Generation Global - Empowering Young Learners

My call for this year is even stronger.  I want to ensure that the ‘big picture’ of adult capacity building initiative is reflected back into the classroom.   As Triska Ehssan Yaseen of the Balla Academy of teaching and training, Kurdistan’s first private school, says:

“Education has to be an all-round affair, we teach in English and Kurdish because a 360 ° education must have a global perspective. However, I believe this perspective needs to be linked back to spiritual social emotional and physical well-being of the individual child”.

In this year’s speech therefore I will be incorporating all the elements that have been at the adult end of globalised capacity building around a local identity, and apply them back in to school age learning.

The best way of learning is if you feel you are teaching. The best way of building understanding is through collaboration. This year’s showcase will therefore be Oddizzi.com, an online platform that allows children to share their experiences, strength and hope with each other. Much as Nina will be working with Microsoft’s Aspire Woman portal, to provide a hub for everyone to connect around a common goal, Oddizzi connects schools, teachers and young people across the world with a tangible approach to global citizenship (Oddizzi are keen to connect with more schools in Iraq, so in return for  feed-back they are happy to provide a term’s free access.)

When linked to our children, this type of innovative and applied Educational Technology can create direct economic growth. It empowers future nation builders and creates stakeholders because the wonders of the world seen through the eyes of a child can create a new, non-judgmental way of looking at things for their peers, but indeed also for us all.

The framework of Oddizzi has been created by educators, but increasingly students and their teachers are driving the population of content, based on their real experiences ; participating by co-creating. This need for authentic voices and material goes even further though, as Oddizzi is increasingly realising that the frame-work it offers can enable government organisations and private sector companies to communicate stories and material that will support their work. By being a hub for different kinds of organisations (from oil and gas to agriculture), Oddizzi is therefore able to make future generations of employees and suppliers aware of the needs of nations.