into a social entrepreneur. In this episode, together with host of the show and CEO of WISE, Stavros Yiannouka, Kiran discusses reflecting on the role of loss in education, preparing students for change, ethics, and practising empathy online. -------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Follow Kiran: https://twitter.com/kiranbirsethi https://www.dfcworld.com/SITE -------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wise-qatar.org Twitter: twitter.com/WISE_Tweets Instagram: wiseqatar Facebook: www.facebook.com/wiseqatar/ Lin

"This COVID-19, to make an analogy, would be like waking from a dream. The first 2 minutes, you remember it really vividly, but if you don't talk to someone or you don't write it down, then you forget it quite immediately. I won't ever choose to go through this, but as it is happening, we need to make the most of it. What does this mean?" Agustín Pardo Van Thienen, currently the CEO of OX Education, and someone who started his entrepreneurial journey in education from a very young age, joins us to discuss the Latin American Education response to the current situation, and how edtech ventures like Ox’s Spanish learning platform Wumbox are stepping up in an attempt to ensure learning never stops. -------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Ox: http://www.oxed.com.ar Wumbox: https://www.wumbox.comox Latin American students sharing their thoughts: https://youtu.be/fMGefvxQ-oM https://www.instagram.com/oxeducation/ https://www.facebook.com/OXeducation/ http://twitter.com/oxeducation

We’re joined by William Zhou, CEO of Chalk, a versatile planning and analytics platform tailored to the K-12 curriculum and designed to help support teachers and schools stay online and on-track. Five years ago, William was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 list in education. Back then, there were about 100,000 users using the curriculum planning platform. Fast forward to today, there are now more than 500,000 teachers have signed up to Chalk. Chalk was also part of the WISE Accelerator cohort of 2016-17. Such tools are undoubtedly helping to keep schools and districts focused and ensuring the right standards are being taught to students, and that’s especially important in times of uncertainty. If this is the new normal, how can we schools and educators plan effectively for it? William Zhou sits down with CEO of WISE, Stavros Yiannouka, to discuss this in-depth. -------------------------------------------------- Relevant links: Chalk website: https://www.chalk.com Follow William: https://twitter.com/William

One of the key questions we’re still looking to answer is how we can best support education decision making to ensure an effective education response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A framework to guide and education response to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 is a new report that was recently released to help guide education leaders and promote global collaboration during the unprecedented crisis. Harvard Graduate Professor Fernando Reimers and Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the OECD issued the framework and join us for this episode to discuss some of its findings. -------------------------------------------------- Check out the resources: - A framework to guide an education response: https://bit.ly/2WkzIeY - Teaching and learning resources: https://bit.ly/35lmAdP Follow Andreas: https://twitter.com/SchleicherOECD Follow Fernando: https://twitter.com/FernandoReimers -------------------------------------------------- Check out more from WISE and send us your thoughts! Website: www.wis

"The one silver lining that has come out of the COVID19 pandemic in education is that there’s now a shift in truly considering the whole child." Aparna Ramanathan of AskMyClass joins WISE Words to discuss how schools can adapt to remote learning. As students continue learning from a distance, we must consider if too much screen time is conducive to learning? Aparna took AskMyClass an audio path for learning, by introducing a voice system to the classroom so that children are screen and hands-free to collaborate with each other. Now, they're looking to adapt the platform for the home with AskMyKid. In this episode, Stavros Yiannouka, CEO of WISE and host of WISE Words talks to Aparna about the many ways schools have been adapting to the crisis, the potential of audio tools for the classroom, and keeping kids active and learning from home. -------------------------------------------------- Related links AskMyClass: https://askmyclass.app https://askmykid.com Follow AskMyClass: https://twitter.com/askMyCla

Like in many other industries, education practitioners and students around the world have been jumping into digital platforms as a means to continue operating amid the crisis. A remote-powered world draws many challenges into question. Issues concerning ease-of-use, accessibility, and privacy and security are some that teachers are continuing to grapple with. In an attempt to address these challenges, edtech solutions are stepping up to train teachers and education stakeholders how they can effectively utilize technology to not only facilitate the classroom experience, but to potentially enhance it. In this episode, Aldo De Pape, founder of TeachPitch, sits down with host Stavros Yiannouka to discuss how the organization has been training thousands of teachers in partnership with the Ministry of Albania. They talk about how the crisis has affected TeachPitch, the difference between online teaching and emergency remote teaching, and what it means to provide a central infrastructure for e-learning. ---------

WISE@Bogotá and Medellín postponed: https://bit.ly/3agViHe ----------------------------------------------------- Nine out of ten young adults feel that they have a responsibility to better the world - yet not even half of those 9 people feel equipped to take action towards this goal. This is according to some of the latest findings of an extensive research survey that was released by WISE recently for the International Day of Education on 24 January. Conducted by Ipsos, the WISE Global Education Barometer includes surveys conducted by more than 9000 young people between the age of 16 to 25 across 20 countries from around the world. In this episode of WISE Words, we will be taking a look at some of the key findings of the survey, and discuss with university students of Qatar Foundation's Education City about the future of education. Many thanks to the students who participated in this episode: -Ria Sayadi -Andrew Edward -Ghada Al-Qashouti -Salar Mujeeb Khan -------------------------------------------------

APPLY FOR THE 2020 WISE ACCELERATOR: https://bit.ly/2W13iaY ----------------------------------------------------- Innovation. You’ve probably seen the word being generously used across the media you consume. It’s the buzzword that many companies and organizations strive to achieve and specifically mention in their strategy (including ours!). In fact, a consulting firm, Board of Innovation, estimates that there are over 70,000 books written on innovation and the philosophies behind it. Despite its status as an overused term, it's values is most definitely still appreciated and adopted by industries alike, including the education space. However, education has been one of the sectors where innovation and change have been notoriously difficult to scale. Many cite challenges such as limited resources, undercompensated teachers, and students who are disengaged. At WISE, we know that innovative education projects are taking shape in many forms across the globe. The question is what is the most effective way

There was a time when robots were so primitive they could only navigate on wheels, now not only do some have some the ability to walk, but they can even do backflips. That's not all - AI has become so advanced that it can already teach languages, like Botter, one of the WISE Accelerator cohorts, it can pick out the ripest raspberries in your supermarket by utilizing tactile sensors, or even generate deep fake videos of world leaders reciting controversial statements. Which begs the question: Should we embrace AI as a solution to solve problems in our world? To what extent can its abilities surpass ours, how should we regulate the way it’s used? Can we depend on it to enhance education? Well, it doesn't just go in one direction, instead, we should be thinking about how human beings and AI can work together to become better. Meia and Max Tegmark of the Future of Life institute join us to discuss all about AI's role in education, speculative fiction, demanding transparency in tech, and understanding the human in

APPLY FOR THE 2020 WISE AWARDS: bit.ly/2t5Vqsw ----------------------------------------------------- "The success of what we do has to do with teaching kids HOW to think instead of WHAT to think, and that is something that the arts does best." It is impossible to deny the universal capacity of music to touch the souls of millions around the world. So why have we not used it as a gateway to learning in the classroom? This is exactly what world renowned musician and actor/producer, Steven Van Zandt, set out to achieve with the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation and TeachRock.org. Joining alongside Steven is the Chairman of the Rock and Roll Foundation, David Roth. "The arts inspire and engage. Music engages you, it engages your soul. It engages you to your very core. That is exactly the goal we have for every classroom". After 12 years of building a curriculum on the foundations of music, TeachRock is now offering over 150 lessons entirely for free. Currently, there are more than 25,000 teachers registered on t

APPLY FOR THE 2020 WISE AWARDS: https://bit.ly/2t5Vqsw ----------------------------------------------------- Author of Connected and Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of A Good Society, Nicholas Christakis joins us to discuss the human being's innate ability to teach and learn from one another, how societies are inherently good, and the negative externalities of emerging tech. Nicholas is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. His work is in the fields of network science, biosocial science, and behavior genetics. He directs the Human Nature Lab and is the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2006; the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010; and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. He was also a speaker for the WISE 2019 Summit. -------------------------------------------------- Related links Buy Blueprint: https://amzn.to/36rZlhZ Follow Nicholas: https://twitter.co

Founding Principal of High Tech High and the seventh WISE Prize for Education laureate, Larry Rosenstock, reminisces previous experiences throughout his life and how those experiences inspired him to create an innovative network of American charter schools. Larry is recognized for his lifelong dedication to rethinking K-12 learning and tackling inequality through education. He has pioneered the concept of project-based education – the idea that students can and must learn crucial academic skills through hands-on projects that integrate multiple disciplines, engage their interest, and have an authentic purpose. His model also reimagines the role of teachers as “designers” who adapt their curricula and blend a variety of subjects based on the specific needs of each student. -------------------------------------------------- Related links High Tech High: https://www.hightechhigh.org Send your thoughts to: @wise_ceo --------------------------------------------------- Check out more WISE content! Website: w