City Learning Centres Conference 2007

Speaker: Dr Baldev Singh, Director of E-Learning, Imagine Education Ltd

Dr Baldev Singh kicked off the first of two keynote presentations at this year’s City Learning Centres Conference. Dr Singh himself is the Director of e-Learning at Imagine Education, based in Bristol.

Dr. Singh opened with The Borderless Flat Classroom Experience referring to Thomas L. Friedman’s book “The World is Flat“. He described how technology is breaking down barriers worldwide which is he felt is also the case in Education. This breaking down of barriers is responsible for a “flattening process.”

ICT has changed teaching and learning around the Globe and Dr Singh highlights a blueprint for change which includes a new approach in training and CPD as well as encouraging creativity.

The Schools of the Future project which Imagine Education are working on in Singapore and Malaysia are heavily benefitting from “leapfrogging”. Leapfrogging is where the Schools learn from other existing Schools of the Future based in Philadelphia, Sweeden, Finland, Taiwan and Korea. The project also involves collaborations with companies such as Google, Yahoo, Disney, Microsoft, IBM, Apple and the list goes on. The modeling process of these schools also would be looking at CLCs – so beware of spelling mistakes on your websites!

Dr Singh suggests that the only way to cope in this world of infinite content is to focus on context and if a picture is worth a thousand words then a video is worth more. It is no surprise that Dr Singh sees the age of Digital Video adding value across the curriculum to existing content, as well as integrating the use Podcasting and Blogging.

Dr Singh who feels, that for teachers, the days of Microsoft PowerPoint training are over describes CLCs as an “oasis for students where students can really engage with technology”.

Video: Click the play button to start the video of this presentation!

Download: Powerpoint slides (14.2 MB)