Translator: Cecilia Bianchi Reviewer: Patricia Aguirre
(Applause)
How many computers or mobile devices
do you imagine there are in the educational system?
There are about five million netbooks in the educational system.
How many children, in primary and secondary school,
are there in the educational system?
About eight million.
That means that 50% of students have a computer at hand.
This is a turning point
in what's happening in education today.
This turning point gives us many possibilities
to what may happen in the future of education.
I've been working for ten years at a technology company
which is closely linked to education
and which tries to transform education from its point of view.
I want to share with you a little bit about what I do
to see if we can all together imagine a different future.
Do you remember the first online newspaper?
The first online newspaper
was the digital version of what was done in an analog way.
There was not much more than articles.
Perhaps thanks to these texts which were beginning to appear
and to how tools and users evolved
today we have video, photographs, personalized information,
and above all, interactivity.
I personally believe
that the same is happening in education right now.
Today education is going through that transformation
and it's moving from analog to digital.
When I was six years old, my mother taught computer science
at the English school I attended.
That school had a Talent computers lab.
The Talent computer was a huge keyboard
which was connected to the television
and at most, you could connect a floppy disk drive to that computer.
That floppy disk drive used 5 1/4''
which today would be the equivalent to 200 SMS messages on a cell-phone.
Quite little if you imagine what could be done back then.
At that time you could connect a Talent to an interface.
Robotics could be done with that interface.
Perhaps my mother was ahead of her time back then.
Fortunately, nowadays, 24 years later,
there are hundreds of initiatives in our region or in the world
which are starting to use digital technologies in classrooms.
Connected teachers, students, mobile classrooms, boards,
whatever you can think of, there's a lot to do.
I personally believe that now teachers have an opportunity to make a change.
I gave a workshop in Chile
to some teachers we had chosen for a pilot program
for one of the first experiences we were going to do.
In those experiences, in this training we provided the teachers with,
they got very worried because they didn't know
how they would use technology in a pedagogic way, particularly.
The local government had chosen the pioneers.
The truth is they were very good at their subjects
but not at using technology.
That made them very upset, they said: we won't know how to use it.
That was five years ago, not so long ago.
Think about where you were five years ago.
It was very natural for you to use technology.
We were working with some other teachers,
with whom we started working a lot on training them.
Fortunately, with those teachers, at one of the schools,
we were able to interview a teacher who said:
"For us, this is the bridge
which helps us connect with students in the classroom once again."
That's very intense, very transforming, because if you think about it,
there are many teachers today
who don't know what to do to involve students in class,
so that children would want to study again.
One of the things we did with some teachers in Mendoza
was that they suggested children make a short film
about San Martin's Crossing of the Andes.
What happens in every school play?
They all want to be San Martin. Typical, right?
What did kids do?
They made this short film
but in each scene, one of the kids played San Martin.
So, it was a way to solve it.
Then they have music class.
How many of you remember your music class at school?
Teachers knew a few music scores.
We all learned the same ten songs on the flute and that was it.
Today, with the Internet, you can find any song you like
and teach it to children,
or find one that the children like.
What does this mean? That kids connect again with music.
From another point of view, maybe everybody likes Cumbia.
So, they'll have to teach a little more Cumbia.
It happens.
And biology.
Biology has always been an eternal issue.
Who hasn't read about photosynthesis?
We've all read it.
We can now find animation or a video
which makes photosynthesis a little more fun.
But apart from making it more fun,
we can look for an expert who makes children fall in love with biology.
That's amazing, right?
I think this brings about a whole series of futures, turning points.
At these turning points, there's an obvious path.
This obvious path is that all teachers take technology
just like they took blackboards, books, any technology you can think of,
at any time of education you choose,
because it's not just about digital technology.
Or they may reject it.
What if teachers say: Let's not use computers.
It's a shame, computers are already there.
Why wouldn't we use it?
The truth is, this gives us a third possible future.
They can't reject it.
This possible future is that children, communities, or schools,
take the device they want to teach with.
And with that device they choose to teach,
we can have a much more personalized learning environment/
We have crowd-founding or crowd-sourcing,
we could have crowd-learning, so to speak.
And there, we have Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is one of the best examples of this.
All Internet users can write what they want on Wikipedia.
Another user corrects it.
So, we're all teaching one another.
That's what makes Wikipedia so authentic.
Because it's written just like history, every day.
I think information technology in class
is something like the explosion of book-printing.
In the 16th century, people started writing books
in the languages we all speak
or the ones which were spoken back then.
That caused a very rapid increase in the number of people who read.
Therefore, now everybody has the right to read and write.
With that right to read and write,
why wouldn't we think about personalized learning today?
How many children wander about the educational system
until they find that seed,
that trigger that engages them and brings them back to class?
I don't have kids yet.
I think it's a call for action for all of us in general,
because we all have someone in the educational system,
a son or daughter, a relative, a cousin, an aunt or uncle, a teacher, anyone.
We have to bring these teachers in, these educators at any level,
so that they share their experiences but also seek experiences,
because there's a lot to do.
This is a point that starts today.
In eleven years, the children who started school today,
that mandatory period, they'll be finishing it.
How could we not make the best of that journey?
I believe that these children's future begins today.
As you can see in these images, these classes are being taught today.
Thank you.
(Applause)