Claudia Urrea inspires educators to reflect on what’s worth learning

Over at Edutopia, Suzie Boss covered Claudia’s recent keynote at PBL World, the annual project-based learning conference. From her writeup:

When Claudia Urrea was growing up in Colombia, her family made a point of doing projects together. Whether they were focused on fun — “building the coolest kite” — or more practical household matters, projects taught her the value of learning by doing. “Projects move students from being told what to do to owning their learning,” says Urrea.. Instead of thinking about “what I learned today and might use someday,” Urrea says, “help them see that what they learn today they can use today.” And for many years to come.

The whole piece is worth a read, with nods to Papert, Scratch, and the OLPC mission. As is the rest of the PBL World coverage. Now if only they’d put the video of Claudia’s talk online!

TEDxRio : Rodrigo on OLPC and viewing children as our future

Rodrigo Arboleda spoke about OLPC at TEDxRio this week to a crowd of 800, with 7000 people watching online.  The conference was a big hit in the Brazilian blogosphere, and one of the top trending topics in the world that day.  TEDx has really captured the essence of TED without much of the overhead, and it’s great to see it flourish.  Everyone there felt they were discussing how to contribute to human knowledge and development, and they left wondering how they could follow up on the event in more rural parts of the country – a great audience for an olpc talk.

The session will be up online soon, and you should watch it; for now, an image from the floor:

Rodrigo speaking at TEDxRio

"Children are a mission, not a market"