Spreading Knowledge

Spreading Knowledge is solving the problem of inequities in education due some objective factors: distance to schools, poverty of the families, low interest in self- improving, poor educational background. 

It consists of an educational program designed in order to reach as many students as possible, to capture their interest and to improve their capacities and finally their lives. The program has 5 components: 

1)  A highly performing  e-learning platform

2)  A good and coherent syllabus taking into account the students needs, age and interests, zonal specific and future work opportunities. 

3)A net of well instructed teachers in online teaching

4)A net of tutors

5) A psiho-social component

 The students must be taught how to learn, now and in the future by themselves, the educational background of their future families will be higher and the way they report to other people, to environment, their ethic and reasoning will be better.

There are many discriminatory factors in education that have to be overcomed in order that every child could access high quality education. Some children have to work, other children live very far from the schools, have poor families, low interest in education or self-improving. The statistics give huge numbers of uneducated people. Education can change people from many points of view as attitude towards other people, ethic problems as "to steal or to work?", attitude towards the environment. Let us think how education improves lives: if X is an educated person, so probably will be his 3 children,  9 grandsons  27 great grandsons and so on. The impact of quality education is considerable for the future of our world.

1 The lessons will be live on the platform and organized as a permanent dialogue teachers-students.  Lessons will be available  on the platform to be accessed any time. The evaluation of students' performance will be done both on specific topics  and summative evaluation (at least 3 times a year). The students will complete their tests on the platform and be able to see what they must do to improve their learning.

2 The syllabus will be established in order to meet the students needs and accordingly with the necessities of the society they live in. It will be organized  on levels and a student must complete a level to pass to the next one.

3 The teachers working in defavorised regions and speaking the native languages  will take courses of efficient online teaching. In their turn, they will prepare other teachers and so on in order to obtain a net.

4 In this process will participate a net of tutors selected from the students who finished the educational program. They will help the actual students with their learning problems and will be good examples for them.

5 The psyho-social component: education changes people in better and their interest in self-improving.

This solution is design to serve children coming from poor families, living in defavorised zones or far from schools.  It offers them access a high quality education and overcome this discriminatory factors. Spreading Knowlege offers a possible answer of how an educational program can be organized in order to reach as many students as possible, with no age limit, to capture their interest, improve their knowledge,  capacities  and finally their lives. The process of learning  is not the only component of this program, but the intellectual education of the students. They must be motivated to learn by answering to 3 fundamental questions:

Why to learn?

Possible answers: To understand the world you live in and to be able to improve it.

To use your skills in good ways and to improve yourself, to become a better person.

To have a better life, a better educational background for your family, to escape from poverty.

2 How to learn?

Permanently,  all the life long. The world we live in permanently changes and people have to adapt as well as possible to these fast changes.  A student has to know how to learn, to have his own learning style, he must know to choose competent  sources of information. He must be taught to use his skills and aptitudes in order to obtain greater benefits from studying. 

3 How do I know I am well with my studies? 

The best feed-back is how a student receives new knowledge basing on his existing skills, how he or she applies what he/ she has learned to solve problems or problematic situations not only in school  but in daily life.

The lesson have to be permanent dialogues between teacher and students. The students must be challenged to think, to create, to find answers to the questions.

They must be convinced that they learn for themselves and every effort they are doing during the learning process will be rewarded.

 Spreading Knowledge  is designed to offer equitable learning conditions for children living in defavorised regions or having a low educational background due to poverty of their families,  low interest in education and self-improving. The solution, as it was described above, consists in 5 components, each of them having a decisive role in the learning process, and all is needed to implement it is an internet connection and a tablet to work on. The lessons should be interactive, so, both teachers and students must to be able to speak/ write in the application. It can really improve lives of target population. 

The Spreading Knowledge idea came into my mind while I was designing my own on-line lessons. The teaching methods used for  a small number of students can be extended to a big number maintaining the quality of education. After 15 months of on-line teaching  my students improved their results about 20%. When analyzing the reasons for this increase, I realized that teaching on-line is the most powerful. Seeing the MIT SOLVE challenge, I thought what is to be done to adapt this experience to a great number of learners, how the work must be projected, with what human and material resources. I analyzed each idea separately and how the 5 components of the Spreading Knowledge work together in a coherent system. I think it is helpful for defavorised young people who need much help in their education.