"Universal Education" was the wish that was generated within class. In this initial discussion, we'd like each of you to comment at least three times between now and class next Wed. The focus of this discussion is to advance the concept of "Universal Education" while keeping in mind your roles (prototypers, storytellers, 100% committee). What are ways to make the wish possible today? Project yourselves 100 years into the future and imagine what could make the wish possible.

educatetomorrow.org - "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world" Nelson Mandela

How about e-learning to help improve access to education (almost) everywhere?

Can we help improve access to knowledge around the world through e-learning and open resources online such as iTunesU or edX? - edx.org, "The Future of Online Education, for anyone, anywhere, anytime"

"With the help of donor funds and debt relief, in 2002 Tanzania was able to make primary education free for all Tanzanian children. Almost overnight, an estimated 1.6 million children enrolled in school and by 2003, 3.1 million additional children were attending primary education." endpoverty2015.org, Goal #2 "Universal education"

Can we help develop the resources for students to gain access to free online courses from universities or reduce the cost for them to go to open universities? openculture.com

Our heroine has always been big on universal education, so wherever she goes, she makes herself a zealot for the cause. Yet it recently occurred to her that "universal education" appears second on the United Nation's list of global development goals for the millennium. Ending poverty and hunger come first. She accepts that this order of priorities makes sense-- given the crabbiness she experiences in those moments when she tries to fight for universal education without food. How not to make this a losing battle? Thoughts?

Good thinking. Can education improve poverty, too? Think agriculture, entrepreneurship... tech can help, like Chris Andersen's flip this lesson or khanacademy.org or skillshare.com. But how do we reach those who only have cell phones as access to the www? How do we 'make place' for education in people's lives, think cultural obstacles. How can our solution reach everybody? How can we think wider than what exists already? What does it take to innovate? #edtech #edu #bldgstoryworlds

As a prototyper, I'll first post some of the thought processes we went through while making our decision to choose Universal Education.
Keeping the Fuller quote in mind, we knew we had to cross some things off immediately. "Universal Education" was actually the first of the three we chose out of the thirty. Everyone in the prototyping group seemed to come to immediate consensus over this point: education fixes maybe 90% of the wishes on that list.
This line of thinking is reasonable. If people are educated, there is less chance that they will be prejudiced, drink infected water, or do anything else to the detriment of human life. But it is important that we qualify what universal education means, before we talk about how to implement it.

So, qualifying universal education means this:
It has to be TRULY universal. And it has to be a WELL-ROUNDED education.
Universal means for available anybody who wants it. With/without Internet, money, capability, or ease of access, universal means that people with the desire to have an education.
That education must be well-rounded. That means that you can't teach people all over the globe a standard K-12 philosophy. Teaching people, really educating them, means giving them mosquito netting and explaining how to purify water systems. It means creating a curriculum to match individual cultures and communities.
On a more concrete level, universal education also means free college. Anyone seeking out higher education shouldn't be barred.

Seems that a central prerequisite for the prototype will be integrating many systems within an agile meta system? Can a 'people teaching people' system be as good as schools with trained educators? If not, how can this be achieved? Is it desirable?
One another note: another new school that's just being announced: The School of Emerging Media and Tech in collaboration with skillshare.

Currently, there are more than 75 million children around the world of primary school age who are not in school - en.wikipedia.org.
If the second United Nations goal will be completed by 2015 and all the kids around the world will start getting education then 100 years from now civilization will have bright and educated nations all over the world since all generations will know how to fight their struggles and direct their energy towards creating better environment.

Ok Vyasar, that's clear. So trying now to consider how this definition of "universal education" can begin to shape our story. Maybe we can think in terms of dispatching local educators who are sensitive to the interests and needs of the communities they serve? About centralizing this effort somehow, or giving local leaders ultimate decision-making power...

To talk about "Universal Education", I'd like to talk about the education condition in China, which I have learned and maybe much more familiar. Since in China there is a large gap between developed areas and rural places, this can be a sample model of our discussion.
I think there r 3 main problems in education here.
Firstly, the fee & tuition. Although the basic education in China (including rural areas) is free, for elementary and junior middle schools (not high school). However, this education level is still far from adequate. So most students become back a farmer without knowing anything about real technologies.
For an ideal Universal Education, I think, we should prolong the free education.

Secondly, the talents. I have been to a junior middle school in Ningxia Province, China. That place is really poor. What I felt was that teachers there are far worse then those in my school, except some voluntary teacher from larger areas.
So, where can we find more well qualified teachers to help these areas? How many of them are willing to sacrifice for this? Maybe we have to find more candidates whose life aim is to heal the world.

The last issue focuses on the ones who r educated. What shall we do for those who hate learning? Most of them are in a good condition, but they truant. They might be the potential threat of our society even if we achieved Universal Education.
So should this issue also be included?

We also should consider the change to be interesting for everyone, which will require good teachers, equal opportunities and free access. Julie's idea about e-learning was great but how can we manage that starting today?

Like Paul said, one of the big problems with universal education is resources. I like the idea of e-learning, too; one great teacher can reach more through online practices than with the limitations of a physical classroom.

What if funds allocated towards education--traditional e.g. college, professional, and practical e.g. clean water--were put towards some sort of public electronics facility in different regions around the world, so people could use computers there to access this kind of e-education?

It seems to me that there would be two approaches to something like universal education. The first would be to reach the people who are the worst off, e.g. rural Tanzanian villages without any schools, and bring them all to a level that, while not considered great, is acceptable as the minimal level of education to function practically within that specific environment. Then go from there and repeat the cycle, taking the next group of the people who are now considered the worst off, and bring them up a level education-wise. (I think Rawls made an argument like this somewhere.)

The other approach would be to skim the barrel (I think that's the term?), taking the people who are not well-educated but closest to succeeding and bringing them to a great level of education, then taking the next group of people closest to succeeding, etc. and working your way from top to bottom. Each approach means a different use and allocation of available resources and different short- and long-term outcomes. Short term for the first: more people have access to lower quality education. Short term for the second: fewer people (still more than now) have access to superior quality education. I can see e-learning, with the right structures in place, bridging the gap between the two.

Off of what Toyin said about our "heroine" being big on education... we could also go the opposite way with a character who is a clean slate and lacks all sense of what education is and how to access it. That way we can tell our story through lessons to our main character. The character can then reflect on what she has learned and how that is immediately improving her life.

Madeleine, we totally could. And building upon what others have said, it might be useful to consider the circumstances of the people we're educating. Are we taking a "top down" approach to determining what we teach/give them? Or are local leaders drawing from their own knowledge and resources to let us know what they need? I guess if we plan for a goal to have reached in 100 years, it would be getting everyone to a point where they feel they have access to resources for improving the quality of their lives. Whether that means access to mosquito netting or higher institutional education. Our anti-hero might be a group (or individual) that considers this a waste of time and tries to frustrate our effort somehow... Wondering what others think.

It would be interesting if we could figure out a thread where our character learns thing 1 in place 1 and goes to place 2 to learn thing 2 while also teaching thing 1 to the people of place 2. Does that make sense? Then we can get a sense of what each location has to learn as well as what they have to teach.

That's a great idea. :)

I would like to expand a little on what Paul has mentioned before. Along with the people who would be against education, even geographical landscape will be amongst the villains we will have to fight. There are still areas without electricity and transportation. So for such areas internet will be out of the question. There are some campaigns and organizations that provide help for children living in such areas, so getting in contact with these organizations to see what can be done could be helpful, both because of their experience with kids and parents and their knowledge of the needs and attitude of people.

There are also some local boarding schools which provide free primary and secondary education. However despite all these organizations, donations, free schools and everything there are still kids who cannot go to school. Amongst the reasons for this- in addition to culture, religion, tradition or being a girl, I can count “invisible children” too. What I mean is that some kids are not even legal citizens of their country. They don`t have identification cards, they are legally nonexistent. So one of the things our heroine can do may be detecting these invisible kids?

To play the villain: It's already been brought up that universal education is not #1 among the UN millennium goals. Perhaps this is for good reason. As university goers ourselves, I feel that we're more inclined to be optimistic about the effect of education. Reading the news, I see: lawyers in Cairo taking jobs as taxi drivers, Cuban doctors defecting to the US to take wage-labor positions. Students in the poverty-riddled provinces of Thailand study hard at English only to end up among the workers (victims?) of Bangkok's sex tourism (which caters to English-speaking foreigners).

continued from last post...

By demanding education and assuming the rest (poverty/hunger) will peter out, are we any different from those economists that tout the effects of trickle-down wealth? (Not to be all 1% about it, but we've seen the (unequal) results of that argument).

Some previous posts have addressed this, but what I'm trying to say is there needs to be a foundation upon which we can throw our blanket education. Students shouldn't have to worry about whether they'll collapse in a starved fatigue at school. And they should know that there are work positions out there that merit their education, such that, in the example of Cuban doctors working in Havana's tourism district for better pay, it isn't all for naught.

I believe that universal education cannot be one form of education that applies universally to everyone on earth but rather that everyone on earth receives the education they need to advance his or her own life to the next level and beyond. For some that means a traditional grammar school education that leads to a university. For others that means learning to read so they can get a higher paid job, or learning the difference between poisonous berries and non poisonous berries so their friends and family stop dropping dead. Every person need to learn something and the education provided should be a personal reflection of each individuals needs and goals.

The Khan Academy has been brought up. I believe bottom-up model s like this are the way to go. Universal education entails giving students access to teachers, of course, but what's also necessary is allowing teachers access to students. Education is often stymied by bureaucracy . In NYC, for example, in order to teach public high school one needs to have earned (or be earning) a Master in Education. Although I believe that it's important to encourage pedagogy, this practice also limits the field of qualified teachers. Isn't it reasonable to assume that a student who studied math for his/her master's is equally (if not more?) capable of teaching high school math as someone who studied teaching?

The big problem that I can see with implementing something like universal education is the penchant to bureaucratize, standardize. We should encourage bottom-up education. I've learned as much from my parents as I ever have in schools. Let's broaden our use of 'education.'

@Vyasar
It's definitely critical to consider the quality of education in addition to access. Even in a country such as the US, where educational coverage is almost comprehensive, there are wide disparities in school quality. Also, education would need to be tailored to the specific economic and cultural context of each country or region.

I think the UN is actually highlighting the importance of "Universal Education" in the MDGs, by placing it 2nd only after "End Poverty and Hunger". The two issues are interconnected as the general assumption is that education will lead to more economic opportunities and better living standards. Education and basic needs development can happen concurrently, each magnifying the effects of the other.

@Joyce
There's a fairly amount of innovation and experimentation happening right now in the field of distant learning. Like many other have mentioned, a digial education strategy would necessitate providing access to the relevant technology.

Just to be clear education does not have to be in any kind of formal setting with one teacher and a classroom full of kids. Education is any instance where knowledge is spread from a source to a recipient. Tutoring students without first earning a degree is still educating as is showing someone how to find water sources where they live. The need for education is everywhere and that what we need to address. It's not just highly trained teachers with a lesson plan; it's ever individual reaching out to share knowledge they have with someone who needs it.

Precisely. Vaysar clarified in his second post that our Prototypers meant to consider "universal education" in terms of access to better life outcomes. So that our goal in the end is to give students access to a *range* of free resources for improving their lives. These resources will depend on what the students need, or claim to need, in order to inprove the quality of their lives.

*improve.

People have posting a lot of links to online resources, some of which explain teaching methodologies, others which offer some way of school via the internet. Given the word limit on this comment, I want to try to be as clear as possible on this subject.
The Internet, as it exists, is not the solution to universal education.
We live in a world where there are villages without Internet connections, 4G signal, etc, etc. The Internet offers no solution to them. It is not convenient for them. It is not the easiest thing for them
So, if we are planning on using an IT infrastructure to solve this issue, we're going to need a way to spread the Internet in a way it's never been spread before.
Otherwise, this project has to be implemented offline.

Internet learning might not be right for every individual on the planet but for some people it is precisely the solution. People are offering links to possible options, not links that will solve everyone's problem everywhere. Universal education does not mean one single plan that works universally, it means getting education to every person without exception. The form of the education will differ depending on the individuals needs.

I agree with Madeleine. It's obvious that for most people on the planet, Internet is the most efficient and lowest-cost mean to achieve better education. We don't need to give it up just because some are not accessible to it.
If so, our problem came into two. One is how to utilize Internet for those who can access, while another is how to spread education to those who cannot.
with Internet: It's much easier. I think we can establish a platform that converges all educational resources. We can also use some resources that already exist and just provide links and instructions, while develop other sections that make our platform works better.
without Internet: It's a tough task that we have to work out together and we are now working on it.

Definition of Education:
the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.

dictionary.reference.com
en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org

Mostly it's about one generation teaching the next in a way that improves the way our children interact with society, and also broadening the scope of knowledge that local communities have access to.

Yo prototypers wassuuuup! I'm picking up on the convo we had about www (& tech?) only being relevant for some. A few semi-colons on why www could be, should be, will be relevant for all, especially for (universal) education. Www fosters many to many communication; convergence of all forms of media simultaneously - video, books, phone calls, etc all at our fingertips; consumers become producers; it's cheap; hell we could list more benefits than times I've stacked it on my snowboard - that's a lot. Maybe www would just be the framework for our prototype, people adapt / subvert tools for their own context anyway. "Technology becomes socially interesting only once it has become technologically boring." @cshirky
Word.
e-see you soon!

I believe that the targeted audience for this experience should be as wide as possible but to be realistic, I believe that it’s mostly students (and even maybe undergrads) that will play (others may not have to time to go through this experience). I think that in order to reach the widest audience, we must first hook our potential users by providing incentives that will intrigue them to learn more about our project (we could for example posted QR code with the word “Help” all around campus to intrigue students and make them want to learn more – and hopefully solve - this mystery). Interesting locations to target could be the ones with high foot traffic such as campus walk, Joe’s coffee or the library. Any other suggestions?

Also, this experience needs to be interesting for the participants and should have both entertainment value and learning potential if we want the users to keep playing (and learning). To this extend, we could have some partnerships with various game corporations to make this experience more fun for our audience. What do you think guys? Who else would be interesting to have as partners?

How about promoting our experience through the campus communication channels: Columbia website, The Spectator newspaper...? Do we want to advertise this outside campus?

I strongly agree with Julie on the issue that we have to project some incentives that attract participants into our experience. And we should keep them in mystery until the end, which I think is the basic rule for all storytelling tasks, as well as interactive experiences.

The locations can be various. For example, we can install some files and hints in a certain computer in a library, then give the participants hints to locate that computer and find the file we installed. Or we can also utilized the resources near campus(if possible), like restaurant, supermarket, stationary stores, grocery stores and so on. We can try to discuss and cooperate with them in the experience. Simultaneously, this is a kind of AD for them. A double-edge sword!

Furthermore, of course we have to utilize all the methods we can to propagate the experience. Edu website, Facebook and Twitter, etc. Even try to ask officers to forward emails to students... Digital Posters and our own website can both be really cool.

Ah. To mention that I can help develop a website if u guys like this idea. Maybe we can talk about this in later classes.

For places on campus: the library and teacher's college seem like obvious choices.

I like the idea of using platforms that students are using every day already, such as on campus computers, venues, and press and media in circulation. Then we're reaching the Largest number of people and allowing those who would be interested in the project to gravitate to it on their own. How likely is it that these establishments would allow us to use their platforms for our project, though?
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I'm not in the new branch yet, but I didn't want this idea to slip my mind.
I think we should incorporate all the colleges/universities in the city, esp NYU- develop an intercollegiate competition. It's not just a game- it's school pride!

I totally agree with Laura that library and teachers college could be great. Maybe we can use the International House and Sakura Park as well, but I am not sure if we could be allowed.

For the target audience, I realized somehow I always had university students in my mind, maybe because we have considered Columbia as a setting, but I also agree with the idea that it would be great to have more participants from different age groups.
(munire)