Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

Hi everyone, Brainy Swaibu in Uganda, is developing with and for refugees Spectrum Campus of Design whose mission is to transform education, schooling and learning for refugees and host communities in East Africa. I’m so thrilled by the fact that a few East African parents, teachers, students, private sector and governments, have started to realize how much our currents School systems that look much the same as they did when we're kids have become a mismatch between how students want to learn, how parents want to educate and how teachers want to teach in a post-lockdown world and exponential changes. Spectrum Transformation Services is developing with refugees a high school and university in Uganda to be referred to as Spectrum Campus of Design that will take care of the most neglected education challenges faced by East African Refugees and host communities that include the following: 1. Why do we still have fixed furniture and Space in a world of introverts, extroverts, collaborators, lone wolves, dreamers, and designers? We can’t merely cater to a single type of learner with our current linear education in an exponential world and learnt lessons after the pandemic. 2. Lack of portable furniture, Natural lighting, home and school WiFi, group seating, and open spaces for active, lifelong learning, experiential projects, independent study, and break room to rest brains if learners get “stuck” while solving problems. 3. Long hour monologues judged by teachers, learners not allowed to share with their peers, without internet devices allowed, boring, without movement-enhancing classroom elements that may include: workstations, standing tables (for lab work, etc.), yoga mats, exercise balls, kidney tables and sofas. 4. East African learners miss walls & surfaces transformed into brainstorming whiteboard space, STEM linked to Design, Makerspace and design thinking concept for students to become makers and creative. 5. Limited tech/devices in the age of an always-connected universal encyclopedia and instantly updated fact and teaching machine called the Net?. This means that it’s more important to want to know the answer and to know how to look it up than it is to have memorized it when we were seven. Given the choice between wasting time and learning, too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that learning is somehow onerous or taxing. Spectrum Campus of Design that we’re developing with and for refugees and host communities in East Africa will mainstream the maker Education, STEM and design that has been difficult within existing high school and university structures in East Africa. The deeper transformations in how East African high schools and universities operate will be needed to ensure this happens fast enough and deep enough. Spectrum aims to design the next generation of exponential high schools and universities that will breed the next generation of problem solvers to take action and support them through this process, regardless of their context, capacity or starting point. We’re introducing “STEM and creativity” into its maker education program by integrating design thinking as a new teaching method in STEM lessons. Thus, with the “Design Thinking in STEM” project, we will combine STEM education with creative processes to encourage innovative thinking among young people. The project is aimed at developing approaches for teaching these abilities in science and technology lessons. The design thinking method encourages students to address challenges with a sense of empathy, viewing a problem through the eyes of someone actually confronting it. Through interdisciplinary teamwork, ideas and approaches are turned into physical prototypes early in the process to be tested and evaluated. The main focus of the project is on the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, established by the United Nations. They provide the thematic structure for the interdisciplinary STEM lessons and the use of the design thinking methodology. Typically, the iterative design thinking process starts with the formulation of a specific challenge. A multidisciplinary team will then develop a concrete solution for the problem, keeping the user at the heart of the process. In this project, we suggest teachers and students to choose their challenge from the SDGs, these including the economic, social, and environmental challenges of the 21st century, which are growing in their local impact alongside their global relevance. Complex STEM topics can be explained through specific problems, such as clean drinking water or sustainable power generation, while design thinking makes the problems more approachable. Design thinking is a very suitable method in addressing the subjects of the SDGs since due to their complexity most of the goals require a multidisciplinary approach which is a core element of the design thinking mind set. Since Africa has few or no opportunities to get hands-on experience in science right from the time I attended school, high school and university. Spectrum STEM Lab will change that through promoting science and technology education in developing countries, and implement STEM laboratories and programs in schools in partnership with student organizations both at partner universities in the US or UK. During the summer, college students will travel to high schools in Uganda to teach courses on cutting-edge technologies such as 3D printing and design, electronics, programming, drones and biotechnology. They will continue to work with the students remotely to help them prepare for a STEM fair, held in November. Selected projects are subsequently presented at a partner university, for example UC-Berkeley in February, where students are invited to participate in workshops, tour Silicon Valley and visit area colleges. We will be a hub and a platform of transfer of knowledge from U.S. or EU universities to high schools in Uganda/ East Africa. We will inspire students in as many fields as we can. Students will be encouraged to use their education to solve real problems related to SDGs in their communities. High school students in Uganda program a 3D printer to print out Yoda from Star Wars, Game of Thrones logos and models of several buildings. They can also receive programming experiences by coding in Python, programming electronics and building drones. And then they work on building projects with social impact, such as a prosthetic hand, an automated irrigation system or a water contamination detector. We will begin with private schools willing to help offset some of the equipment and travel expenses. The program will be expanded to include more students from a dozen of high schools. We will use fourth-year students at partner universities who plan to teach secondary school and university, and travel to Uganda in summer to work with students. It will end up being very collaborative, working a lot with the teachers and adapting to the students and what their experience and prior knowledge were. The program will be a very inspiring career path choices and students served will change their major preference to a STEM-related field after participation in the program to drive our purpose to improve the quality and availability of DESIGN and STEM training programs and professional development opportunities for young African leaders from Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.