Creative thinkers and innovators will gather next month in Half Moon Bay to brainstorm and implement progressive ideas in education at the Big Ideas Fest.
In groups called Action Collabs, they'll tackle big-picture questions like how to help teachers influence and have impact on learners, how to create opportunities to learn for students who are pushed out of formal education space, and how to create alternatives for certification as a way to expand education and career opportunities.
Some of the scheduled speakers include Sugata Mitra, professor of education technology at Newcastle University, who installed an Internet-connected PC in a New Delhi slum and watched how kids learned how to use it on their own and to teach each other; Stephen Breslin of Futurelab, a U.K.-based nonprofit that finds innovative uses of technology to support systemic change in education; and Christopher Rush, of New York's School of One, which has revolutionized the traditional classroom model.
Participants will also have access to hands-on workshops that demonstrate how to use technologies in the classroom, organized by KQED's Education Network.
Big Ideas Fest, held Dec.5-8 at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, is organized by ISKME, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, a research institute that develops research-based innovations, and facilitates field building to improve knowledge sharing.