Dot Learnt

With BB and Sam jet setting the world, I thought it would be an appropriate time to check in with the creative minds behinds the series. Take a look at this quick interview with Co-Founders, Anna and Chris Batchelder as they share their outlook on the importance of global awareness and eBooks for kids reading.

What inspired you to create The Adventures of BB and Sam series?

The answer is simple. We are passionate about reading and promoting global awareness amongst children (and adults) around the world! We also have a travel bug. But we have a different philosophy on travel. A lot of people visit a country and try to see as much of it as possible. We prefer to park ourselves in one or two cities for a period of 2-3 weeks and absorb the vibe of the place: the food, culture, people. The best way to get to know a place is to live there. It’s tough when there are so many countries in the world.

What is your process for creating e-books for kids and families?

First we select the country we want to focus on in each story. We spend a significant amount of time in that country learning about the culture, taking photos, capturing original video footage and imagining possible storylines.

Then a tremendous amount of time is spent working with the Bon Education team to write the story, edit it and make sure it is exciting and age-appropriate. We have children, parents and teachers in different countries read the story drafts along the way, to make sure we are on the right track.

We work with our amazing illustrator Richard Peter David to create character and scene sketches, full color illustrations and interactive diagrams. (more…)

Dear Bon Education Team!

I wanted to wish you all a very happy new year and thank you for your hard work and dedication in 2011.

We are really excited to finally launch BB and Sam (our interactive digital literature app) in 2012 – that’s one of our big goals we have for this year. With all of your fabulous talents and skills I know we can make the final push these next two months towards a successful launch on the app store. We will also continue to grow and build our training and consulting business working with schools, teachers and students to empower and personalize their learning through technology.

I read an article in the NY Times this morning about the CEO of IBM.  He had these four questions that guided his management of IBM.  These are great reflection prompts, both from a company perspective as well as an individual perspective.  (link)

• “Why would someone spend their money with you — so what is unique about you?”
• “Why would somebody work for you?”
• “Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography — their country?”
• “And why would somebody invest their money with you?”

The answers to these questions are where we’re going with Bon Education.  It’s about focusing on the purpose and impact of the work we do. I trust that if we are happy with our answers to these questions the financial returns required to sustain and grow Bon Education will follow. (more…)

Using Web 2.0 and Social Media to Encourage Deeper Learning from Bon Education on Vimeo.

This fall Bon Education co-founders, Anna and Chris Batchelder, will be creating and facilitating a course for Peer 2 Peer University’s newest initiative – The School of Education (pilot). Funded by the Hewlett and Shuttleworth foundations, P2PU is an open education project that knocks down the walls of the university by providing students and their peers with an open platform where they can teach courses and learn from one another for free. As the P2PU mission statement points out:

The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the Internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities. P2PU – learning for everyone, by everyone about almost everything.

To learn more about the founding of P2PU read Fast Company’s, “How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education.”

The P2PU School of Education will bring the model of open, community-based peer learning to professional development for K-12 teachers and administrators. Seven courses will be offered between September and November 2011, with a focus on innovative teaching methods. Anna and Chris were invited to create and facilitate “Using Web 2.0 and Social Media to Promote Deeper Learning.” The course is for K-12 teachers and administrators that wish to utilize web 2.0 and social media tools to promote student core content knowledge, critical thinking, collaboration skills, communication, self-directed learning and global outlook (components of what the Hewlett Foundation calls deeper learning). Teachers and administrators interested in participating can register here.

“Learning for everyone, by everyone about almost anything!” That is a motto we like!

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Beyond the movies, the hospitality, the humor, the protests, the history, you find something that every Egyptian simply gets used to–traffic. At the nexus of overpopulation and a weak infrastructure emerges inefficiency.  Thinking about infrastructure in the context of school systems, we realize that schools are more than just teachers and students. To run smoothly they need countless resources, upkeep, processes and people. With so many moving parts at play, inefficiencies are bound to emerge.

Enter IntaFeen – the Arabic phrase for Where Are you? I’m sure most of you have taken note of the latest ‘check-in’ fad on Facebook. By grazing your minifeed, you can easily take note of where your co-workers are for lunch (and potentially crash the party) or which of your friends is attending the latest ISTE conference. With apps such as FourSquare continuing to gain popularity in the States, six Egyptian men, straight from the heart of the Silicon Valley have opted to return to their roots and introduce the Land of the Pharaohs to ‘check-in’ culture.

Allow me to highlight what a tool like IntaFeen can do for school districts in Egypt (and other societies challenged by education infrastructure inefficiencies). Imagine a school that integrates the IntaFeen technology into their administration system. A teacher running late on the day of an exam can instantly ‘check-in,’ giving administration an estimated time of arrival. More often than not, exams are canceled due to teachers getting caught off guard by unbearable traffic. The school’s administration could then designate another teacher to administer the exam or predetermine an alternative plan of action.

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Early this month, the social media hegemon laid down the law and stated it was acquiring Push Pop Press, a digital bookmaker that is famed for their dynamic digital content for Apple’s ipad. Dare I say it? These are not just books. These are elegant, visually teasing, intellectually stimulating packages of knowledge.

So what’s the deal? Is Facebook trading in their status updates for a bunch of e-books? Not necessarily. What the multibillion-dollar company is doing though, is recognizing the growing market for e-books and asking for a piece of the pie, or at least claiming rights to it. A Push Pop representative explains how the “ideas and technology behind [their company] will be integrated with Facebook, to give people an even richer way to share their stories.”

Let’s talk e-books for a minute. As of recent, the Association of American Publisher’s released data showing e-books as the bestselling category in American publishing. Just a few months ago, Amazon came out and stated that after four years of selling e-books, they are “now selling more of them than printed books.” E-books allow users to engage in the learning process as readers dive deeply into the content with the use of multimedia and interactive text-supporting features. For example, in Al Gore’s first e-book, published and created by Push Pop Press, Our Choice allows readers to explore audio, video and interactive graphics as they read. Users become more than readers, they become a part of the story itself.

Through the fusion of access, content and connectedness individuals, organizations and governments alike are hopping on board the digital and mobile technology train. Just recently, the government of South Korea has mandated that all school-age curricula will become digitized by the year 2015. In one the New York Time’s recent opinion piece, Virginia Heffernan discusses how 65% of today’s grade-school youth will end up doing work in a field that has not even been invented yet. Such developments should only push us to embrace technology use in the classroom, as technology will help us better prepare for society’s evolution. How’s that for knocking down the bookcase?

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Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sid Djerfi, a Teach First ambassador and current Associate Director of Regional Expansion at Teach First. Prior to his current position, he worked on implementing the Teach First model in Lebanon and the UAE. It was during this interview that Djerfi unveiled his viewpoint on the biggest problems that countries in the MENA region are facing in terms of education, and how we can help solve them. You’ll find the full interview below, followed by highlights from our conversation.

In your opinion, what challenges do MENA education systems face when it comes to taking advantage of education technology in schools?

There are obvious issues we can talk about such as the issue of connectivity or the issue of accessibility, but I’d like to focus on the bigger picture. The problem that MENA countries face is that in a lot of places, students have sufficient access to knowledge, but unfortunately they do not know how to utilize that information. They do not know, for instance, how to decide on which Ted Talk they should listen to. Also, a lot of the information out there is in English, and many of the students might not be able to understand.

So what you’re saying is that it goes beyond giving them access to technology, it is more about teaching them how to implement the technology. Correct?

Absolutely. There have been a lot of initiatives that have focused on getting computers into schools. But how do you use the computers? If a teacher asks a student to find research on cancer for instance, the student will return with a variety of different sources. Can the student tell what is biased information from what is not? Can they put in the right keywords when searching for things on Google? It is as if the library has been built in the town, but the kids are unable to figure out which book to read for the answers. (more…)

Living out of a suitcase this summer, I’ve been out and about traveling across the Middle East. Nonetheless, some things stay the same. My daily news-fix continues to allow me, to share with you, the latest updates and blog posts unearthing around the globe!

Ladies First

During Google’s first annual international science fair, teens from over 91 different countries were engaged on matters such as engineering, space exploration and medical technology.  With all leading finalists being female and hailing from the United States of America, the top projects included Lauren Hodge’s examination on decreasing carcinogenic compounds in grilled chicken and Naomi Shah’s focus on the effect of environmental pollutants on the lungs. The grand prize went to Shree Bose who researched how to improve the effectiveness of cisplatin treatment, the most common drug used to treat ovarian cancer.

TechWomen, an organization that links up women from Muslim-majority countries with female mentors from U.S. tech companies, has recently graduated its first class of women. In an effort to strengthen collaboration between the United States and the Middle East, women from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian Territories and Algeria analyzed entrepreneurism in leading US tech firms and will use the skills learned in their own projects back home.

Teching it for the Team

The “SMS for Better Schooling in Sindh” is an initiative adopted by the World Bank to improve the links between government, schools and local communities in Pakistan. As of now, 400 schools are participating in the pilot project, which involves using text messages to keep schools up to date on matters such as textbook delivery dates and the quality of the drinking water in the schools. Recently, USAID amongst other donors, have focused on erecting Mobiles for Education Development (m4Ed4Dev), in hopes of exploring the solutions at the junction of mobile tech and education development.

Keep reading for more on e-learning and global tech initiatives (more…)