Ayesha Khanna - Externships: Why Partnerships between corporations and schools is the best way to teach STEM #futureschools

Ayesha Khanna speaking at Future Schools
Khanna began by talking about the future of work. 47% of jobs will be automated.

Khanna is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Keys Academy and innovative enrichment hub who champions the concept of "externships" which allow secondary students to apply their learning to 21st century industries.

Our new colleagues and competitors are robots.

Our new tools are becoming increasing sophisticated and are reducing in cost.

I am not interested technology, I am interested in giving young people creative confidence. I LOVE this quote. Consider it stolen and appropriated.

Our new jobs are going to involve wearable technology and virtual reality.

We are going to live differently. Khanna gave the example of designer babies.

How we work will be different we are going to see "the rise of the connected freelancer" (another goody - thanks Ayesha!).

Telepresence is going to become increasingly normal.

Smart nano-workers. For example 'HourlyNerd' where you can pitch projects to freelance projects around the world.

We also face a future where cyborgs will become a reality and death is regarded as an illness or problem that can be solved.

Consider the driverless car or driverless trucks, how many people are impacted as a result of this, how many people lose jobs?

 Khanna then spoke of John Seely Brown's concepts of homo sapien, homo faber and homo ludens. I need to get my head around this, but in the mean time here's an explanation I found - thanks Google.
Source: http://www.johnseelybrown.com/rlcspan.pdf
Khanna then talked of her concept of "externships" rather than students going in to a company and businesses not knowing what they are doing, students instead tackle a real problem that the company is tackling and students work on this outside of the company. Students still have to understand, deeply, the constraints of the company and the work on coming up with solutions. Another freakin' awesome idea. Mental note - appropriate this idea. Now.

This makes so much sense. They may not solve the problem, but they are exposed to the market, they develop an understanding of business and engage in authentic learning and genuine problem solving. What a bloody good example of win win!

Watch our Larry Rosenstock, I think I have a new educrush.

The are so many parallels between The Keys Academy and The Mind Lab, I love that Khanna even makes the same claim as Frances Valintine - these spaces only need to exist for a period of time. When schools catch up, they won't be needed.

I suspect it may take a little while to catch up with awesome women.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The National, Act and NZ First Coalition and what it means for education

Image
Photo Source Yesterday saw the announcement of a new government which came with a raft of new policies and ministerial appointments. The Minister of Education, as was expected, is National MP Erica Stanford. More interestingly was the number of policies and priorities two parties who only collectively gained 15.5% of the votes managed to get across the line.  The common threads across both Act and NZ First included some good old-fashioned back-to-basics, a focus on compulsory attendance and cracking down on truancy, increased focus on academic achievement and shifting the fees-free policy from the first of uni to the last. To be fair, none of these represent much of a departure from what National was touting anyway.  The interesting and, at times, worrying changes suggest Luxon was willing to let both Act and NZ First foist their ideologies on innocent schools and students for the sake of a "strong and stable" government.  Unsurprisingly Act got Partnership Schools across the
Read more

National, Act and the age of standardisation in education

Image
Chris and David discussing the joy of testing. Whilst we are still awaiting the outcome of special votes, it is pretty safe to assume that we are staring down the barrel of a National / Act Party government that will be bringing a very distinct flavour to the education landscape. Below is an outline of what each party promised for education.  Front and centre is a focus on "back to basics" and what looks like a whole lot more standardisation (from both National and Act) and testing to ensure we are all "teaching the basics brilliantly". Those of us in schools know that standardisation isn't necessarily the answer and testing didn't seem to turn the dial in the past either. That is the trouble when policies are designed to satisfy parent voters who just want their kids back in school and succeeding.  In their 100-day plan, National is promising to do the following in the education space: Require primary and intermediate schools to teach one hour a day each of
Read more

Assessment in the Age of AI - Claire Amos

Image
Below are the slides I shared at NZQA's 'Assessment in the Age of AI' symposium.   This is my brief overview of how we are approaching AI at Albany Senior High School and some of the concerns and some of thoughts I have about the topic.  In short, I am worried we are so damn busy we aren't giving it the attention it needs. I also worry that leaders will try and ignore and/or attempt to ban and that this ignores the fact that Pandora's Box is well and truly opened and this thing is developing faster than we can imagine and is increasingly woven into platforms and tools we already use. We are sitting at a fork in the path where both options lead to a world fundamentally altered by AI and we need to choose whether to work with it or stick our heads in the sand. That decision is going to have a tangible impact on how well our young people are going to be equipped to thrive in the future.  We need to embrace AI, and approach it with curiosity, criticality and care.  One
Read more