Kiran Bir Sethi is a designer who became a teacher, a principal who grew into an education reformer, and subsequently morphed into a social entrepreneur. She uses the language of design to develop curriculum innovation and community-based social programmes.
1:41:32 pm
250,000 children infected with the “I can” bug to date.
Every child has a right to believe that they have the right to make the world a better place. And on that happy note, accompanied by soppy strings, we’re out of here to go eat happy lunch with happy shiny designers.
1:38:02 pm
When children do good, they also do well academically.
Another point – we need to design child-friendly cities. Not build more malls, but rather cycle paths. Kiran also gets cities to close streets for a day, to allow kids to play free.
Riverside school about redesigning education, effectively.
1:33:51 pm
Key to Riverside program is to replace word ‘or’ with ‘and’. So no learning in vacuum, but learning in conjunction with effect. For children to become aware of consequences, or at least how things interlink.
[I'm not getting the design thrust here, I must say. Methodology, certainly, and process, but how this relates to a Design Indaba is a little unclear.]
1:28:55 pm
Student wellbeing is embedded in real world, depends on adult learning and parent partnership.
Essentially, Design for Change is about giving kids the power. So the Design for Change international conference actually organized by kids. Budget to logistics to fruition.
1:26:06 pm
Koran talks about her own son, sent home from school with the lesson – you can’t choose to do things your way. She rails against redundant, old-fashioned pedagogy.
In India, 200 million school kids a year, only 18 million graduate from college. Big numbers, even of small percentage.
1:22:33 pm
Kiran Bir Sethi up, education activist from India. We could use a few more of those in SA.
She references Ghandi for Design for Change – 250,000 school kids making change happen across the world.
First example – kids in India visiting dump, and then all agreeing to only eat package food on Wednesdays. They then went to UN and other schools to spread their message of ‘no waste’.
1:06:12 pm
Design Indaba running about an hour late. So this live blog is now on Cape Town time. Watch this space.
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