Friday 29 April 2011

How to have an impact and how to make the world a better place through innovative learning?

"Let's come up with ideas to relief some of the harsh situations people around the world are facing!", this simple motivational sentence was launched at the MobiMOOC course.

The MobiMOOC course is in its fourth week and discussions and exchanges of ideas keep on going. This week’s facilitator of the course is David Metcalf from MetilLab in California, US. He offered a view on some of the latest mobile innovative edge projects ranging from sports to learn statistics, over free mobile medical applications, to aid relief and augmented reality. If you are interested, his webinar was recorded and if you are interested you can follow the four part YouTube movies here or via the depicted QR code below.

(QR code kindly provided by Lavender)

There was one specific thought that David raised which has given me gray hairs for the past few days, so I want to share it in the hope some of you can come up with some ideas.

David raised the idea that we need to look at collaborations between the academic world, companies, non-profit organizations and possible funding agencies to solve some of the world’s high priority issues, pointing towards the Millennium Goals that are only 4 years off and are still hot issues (primary education for all, gender equality,…)

The only problem is, what can we do? How can we make this beautiful globe a better place while using mobile technology? There have been many initiatives, and some really make a difference (empowering women, mobile literacy classes…) but what is within our power AND who is willing to go for a grand impact collaboration?