As I discussed in this recent blog post http://www.danjjroberts.co.uk/2019/09/03/the-importance-of-subject-communities/ We will have our first ever Plymouth InspirED Conference #PlymouthInspirED in October and we are incredibly lucky to have two internationally renowned keynote speakers Graham Brown-Martin @grahamBM and Ross Morrison Mcgill @Teachertoolkit speaking.
This blog post gives an insight into what our colleagues will potentially experience from Graham’s keynote.
Who is Graham Brown-Martin? (Short bio taken from http://www.grahambrownmartin.com/)
Graham Brown-Martin is a leader in the field of foresight and anticipatory research, bringing together social, political and technological trends to consider how we might prepare ourselves for the future. He is the author of Learning {Re}imagined, the best selling book on global education published by Bloomsbury. He has enjoyed a 30 year career spanning the education, technology and entertainment sectors. He was the founder of Learning Without Frontiers (LWF), a global think tank that brought together renowned educators, technologists and creatives to share provocative and challenging ideas about the future of learning. He left LWF in 2013 to pursue new programmes and ideas to transform the way we learn, teach and live.
Today he runs an innovation and design consultancy to help international government agencies and other organisations navigate the future. He was recently retained for a 2 year engagement as the Chief Education and Product Officer for pi-top transforming the way we learn and solve challenges together.
I first met Graham in 2011 through Learning Without Frontiers (LWF) some of my students were up for a national youth award as a result of a project they had developed using Xbox for education in primary schools. One of my projects won the Secondary Innovation Award at the LWF that year beating off fierce competition from companies such as Sony and Channel 4 http://www.danjjroberts.co.uk/2011/01/26/saltash-net-scoops-major-awards-at-lwf11/
LWF was an absolutely brilliant global platform which came together as a huge educational event every year in London. It brought together the greatest minds, thinkers and innovators and discussed the future of education, there really hasn’t been anything like it since and I believe that it is something greatly missed by the education community.
What is LWF?
This is Learning Without Frontiers from Learning Without Frontiers on Vimeo.
What is Learning Re-imagined?
Back in 2012 I met up with Graham again at the Worldwide Innovative Summit for Education (WISE) in Qatar, Graham was presenting at the conference and was busy finalising plans for the launch of Learning Re-imagined. Graham was commissioned to author and direct this project that involved him travelling over 130,000 miles, visiting 18 countries on 6 continents including Cuba, Ghana, UAE, Singapore, India, China, USA, Lebanon, Jordan, Brazil, Vietnam, Qatar, UK, Canada, France, Sweden and Australia. He found himself in diverse surroundings; refugee camps on the Syrian border, crisis response schools after an earthquake in China, a village in a remote rural area in Bihar in India, Silicon Valley in the US and London’s Shoreditch to mention a few.
He visited schools, universities and other places of learning. He met and interviewed some of the world’s leading thinkers including Noam Chomsky, Sir Ken Robinson, Seth Godin, Sugata Mitra, and he met some of the world’s most progressive education leaders, practitioners, government ministers and reformers. The outcome was one of the best books about education that I have ever read, if you haven’t looked at this then please do.
What is Pi-Top?
More recently he has been inspiring the next generation of makers and disrupters. In August 2019 he successfully completed a 2 year engagement as the Chief Education and Product Officer for pi-top leading a global team of learning theorists, industrial designers and engineers to create programmes and technologies to radically improve the way we learn, live and solve challenges together through the medium of making (social constructionism).
I am sure that all our colleagues attending #PlymouthInspirED will be incredibly excited to listen to Graham, I am positive that he will make us all reflect and challenge our thoughts about education and what future learning could be like in our classrooms.
Recent reading…
Education and the fourth industrial revolution