I was invited to ‘A Round Table discussion on the future of Education, Technology and Philanthropy’ organised by the Victor Pinckuk foundation.  The panel comprising the President Bill Clinton, President of the State of Israel Shimon Peres, Melinda Gates, Shelly Esque (President of Intel Foundation), Nicholas Negroponte (Founder One Laptop Per Child), John Sexton (President, New York University) and Jimmy Wales (Founder of Wikipedia).   This is a subject very close to my heart.  The long term vision for BraveNewTalent is to become a education platform that will bridge the gap between education and industry using social media.

I have pulled some of the hot quotes out:

Jimmy Wales ‘People now receive the majority of their education in an informal way’

Shelly Esque ‘Technology is just a tool.  But people need local content relevant to their lives – they need both Software and Hardware’.

Nicholas Negroponte ‘Need to distinguish teaching and learning.  In Afghanistan 25% of teachers are illiterate.  Another 25% are one grade ahead of the children.  We need to focus on the children themselves.  By getting a laptop to the children themselves you can get past the challenges of school.  Almost all children involved in one laptop per child are now teaching their parents to read and write’.

Melinda Gates ‘There is an opening of education.  We should encourage universities to put their content online.  There is great innovation happening with technology allowing people to download their lectures to get access to the best teachers.  We need an effective Teacher in every class room’.

Melinda Gates: ‘You should only go into an area if you can play a catalytic role.’

Knowledgedia.com – Social media for the new world of education

Listening to Melinda Gates and Jimmy Wales I have just come up with an idea. People are now consumers of education.  Students are paying for their studies and now have more choices than ever before.  What will the future look like?  Will there be teaching sites where students rate their teachers (like TripAdvisor for online teaching)?  The most popular teachers would get the most viewers.  Think back to your favourite teacher when you grew up.  Think how they inspired you – how they helped to make the person you are today.  Now imagine if as a consumer of education people will be able to find teachers of this quality online.  Teachers will compete for followers as on Twitter.  The worlds most inspirational teachers could then have class sizes of literally millions of children.

While the teacher is training the class  the students will be able to engage with each other in a feedback stream.  Support teachers could pick up their questions live on the feed.  Students could come together from every country in the world.

If anyone knows of a good site that allows teachers to train people online and in turn allow students to rate their teachers please let me know – lucian@bravenewtalent.com