A 10 Minute, Inspirational Look At Informal Learning In Action
I saw this somewhere on twitter yesterday–opened the link in a new tab and didn’t watch it until just now, but was moved this short video in several ways.
It features a 15 year old Sierra Leone self-made engineer who, from garbage cans and trial-and-error, has learned to build generators, radio stations, and a variety of makeshift gadgets out of scrap. While the story is obviously interesting culturally and emotionally, the learning bits really stood out to me.
1. He was clearly self-directed.
2. The role of play in the learning process is apparent.
3. He is solving problems that are authentic to him.
4. Because of this, there is a ready-made “need to know”
In fact, all combined this video does well to demonstrate much of the thinking in our recent 21st Century Learning Model (The Inside-Out School).
You can support more efforts like this at crowdrise.com. The description from the video appears below.
“15-Year-Old Kelvin Doe is an engineering whiz living in Sierra Leone who scours the trash bins for spare parts, which he uses to build batteries, generators and transmitters. Completely self-taught, Kelvin has created his own radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music under the moniker, DJ Focus.
Kelvin became the youngest person in history to be invited to the “Visiting Practitioner’s Program” at MIT. THNKR had exclusive access to Kelvin and his life-changing journey – experiencing the US for the first time, exploring incredible opportunities, contending with homesickness, and mapping out his future.”
You can find the video here.