Integral learning

We are in the middle of a technological revolution and changes on everything are happening, it mean a big opportunity to make radical and good changes on the people and his quality life, but there are some big risks also, and need efforts from all the sectors of all societies, break the inertia of the actual paradigms is not an easy task to do. With the Fab lab movement we find a huge opportunity to become real the Papert's constructionism ideas, we have adapted them to the mexican context, with many programs developed, but this is just the beginning, we are going to design and build a functional platform dedicated to educational connections, experiences, methods, tools and more, with spanish, and indigenous language resources. The philosophy behind this development knows that the important skills are not technical, but the human attitudes and aptitudes that can be generated by.

A healthy educational system is a fundamental problem of the societies, it is just a link on the social chain cycle, it is a complex problem, and has many branches, and what you think can be the fundamental problem, also it's just a link of the chain spiral. The quality of this depend of the context of the communities.

We can highlight some of the problems of mexican systems:

• Passionless people. Many people live without the awareness of why they do what they do, few people choose following his curiosity and passion, and sometimes they finish studying something they don't like and working unhappiness, but most important, many can't recognize this situation.
• Obsolete systems. When you don't have passion on what you do may arise a steady-state of knowledge, not good news on a dynamic world, certainly we don't have to stress with the velocity of the world, but we should maintain curious about how we do our actions, and modify them when necessary.
• Vicious circle. We grow on obsolete systems that create passionless people who make obsolete systems. This is not, healthy, safe and sustainable. Generate violence, corruption, disease, pollution, unhappiness. 

This is the situation of many mexican communities. 

Our final users are rural schools and his people, we have some insights about their lifestyle, there are language, economic and cultural issues. We will apply a design thinking approach for understand their real needs, and see how this platform (and network) will be truly functional. 

Also the platform can be used by other schools from everywhere, but the contents gonna have spanish and indigenous language preference, but we will explore a multilingual system.

We believe that achieve a healthy educational system needs collaboration of many people with many backgrounds. So innovators must design and create the toolboxes that people needs when they meet. A start point on this task is an educational platform design.

Some characteristics we want for this platform is that will allow multi-backgrounds collaborations, we imagine a designer doing projects with a rural teacher, or a family testing at home a brazilian chemistry course, we want to break language and cultural barriers, supported by schools, fab labs, makerspaces, art forums, libraries and all the learners communities.    

From creative learning we get some design principles on education products: 

• The design must have low floor, high ceilings and wide walls, this mean that has to be so easy to access that the user doesn't need complicated instructions for start to collaborate (low floor), also the product must allow to construct big and professional collaborations(high ceiling) and finally must allow also diversity of collaborations (wide walls).

Also our design process is based on a design thinking approach, it includes many tools and strategies for doing a better design. We know there are some platforms already, but many mexicans still are not using them, we want to make a platform for them.

Our innovation approach is based on an adaption for the mexican people. Actually there are many platforms builded, but many of them are on english or without mayan or indigenous language option, other just have not the right educational philosophy and also many of them has his own sources of materials, like electronic boards, adapted on their context and many of them are difficult to get, also the spaces and machines sometimes are different and some instructions are also. We want to join all  the local people with his developments, infrastructure, languages and other context aspects for make a really useful platform for our context.

For developing the digital platform we gonna explore open-source options like phyton, p5.js, dart and maybe more languages and plug-ins, like translation or machine learning ones. But the more important technologies are the ones we want to promote on the platform, these are educational, and maker technologies, some of them are local, and other international.

These includes the Fab Foundation network infrastructure, including local Fab Labs with his machines, tools, and  methods, like laser cutters, vinyl plotters, 3D printers, electronic boards, documentation, space design, small and big networks and more.

Also many maker developments, some from media and citizen labs, universities or independent, these include Snap!, Scratch, Microblocks, Arduino IDE, Beetleblocks, FreeCAD, Inkscape, Circuitphyton, snap4arduino, Processing, p5.js, Microbit, Circuit Playground Express, Arduino, NodeMCU, and many internet tools.

For the success of the platform we include indigenous knowledge, behavioral design, and social networks knowledge. We have some insight of how our users think, we need to test, and investigate more about their really needs and try innovative solutions.

And finally, the core educational philosophy behind the platform, i consider the most important reason of doing this and without it doesn't have the right direction, and makes no sense.

Motivate self-learning on teachers. Many basic school teacher doesn't have the technical skills for include technologies on his clasrooms, but short workshops or courses doesn't solve the problem, they need permanent support and actualization. With the platform they learn skills one by one, they have community support and fresh ideas to try on their places. This drive to good learning-by-design experiences for teachers and eventually for kids, they feel support for try new things, and knowledge on how they apply more tools on his classroom. Eventually it will generates a more healthy and innovative education, with a community-driven grown and support.  

Make visible the educational revolution. On other hand, some educational directors and government still doesn't know the advances on education tools, or they see like something far from us, the true is that we have many human and technical capacities for apply many innovations and leader research and developments. This put more interest on this area and provoques economical and political steps on this, this is why there is very important to do on the right way with solid roots on the philosophy behind the developments, a big mistake would be just do robot kits for everyone focus only on the technical aspects with robot-war objectives and boys-oriented. Eventually the society starts to understand the importance of education and construct what direction should have.

The platform as part of the solutions still is an idea, but a powerfull one, actually we have worked directly with our communities, trough workshops, summer camps, courses, talks, programs, special events and more. We actually serving around 2,000 people directly by year. We want to serving four times more at least (8,000) in one year and duplicate every year, this mean 248,000 people on five years.

We think our impact must grow exponential, our goal in the next year is pilot and measure the impact of this platform, we also want to collaborate with other platforms and his designers. We believe on collaborative models, we imagine being some of the most influential platforms on education, first in Mexico, and after, make replications or adaptations to other context, prefently focus on them where not many people puts attention, like other latin american communities. Within the next five years i see more platforms, not all of them massive, not all with the same design, and not the same brand, but a big educational world network based on diversity and cultural philosophies of learning.

Cultural and market are the principal barriers on this project, but in roots are the same barrier, because few people has a deep educational culture and literacy, as i said before many are passionless people with low expectations of themselves, that provoques not educational market, or at least educational market with a modern character, on philosophy and tools. So the business models are hard to success, and government models too.

I'm sure we can overcome the barriers, with the following reasons:

Communities interest. In spite of the cultural situation, more people are getting awareness of the importance of good educational models, and agree on fundamental ideas, even applies different solutions, we have a big link and collaboration support with these communities. 

Government interest. The mexican government have seen the last point, and at least part of the leaders understand this, so there are some programs where we can apply for a common objective, together with international programs we can reach advanced solutions for the most. 

Collaborative model. We know many people involved on these common objective, with collaboration interest, from the fab lab experiences we have learned a lot of how a collaborative model can success, and when we have this, we have power of change. 

Our team involves people of two Fab labs mainly, Fab lab Yucatán and Fab Lab IYEM. Fab Lab Yucatán is a hybrid organization, and Fab lab IYEM a government organization inside the yucatecan entrepreneurship institute.

We are eight people full time working on the two fab labs from different backgrounds on design, education and technology, also we have 2 educators working separately on specific projects.

We are a multidisciplinary team, with some transdisciplinarity members, we believe on integral developments and collaboration as a principle of our work, also we have knowledge of the right tools and networks for achieve such task on this context, but most importan we have the passion for doing this, and independently of this contest, we'll continue pursuing better lives for more people.

Integral learning project is currently partnering with:

Yucatecan Institute of entrepreneurship as a source of links between educational institutions, other government institutions, local entrepreneurship system, infrastructure and some financial support.

Network of spaces for a trascendental education (REET). As an educational support with experienced educators of this region, and also a link between all the educational system.

Fabcity. Yucatán is a region on this international program who pursuit sustainable cities, within this framework, we can find more international an nacional support and collaborations.