Translator: David DeRuwe Reviewer: Claudia Sander
I'm going to talk about education and education linked to technology.
Did you know that today,
when a teacher starts a class,
and he gets to the middle of this class,
he has already lost the attention of 75% of the students in the room?
It is simple for us to realize this
if we look at how much technology has emerged in recent times
and become part of the lives of each one of these students.
Technology has created an abyss between educators and students.
While technology unites people who are far away,
it drives away people who are nearby.
As a student,
I experienced this every day.
I arrived in the classroom; my teacher started to teach a class
based on a book in which only he knew what was written.
Meanwhile, I had to follow that teacher's class on the board,
in my notebook and in my book.
Some teachers used slide projectors
so they didn't have to write on the board, and a few used multimedia resources.
If we take the slide projector from the classroom,
the educational process of today is the same as 20, 30, or 40 years ago.
Does it still work and attract the attention of students?
And my answer to this is: no.
We, children of the digital era, were raised connected.
We are accustomed to making searches
that bring results from all over the world.
We no longer fit into the box that is today's classroom.
We are dynamic
and that's why we cannot keep looking at a teacher in front of a board
for five hours in a row.
We are dynamic and we have many influences around us.
And this is not the teachers' fault.
They are simply following a teaching model
from which they also learned.
They are giving a class that they also attended.
The big challenge here is that teachers don't have the tools
to engage and attract students in our digital era.
I was at the end of my first year of high school and I started to realize
that technology evolved much faster in the field of entertainment
than in the field of education.
All of my friends and I were surrounded by technology,
only it was not being used inside the classroom.
Few people know this, but tablets have been around for more than a decade,
only due to deficiencies, as much with hardware as with software,
they only began to be successful after 2010
when they were presented again by a large technology company.
And, for many of us, the tablet is an excellent tool
for reading e-mails and accessing the internet.
Only, for me, it was more than this; the tablet was a possibility,
a possibility to create a tool that would engage students and teachers
and, above all, would bring students back to learning.
Think of the day to day functions of a class, of a student.
My day to day as a student was to carry my heavy backpack,
full of books and notebooks.
And we arrived at the classroom, my friends and I,
and we asked ourselves, "Where will I use the theory that I am learning?
How will this apply in my daily life?"
The truth is that I was tired
of having to memorize the books to take tests,
and no school wants to see its students memorizing books
because they know that students forget.
Schools want their students to learn.
Only, learning is a process
in which knowledge, skills, and competencies
are acquired or modified
through study, observation, experience and reasoning.
I could study,
but I couldn't observe or experience that knowledge.
So, I couldn't reason about the whole thing.
That is, all the students and I,
we had just one-fourth
of the resources needed to really learn.
And, without learning, how will each student question things?
And it is the questioning of each student that will break the next paradigms
and that will construct new theories.
This is fundamental.
Imagine if Santos Dumont had not questioned
if only things lighter than air could fly.
Did you know that, per day, only to produce notebooks in Brazil,
we use a half million liters of water?
Also, every day, 7,200 trees are cut down.
And reforestation?
Yes, these are what create the famous green deserts.
So, when I was 15 to 16 years old,
I had formed a vision of how technology could transform education.
I believe in an education that adapts itself to the reality of each student.
The educational process of each student is different.
I believe in an education that includes theory, and at the same time, practice.
Students in the digital era need to see things happening.
While a biology teacher talks about a cell,
I want a tool in front of me showing each organelle of that cell,
showing me its metabolism.
I want to interact with each structure.
I want to live that knowledge.
And everything should be designed in a process of steps.
Innovation needs to be implemented in steps; if not, it intimidates.
There is a long way to go after the first step.
Imagine a school without paper.
Imagine a reality where I leave aside that heavy backpack
and use a light, compact tool
that contains all my study materials:
books, notebooks, tests, homework,
everything in only one tool.
We are creating a scholastic center.
My teacher uses the same tool, and with one touch,
at the start of a class, he creates a virtual class
to which all the students get connected, are counted for attendance,
and receive all the materials that will be used during that class.
While my physics teacher, for example, talks about uniformly varied motion,
I see an athlete on a track who suddenly begins to run;
on one side, acceleration graphs are shown,
graphs of velocity versus time,
I see the formula of that movement and can interact with it.
While my biology teacher talks about the causes of a heart attack,
I see, in fact, every fat particle accumulating onto the artery walls.
While a geography teacher talks about topography,
I see, in fact, every rock in that environment,
I see vegetation,
and I am transported to that reality,
and it is all happening in a safe and focused environment.
The tablet is not being used here for students to access social media.
In fact, if during the class the student tries to access social media,
the teacher is immediately notified.
We need to make students focus when it's necessary.
Students also use their tablets to take tests.
The closed questions are corrected automatically
and the open questions are sent to the teacher.
If I try to cheat,
the teacher can see how many seconds I spent away from the application screen.
With this transformation,
we can reduce up to 95% of the paper used inside schools.
Imagine this on a global scale.
We are not talking about a very disruptive thing.
As I said, it is a gradual process.
It is not rational to use this enormous quantity of paper on books and notebooks.
In the near future,
classrooms will have 3D holograms
that will reproduce different realities inside the classroom.
Students will travel, inside that space,
to different places in the world.
They will be taken to the desert,
they will be taken to Siberia to see glaciers.
Teachers will transport students to an ancient war.
This is the secret about learning:
to live what you are teaching.
The tablet's frontal cameras will soon do optical readings
and will report during which contents
students are distracted and don't get all the content.
Teachers will be able to correct this.
Even the screen protectors, that protect the tablet screen,
will be automatically filled out beforehand.
This will make it possible for us to reproduce content in Braille,
bringing more access to education.
Basically, what technology can do
is humanize education.
I say "humanize" because the intention is not to separate, but to unite.
We are speaking the same language,
the students, the teachers, the parents and the family.
This is the power of technology:
to bring together.
So I was 15 to 16 years old and I had a big dream.
I had a vision; I knew what I wanted to do.
What then? Who would believe in this boy?
Then I got three investors for the platform,
who I honor very much
because they didn't believe only in that "shell" of a boy,
they believed in his vision and shared that vision of the future,
and it was never easy,
at any moment.
When we started,
we formed a team
and, in little time, the entire team left.
We were alone.
It hurts.
So we formed a second team
who also left.
Why would anyone work on the vision of a 16 year old boy?
The truth is I never saw myself as a 16 year old boy
because I had a vision; I knew what I wanted to do,
and I worked hard every day to put that vision into practice.
That was my purpose.
Today, the team has seven persons that work every day
with the clear vision of transforming education in Brazil and in the world.
What I want for you to get from this talk is:
education needs to change, and we can work to make that change.
But I also hope that each one of you
gets up from your chair and starts doing something positive for society.
We are together; I need you.
Each one of us has infinite potential,
and I'm sure that you are not giving 120%.
Nothing prevents you from creating something incredible
that everyone will be able to use.
My name is João Gabriel Alkmim,
today I am 19 years old,
and I work every day to bring the education of the future
a little closer to the present of our humanity.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)