Sunday, October 6, 2013

The Future of Learning in Zimbabwe

Last Thursday Patrick Kariwo and I ran an open course at the Royal Harare Golf Club.  It was something that we have wanted to do for a long time in order to present our recent discoveries about how the world of learning has moved on in recent years due largely to the advent of the Internet.   I wanted to present Patrick and myself as a ‘team’.  Patrick has such a wealth of experience of another side to the Zimbabwe environment that I tend to miss out on.   And conversely I have experience of another kind.  Together Patrick and I, I believe, are a strong team in the murky waters of the present Zimbabwe economy.

The course was a great success, mainly because of the quality of the participants – three from two of Zimbabwe’s senior schools both with outstanding reputations, while the others were from varied walks of life, all with an interest in developing their own capacity and capability.  The interaction between them was fast and furious.

Our thrust was to awaken them to the incredible new learning adventures to be found through the medium of the Internet and to bring an awareness to them of the opportunities and to the pitfalls that they could encounter.   We were aided by TED video presentations by Sugata Mitra and Sir Ken Robinson both of whom have some radical views on the future of education.

The feedback from participants has been valuable.  One negative comment from one participant about the ‘hanging together’ of the learning material and our presentation on Personal Branding we believe is relevant and in future we will drop the Personal Branding for other relevant learning material.

All other feedback has been extremely positive

The question now is what do we do next to bring about some positive changes in our educational system and to the business community, both of which can make major strides towards a better educated and experienced teaching staff as well a management of businesses in the country.

One suggestion was a forum for chatting afterwards.

So here is the forum!    My blogsite.

Welcome anyone and everyone to the future world of learning.  Your comments and your participation are required.   Let’s hear from you.