Watch the video of Team Thailand
We think that the future of education will be play based. We started asking why it is that students are so uninterested in what they do in school and that led us to ask why we had to do what we were told when it clearly didn’t matter to us and won’t be useful later.
Team Thailand did a very captivating, and beautifully made video, focusing on play-based learning. Find out how they look at learning and education in the 21st century.
We then thought that learning was so much more when we were little. No one told us what to do, we got to play, and as long as we didn’t hurt anyone with our words or our hands, everything was ok. We got to stack blocks and run around. We learned to share and be kind. That’s really all you need in life! (We were inspired by the famous poster by the way).
Our idea is that if education is play-based, we will learn what we want, when we want, and be as creative as we want. We will be able to manage our own time and get together when we want to. We even thought that it would be great if we set our own hours and times. Why do we have to have a schedule? What if school were open 7 days a week and we could go whenever so long as we got done what we needed to? We would learn self-management and explore our interests.
We would also have a campus that was wide open because we would be in touch with nature and we could experience nature. We though that the best way to make students care about nature is to have them experience it and so we would play outside a lot.
We also thought that technology would change so much that we could communicate with people from all over the world. Education could then connect so many different people with similar interests and just like with games, we could connect when we wanted.”
We were curious to know more about the individual team members.
We were curious to know more about the individual team members.
Tell us about yourselves and the school that you are attending.
“Hi! I’m Nico Freud, an eleventh-grade student studying at PREM in Chiang Mai, Thailand. My main interest is hospitality, more specifically sustainability in hospitality. I’m also interested in a number of other things, such as airplanes and space engineering. “
What is your motivation to be part of this Hackathon?
“Being a student, education plays a massive role in my life. The way I am being educated influences everything from my interests to my strength and weaknesses. Unfortunately, I don’t get to chose what I study so most of the time I’m bored in class. By doing this hackathon, I hope to put my ideas out there and hopefully influence, even if it’s in a small way, my teachers teach me.”
What do we need to keep, develop, and trash, within education and learning, as they are 2021?
“Definitely PowerPoint presentations. They are used way too often. If I’m producing less than 3 power points every week, that’s considered a good week. We also need to get rid of teachers choosing what we study. I feel as if student choice should be the leading decision-making tool with which subjects are chosen and HOW they are chosen. This is already a thing to some extent but is nowhere near developed enough.”
How shall we make sure that young people are more heard in the context of the reimagining of education?
“Young people will be the educators of the future. Whether teachers like it or not. They are also the students now. Because education is constantly changing they are the people to ask about our current education system. Not people that went to school 30 or 40 years ago. “
Team member two in team Thailand.
Tell us about yourselves and the school that you are attending.
“Hi, my name is Steve Parfitt. I am half English, half Thai. I enjoy engineering and Formula 1. I currently live in Thailand where I have lived for 14 years of my life. I currently study at Prem Tinsulanonda International School which is an IB school in northern Thailand with a campus and mission statement focused on developing the leaders of our future and sustainable development.”
What is your motivation to be part of this Hackathon?
“I enjoy using my brain to solve problems and mould the future to be a better place. One of the things I enjoy the most is MUN and part of MUN is critical thinking. This Hackathon will require me to use a lot of critical thinking and I feel like I will thoroughly enjoy it.”
What do we need to keep, develop and bin, within education and learning, as they are 2021?
“I think that critical thinking and knowledge assessment is one of the most important things to be taught to anyone. I also believe that classes such as Theory of Knowledge where students study philosophy are very important. I feel like tests, comparative ranking and punishment is something that should be absolutely scrapped as it does not help students develop as people whatsoever.”
How shall we make sure that young people are more heard in the context of the reimagining of education?
“I think that young people should be largely part of the development of the education systems around the world as they should be responsible for what they want to learn. Nobody knows the self better than the individual self so why should adults say what young kids want and need.”