Child Education and Being Unreasonable
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There are 72 million children out of school globally and over 1 billion people living in poverty without access to basic necessities like shelter, clean water, nutrition, clothing and education. However, combining education and technology can provide hope for improving lives, as it has the power to lift people out of poverty when employed effectively in a strategic manner.
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Child Education and Being Unreasonable
- 3. 1 : 75
- 6. 72 million out of school
- 12. | | (pause)
- 14. education + technology = hope source: http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_education.html
- 15. education + technology = hope people +
- 17. people + education + technology = hope Step 1
- 22. people + education + technology = hope Step 2 Step 1
- 26. Paul Polak founder @ IDE 17 M out of poverty
- 27. David Kyle coo @ acumen founder @ isfc
- 28. Kentaro Toyama founder @ microsoft research, India
- 32. strategy
Editor's Notes
- Hi! My name is Shabnam Aggarwal. My venture, called The Teach tour is hoping to fill the immense gap in children’s education
- About a year ago I moved to India. As I was walking up my street to my apartment one day, a little boy of about 10 came RUNNING up to me and jumped in my arms. He kept yelling AKKA AKKA! SISTER SISTER! PLAY WITH ME! It was about 1pm in the afternoon on Thursday. I remember thinking to myself, “Why isn’t he in school right now?”
- Overtime I learned from Chintu’s parents that he could go to school, with 1 teacher for a total of 75 students.
- He could go to a school with no desks and no chairs. He couldn’t afford shoes, so books were out of the question.
- OR he could play outside with his friends and do nothing all day. I quickly became engulfed in the world of education and how vastly it might help Chintu find a better future than mixing concrete with his father all day.
- Like 72 million other children around the world, Chintu doesn’t go to school because it is a waste of time. How does this translate into Chintu’s future?
- Chintu will join the ranks of 1 BILLION children who will remain in poverty
- -failed in fundamental way to bring education to the children who need it most, to allow them to achieve their basic hierarchy of needs.
- -the fascinating part. I took my experience in technology and decided there was a clear solution of how to plug this gap. Radio and TV’s are so ubiquitous that politicians running for election are passing them out to get votes! Mobile phones have penetrated 100 Million subscribers in rural India. So, there seemed to be an opportunity here. I asked myself “How can we capitalize upon this success of technology to change the course of this educational failure immediately?” Well, one idea is MILLEE.
- MILLEE uses low cost mobiles to teach literacy to children using fun games. MILLEE began as a research project out of UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon, which in August 2009 I turned into a sustainable social enterprise in India through June of this year.
- I took MILLEE games over to Chintu and some of his friends to see how they’d react. I realized the impact MILLEE could have, like many other educational innovations being attempted around the world is HUGE.
- What I failed to recognize until today is that we must pause to appreciate the limitations here. Although we were combining education with technology, we have yet to see one success in educational technologies at the BOP till date. Why didn’t One Laptop Per Child work?
- We’ve spent over 30 million dollars on OLPC! And yet, it has not seen even a percent of the success it dreamt of. What I point to in the failure of OLPC is a missing variable in this very vital equation to hope in education.
- In Charles Leadbeater’s TED talk on education innovation in slums of Kibera, he points to this equation to show the impact we could make. EDUCATION + TECHNOLOGY = HOPE But I disagree. This is why OLPC failed. Like myself and many other edu-tech solutions, they assumed the problem and created a solution around that assumption. We must seek out the solutions from the people themselves and innovate based on their needs.
- I believe that technology plus people plus education equals hope.
- If you think back to what you know today where did that passion for information come from? A google search or your most inspiring teachers? While at the Unreasonable Institute, I was similarly hit with the realization through mentorship and fellowship that I may need to take this step back from MILLEE to realize the full potential of our product by taking a deep dive into the world of the people.
- So how do I plan to address this equation for hope? First, I’m going to bring in the people.
- I’m going to spend 6 months traversing South Asia and Central Africa talking to the people, teachers, students, parents, technologists. Understanding what they have failed at, have the most dire needs for and what their proposed solutions would be to those needs. I’ve got people lined up such as Teach for India’s Bombay and Pune slum schools, Gray Ghost Venture’s affordable private schools, Pratham’s vast network of government schools, UNICEF’s support in various Indian and African cities.
- Then, I’m going to take my experiences in Education + Technology and add that into the equation
- I’ve been the co-founder of MILLEE for the past year.
- I’ve developed a mobile solution for Microsoft’s Microfinance partner.
- I’ve educated young girls rescued from sex trafficking in English and Computer skills in Cambodia. I live and breathe education & technology. Alas, I’ve contacted and signed in three incredible movers and shakers in this space.
- We have Paul Polak.
- David Kyle
- Kentaro Toyama. These people believe in this mission, and what I’m hoping to find out is if you do too.
- 200 projects, 90 towns, 100’s schools & 1000’s of people. $ spent solutions that rely on assumptions solve the problems that exist. my research will save time and money from being wasted on future potential failures.
- Finally, with Amy Smith of MIT’s D-labs, I will culminate the tour with a conference, inviting experienced entrepreneurs who have substantially failed and succeeded in innovating solutions, but the new entrepreneurs, like ourselves, to exchange ideas, failures, and learn from one another.
- Imagine today we were convened here for a TED talk conference. You would stand up, discuss your story and how exciting your “idea worth spreading” is. But what you might leave out is all the times you failed along the way. Why don’t we have a conference that turns TED on it’s head, and embraces our failures as things to be proud of? If that were the conference we were present for today, I might tell you a bit about my experiences with MILLEE, Negroponte might talk about OLPC, Tony Hayward might talk about that little spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Then, we’d go back and figure out how to not make these mistakes again in the future. We might call this the Hindsight conference.
- During the conference we will try to determine how we can use our skills, our failures, and the people’s solutions, to bring to market a useful strategy to plug this systemic gap in the developing world. It it IMPERATIVE that we join hands TODAY to bring human answers to the questions the children of our world have. And what I need most is to hear your best ideas for how we can make this happen, together. (Also let me know if you want to attend the Hindsight conference.)
- Thank you sincerely, let’s talk, let’s learn, and let’s play.