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Fostering future skills through creativity at every level
Speaking about collaboration, communication, and creative thinking, Gaurav Kanwal noted that there were different agendas for teachers at every single age group.
“We are all going digital and in the last 15 years, we have seen the world go around completely on digital,” began Gaurav Kanwal, Head of Digital Media GTM and Sales, South Asia. He pointed out that Facebook was launched in 2006 and today almost all of us are on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter because they are sources of information. “Digital technology has changed the way children learn and adapt to things,” he declared. “We have seen technology adoption timelines change too. The concept of landline of the telephone took 75 years to reach people across the globe. The cell phone took much less time and Angry Birds took merely 35 days to reach 15 million people mark!” he added, alluding to how swiftly technology is being adopted.
By a raising of hands, he proved that merely 10 percent of the audience had heard of SnapChat and tried it; pointing out that majority of the users of the app have been born after 1995. “Those born before don’t see the value in it. You use Whatsapp, instead. Kids don’t use Whatsapp. They are on Instagram or Snapchat. That’s the digital divide. Kids that we are teaching today are the digital natives and we, on the other hand, are sadly the digital aliens. How are you going to bridge the divide?” he asked.
When we talk about future skills, we are talking about the goals, he averred. Speaking about collaboration, communication, and creative thinking, he noted that there were different agendas for teachers at every single age group. “When you look at the age 3-5, you're trying to enhance the basic skills of children. The moment we move on to a higher class, we are looking at how well a child demonstrates a thought process. In grades 6-8, we are looking at how a child supports an idea with evidence. When we go to the next level, we are asking the child to express an individual point of view. The moment we get into higher education, we are looking at entrepreneurship, leadership that we imbibe in the children.”
He maintained that the idea of our school system is to prepare children for a world that we cannot envisage today so that when they have to see a problem that they haven't seen before, they choose to think and not remember. This, he underlined, is why creativity is very important. “What we are doing today is we are making them remember. Creativity provides different things at different levels. It gives a break from the rigidity of test taking. One of the most important things in our education system that we need today is creativity. It gives them an idea to express their own point of view.”
Citing the example of a solar system or an atomic fusion made in animation, he shared that every child would have his/her point of view in terms of how they want to show it and it also served to give them their two minutes of fame, stage presence and pride.
Discussing Adobe UDAAN, created specifically for the Indian school system, he addressed the educators saying, “We are not here to define a curriculum. You’re the best people to do that. We are just going to help you get into that with a simple program. Why do we give project work to children? So that they can have an experiential learning experience. They understand the concept better. While we are limited with what we can do in the analog world we are not limited in the digital world. We have a number of use cases between a digital and a non-digital world, everything from an animation to an English project work with poems.”
The possibilities indeed are endless!