 I'm glad that we moved the chairs away last year was really really warm here and in heated debates. You don't want to get any warmer So thanks everyone for being here. I'm so excited to be here and discuss this important topic with you And what are we discussing right? We all agree the problem is that we all agree that learning has fundamentally changed how we consume Content has fueled this but the educational systems haven't really kept up And what we're going to talk about is what is the biggest problem in education today? So I'd like to begin with asking each one of you for your own opinion Esther The biggest problem education today is that we're teaching for the wrong century Teachers are just unfortunately stuck in the Lecture-based model and it's really hard for them to move. I would say that's the number one problem I Couldn't agree more with Esther, but I'm more than happy to mention another problem. We are having We were just discussing about the stuff for example that Esther is doing at Palo Alto High School Amazing mind-blowing and it could be useful in every country of the world the things that Michael are doing are great But the problem is no one knows about those things So education the world of education is extremely local and ideas Innovations don't spread at all and I think that if we are not fixing this one It's gonna be extremely difficult to fix to education systems Yeah, and I think Al Gore's opening speech was really interesting on the importance of solving global challenges and to do that We really need hundreds of thousands of bright Excited passionate scientists around the world. So and and some of the things we see in education is that more than 50% of students in science Drop out of their education because it's not inspiring exciting or fun for them to do their careers So I think a big challenge that we're facing is engaging the new generation in education and make them really passionate I'm excited about their the challenges ahead. Yeah, and I guess I'll share my own view Which is why I gathered you around here to begin with I think the problem is that as much as I love these shoes Us wearing the same shoes us learning the same things in the same way doesn't make any sense I feel that personalization and learning needs to happen because Well, it's just it's just not efficient or effective right now, but the next question is how do we prioritize this? Right, do we do we think do we need to think bottom up or top down? Of course it's both, but what do you think needs to happen so that these people in this audience can affect how fast we change? Well, first, I think it's really important for the leaders and the community and all of you here today to know that you personally can make a difference by expressing yourself talking about it to your leaders talking about it in the schools and I have now this new website just created today actually called moonshots.org and What it does is helps you start a moonshot in your school your country Wherever you are and it includes 100 which is probably the most amazing website out there giving ideas to teachers for the What you personally can do in the classroom whatever you want to do don't keep lecturing give kids an opportunity to actually make a difference and Then they'll be passionate passion is the key and they can pick a great project. Just check out that Website there and then also moonshots.org. I just want to I think we should give Esther a round of applause for launching this today congratulations Thank you, and thanks for surprising us Well, I kind of like them to hate when you are saying that These kind of things don't happen in education because that's not the fact There's amazing things happening in education daily in in Palo Alto in Finland in Sweden in Denmark And then I think that we are giving a wrong perception when we are saying is that all the education Systems all the schools are broken because there's great exceptions happening and again The problem is know how we don't know about those and if we are analyzing how to make the change happen I think that there isn't any industry where the where the revolution is happening top down It's always happening bottom up, right? So it starts with the teachers. It starts with the schools It starts with the forerunners But the education systems are full of gate the systems are full of gatekeepers top level are saying is that Yes, but this would never for example the things that Esther are doing Or Michael are doing top level can say is that yes, but they are so Silicon Valley They would never work in Finland and that's not the case if you are asking from teachers teachers would love it So I think that one of the fundamental problems we have to fix is trust We have to trust teachers. We have to educate them better We have to give them resources and we have to trust but Saku is the role of the teacher The same as it was even 10 years ago. Absolutely not and it's sort of like being being top down. It's bottom up. It's it's cross There's there's so many changes happening But the problem is that all of these are big changes and I think that we need to re-educate teachers We have to put more resources and we have to understand is that from the teachers point of view the change is massive and If teachers are getting burnt out if teachers are not Enjoying the chains the whole system collapses. So we have to respect the teachers Right, right. I think I'll agree with that, right? I agree with that. I mean the teachers are the key Teachers need to be respected after all just think about it teachers are taking care of your most precious possession We need to appreciate respect and trust the teachers I don't know a single teacher who did not go into education to make a difference and then as time gets goes on They become you know burned out because there's so many rules that are Interfering with making a difference. I'm excited because I found something that we can disagree on. Oh good We won't really disagree but I'd like to flip that as a student I've been very fortunate to live in a number of different countries go through I think five different educational systems and have the fortune of seeing both the best of the worlds and sometimes the worst of the Worlds and I've seen as a student that you kind of you're in a lottery as a student to get a good teacher Right. Yes, and to me as an investor the reason why you know We invest it into labsters to take some of that randomness out of the equation because me learning should not be a function of My luck of getting you as an amazing teacher and you are an amazing teacher So it should be about you know giving the tool set to learn and the teachers should be coaching you to do the best Possible thing that you can as a student, right? Yes, so Where does technology come in here? How is labs to changing the world in terms of how we learn? Yeah, I think it's a really really interesting points And I love the moonshot initiative by the way I checked it out today I think it's about Empowering the teachers to be part of this transformation and what we've seen is that technology can play a really big part in this We have worked often with teachers to create technology that empower them through data giving them information about the different students in the Classroom, how can they better act as a coach or a mentor in the classroom rather than spending their time on the monologue Lectures or grading papers all of those things we need to leverage technology to automate And then empowering the teachers through education and showing great examples I love what hundred is doing by showing great case stories from teachers who've successfully made the shift to adopting technology So have more of those success cases sharing that with the teachers I think that's one of the keys on how we can make this change happen but it's it's one thing that is Extremely important to understand when we are discussing about education and and and that's We can easily concentrate on creating the best schools in the world We could concentrate on on having great technology in certain amount of schools But in order to create a great society we need to have excellence and we need to have equity So practically every school has to be great And then if we are taking it to the global scale The problems Many countries are facing are huge for example sub-saharan Africa There's a need for 30 million new teachers and no one knows where to get them So when we are trying to talk about chasing education systems One thing is to have brilliance, but then the other thing is is kind of like to have a equity Throughout the system and that's complicated a question to you that right and and I wonder about this Is it are we really talking about there to be that there is a need for 30 million teachers? Are we talking about how many end users students need to be educated, right? And and we talk about scaling technology right that takes away some of the pressure from how many teachers you need per student So my question and this comes here from the fireside. Thank you guys for the questions I thought it wasn't working now. It's working very well We'll try to tackle some of the questions here Is the challenge more in the format or in the content of what school education? It's now. Okay, great Sorry, I don't know how this works But the question is is the challenge more in the format or the content of school education It's more the format So in other words, what you want to do is give students an opportunity to Learn independently together with the peer peer group learning is most effective And so that's the format the content the content hasn't really changed all that much or if it does change The change is sort of marginally, but it's the question is how to get those kids excited about it and When they use the a computer or a tablet or a phone to get that information And then share it with their peers That is more exciting and effective than just sitting there passively and listening to a lecture Because we all know what happens, you know, you're daydreaming about what you're going to do next weekend, right? You're not listening to the lecture. So engagement engagement active engagement is the key to getting them excited and And all the way the culture of the classroom Is also the key and I put it together in my book Moonshots and education. It's called trick Trick stands for trust respect Independence collaboration and kindness and that belongs in every classroom And I can tell you that kids respond to that when they feel that you care about them. You trust them You respect them you treat them with kindness I'll tell you they'll do anything and they get really excited about it So that hasn't changed Other than the way we treat children today still needs to move to the trick concept Right right and that's the that's the less scalable part. That's the difficulty, right? That's the social emotional You know, that's why we do things. Actually, if you just think about it in the workplace You work harder when you're trusted and respected, right? I mean everybody does and so why not do that for kids in the classroom So collaborative education, that's right But one of the problems we are having with education system is that I I'd say that we are always thinking Or even over memorizing And underdoing so we are not doing enough things in schools And for example, what ester is doing in in Palo Alto is that the way they are studying Democracy or elections or whatever is by creating news creating videos creating articles of those And I think that that kind of systems because you can you can learn so many things By doing stuff by creating articles videos tv shows or whatever And I think that that's a great example of things be this new Digital technology is creating us huge amount of opportunities on chains education And we are not using those practically at all And can I I don't think it's necessary between content or format and we were talking a little bit about this earlier as well that It's much more about adoption How do we because everyone agrees on great ways to do it and great content There's hundreds of ed tech startups out there and you're highlighting a lot of the good ones It's more about how do we get the teachers to embrace it in the classroom? So so and I think that's the topic we should really be discussing. Yeah, and can I respond to that? So and you have the same Possibility through 100 You know most teachers they don't feel really comfortable with tech I don't think that's a big surprise to anyone And so one of my students Mariam Handler she created this app and it's called moonshot squad And what it is if the teacher that doesn't know how to do something from like start your smart board or whatever They just request Somebody from the moonshot squad to come to their class and help them and guess who's on the moonshot squad Students all the students I'll tell you they all know what's going on in tech and they sign up They get community service credit and they help the teacher So I think you also have an app like that as well that works. You said already Yes, and it works here in finland I think it can work in all countries. They could have something like that You just have to realize how smart those kids are in your class. They're smarter than you think Right, but then going back to what Michael said because I think that that's the fundamental question How do you really make the innovation spread? And it's quite easy to say is that for example that kind of innovation thing It would never work in our country or it would never work in our school And I think that the only way to solve that one is to tell success stories Right, so if I'm saying that it would never work in our country. They said, yeah Might maybe but it's working in 48 other countries It's more difficult to say is that it would never work in here If it's successful and like the student agents, for example in finland Which is exactly the same that you were talking about it's at today It's more than 80 schools in finland And if it's working in 80 schools It's quite difficult to say that it would never work in our school I mean in a sense in a sense and you don't make innovation spread innovation spreads, right? And you have to be telling about them spreading Yeah, so so the good news is that innovation education is spreading one of our other portfolio companies kahoot Is now we're at over 50 million monthly active users part of the hundred as well. That's a great company And and how did this happen? It wasn't top down the teachers did not create budgets So as to or sorry the schools did not create budgets policy makers didn't make budgets It was the students and the teachers trying to find a way to work together Collaborative tool and it's been so successful now. The teachers are trying to get budgets So it's to be able to become more significant in terms of Role models, right? There was a question here, which I really like that was How can you manage to reinstall trust of various stakeholders into teachers? And I think trust it's it's a common theme in any industry that we're in and it has to do with You know quality deliver it And if you're able to deliver quality you will have the trust you will have the authority, right? So question is michael at labster You know one of the things that excited us about you guys was that you got a bunch of teachers that were super passionate about Getting kids that were fundamentally unengaged They were dropping out of stem school stem educations that they you know Fought really hard to get into in some in many cases and they were dropping out they're bored So what are some of the learnings that you've had in terms of getting this revolutionary content into the hands of the teachers and getting them to Spread it further. So one of the most successful initiatives we do is where we we bring teachers and students together in a conference Similar to this and then we ask the students to use this new education technology And then we ask the students to explain to the teachers what they thought about it What what was their experience and it's always overwhelmingly positive so much so that the teachers realize Okay, we we need to do this which is a much better way than us as ed tech companies going out and trying to convince the teachers So that's one initiative that's been really really successful Another thing that works. Well, we talked a little bit about bottom up versus top down. There are top down initiatives that actually work In canada. There's something called ecambos ontario, which has been a great success for us Where the government supports that the teachers spend time and resources on working together to adopt new technologies And so I think it's it should be a combination of bottom up and top down In many of these cases, but what we're not in in on a european level We're not seeing those type of government initiatives not at a large enough scale at least to make an impact To really empower the teachers because they are overworked. They have already a lot of things on their plate Plus it's a new technology in a need to learn We need to somehow free them of a lot of the day-to-day works. That's that they can embrace new technologies Come on. Let's take a step back. We're in finland the country that pioneered phenomenon based education I love this concept. Tell us how did that happen? Which one the the concept is actually actually an old one And it's been one of the fundamental fundamental parts of the finnish education already from the 60s So so what what we are trying to do is that we are trying to find a way We are all talking about 21st century skills soft skills five seas six seas seven seas And we are thinking is that how could you make that part of the part of the as a part of the curriculum? And then we think that phenomena based learning or project based learning Is probably the best one to make it happen But it's complicated because I think that you can quite easily make that happen implement that in a school level But when you are trying to implement it in a system level in every school of the country It's complicated and it will take years and at the moment in finland There's a lot of discussion about whether this is the right right direction are we taking good care of our teachers Are we putting enough resources in educating them? Are we creating great learning material and so on and and like if you are thinking about chains Chains in a personal level is complicated chains in a company level is complicated Chains in an ecosystem level is extremely complicated But that's what we are trying to do in finland because because like If you think that you are one of the best ones in the world The only way to stay on the top Is to challenge that one take risks free innovate Yep move faster. Yeah So one way we can think about making a system-wide change across the entire world Is for all everybody to think about what I call 20 percent time 20 of the time Do some kind of project based Student driven student interest based learning it differs for every country So we're not going to tell you how to do it in your country, but 20 percent of the time devoted to The as education where the student is in charge It seems like we're borrowing concepts from you know, the googles of this world where 10 percent of your time or we're 1% 20 20 was 20 percent Yes, it works from google So google it works. Um, okay, that's exciting But can I make one comment regarding that one because I think that there's another change we should make in education Whenever you are listening to the discussion about education in any country of the world I'd say 90 percent of the discussion is negative. We are concentrating about the problems We are concentrating about the system is broken And so on and at the same time there's great things happening in every country. So I think that Teachers are teachers tend to be burnt out if all the discussion is negative So I think that we should be excited about education. We should be telling success stories We should empower teachers because if if that kind of excitement is not in the system The change will never happen. So there has to be more excitement and positive examples Into discussion as well right, okay, and so There was a question here that I think is really pessimistic, but I want to use it in any case Because oh, it's gone now. Never mind. Oh, yeah, no here it is mentioned something that works well in the educational system So what do you think is working today and where do we go from here? So my program, which is now the largest media program in the united states With over 600 students voluntarily electing to take this program Is a big success and I would like to suggest that other schools around the world do the same thing Students come up with their own ideas For writing stories. They write them They edit each other's stories. They publish in multiple formats newspaper magazine television radio video movies everything They get to decide the format I'll tell you they're so excited about this That is true for all kids whenever you give them an opportunity to do something and the school supports it They will do it. So that's a really positive thing and it could happen all over the world Give the kids a voice I mean How much time do I have here having three minutes left? But but I I could mention black schools in Bangladesh spreading Works great design for change starting in india at the moment in 30 countries Works brilliantly what ester is doing is working lapster is working There's a huge amount of examples that are working brilliantly Brilliantly and and they are not getting enough visibility. So so we we sort of like Get the feeling is that nothing in education is working. That's not the case There's many many examples that are working great Good And michael, yeah, I would also just add again that we do see more and more collaboration with governments So governments working together with ed tech companies as part of advisory boards and so forth Which is something that we feel at least now is opening a lot of doors. So that's a positive And so sitting here in five to ten years time Do you think we'll we'll have come to something like a crowdsourced global educational curriculum Is there space for something like that? Or do you think it will still be local five ten years from now? I think it's still local because I think it depends on your particular needs and your particular country Although there will be more International or crowd-based We all have our own particular needs And so what works in one country might not work in another country And that's part of why I think a lot of these solutions are country based Right, but you know what we're all kind of the next step between Why do we get educated is that we can enter the labor market right talking about automation and then the fear of unemployment But that's a global problem, right? So can we afford to think of education as local still? No in that case Okay, we'll have to switch a little bit Because I think we all need to teach all students everywhere computer skills Basic computational thinking it should start in kindergarten and every Child on the planet should be able to take it in school Just like you know the best people to learn a foreign language are kids Right two year olds three year olds. They can you know, they can pick up a language in a minute And so we should be teaching computer language to all kids. They can learn it really easily Might be half hard for us as adults, but it's not hard for them So that's one thing that well should change dramatically for the entire planet. Good People are saying that schools are not changing and schools are changing But ed UK the world is changing faster and the gap is widening So if you are not closing the gap in 2030 It will be problematic And I think that the only way to close the gap is through scalable innovations Because that's the way to life changes in any other industry Whether it's Airbnb or Uber or Facebook or Twitter or whatever And I'm fully confident that by 2030 we are having One two three global education initiatives innovations that are changing the total landscape It means that there's parts which are still local But but there's gonna be global innovations as well definitely good And I could add that we already see that within science There's really a global curriculum and we teach the same things in China and the US and Europe And we see that trend continuing where there's more and more agreement on the curriculum across the world So I agree with the science curriculum should be global and it is for the most part Perfect. We have 20 seconds left. So I guess I'll wrap it up by saying We've agreed on the Localization personalization Given students more power and the teachers just accepting to learn new things, right? And getting incurred getting awarded for that. Thank you everyone. And thank you for the questions. Thank you. Thank you