IF - Imagining the Future

An education model that ignites a love for learning through a fun, collaborative, project based experience. Our focus is on creating real world impact. Our goal, to empower students to be changemakers that embrace the unknown. Our aim is to develop lifelong learners with happy, creative and innovative mindsets.

Today's education is still based on models developed when "The Paperclip" was considered a hot invention. By rewarding memorization, individualism and obedience, above all else, we've stuck children inside a standardized box that hinders their ability to be lifelong learners. Our obsession with academic results is killing children's creativity and it’s inhibiting their talents. This system creates a complete disconnection with the real world and disempowers our future generation. For the disadvantaged, school has become an empty promise, as it does not provide them with the tools and opportunities to overcome the difficulties affecting them. Our education system is failing.

Educational theorists have been alluding to a need for a dramatic change in how we educate students for decades. With Seymour Papert’s constructionist theory it became obvious just how far we could empower the learner to take the reins of their own education. Jean Lave’s theory of situated learning further emphasized the need to create an authentic space for learning to happen. Over the past two school years, we have experimented with applied methods inspired by these theories, and have seen results. Our students look at learning from a metacognitive perspective, value cooperation, and have lots of fun doing it.

We’ll deliver our project based learning experience to Green School high school and to 350+ disadvantaged Indonesian students through KKC. We’ll be empowering kids to be changemakers in their community and we’ll be providing professional development for local teachers. Once established, the first IF cell will offer longer programs to other international and Indonesian schools.

We’ll create an open-source network that uses its own cryptocurrency as an incentive to participate. Initially targeting educators and alternative schools, we’ll provide a platform for collaboration, a project database and a toolbox. With all this, we’ll begin to shift the global perception on education.

- Enrollment of 12 students per program delivery.

- Min 1 community driven project per program.

- 5 local teachers trained.

- A hands on, immersive, project based learning experience (6 months)

- Partnership with four international schools and five Indonesian schools.

- Commitment from min 6 students to join full-time during year 2.

- Partnerships with 50 institutions globally which acknowledge an alternative enrollment process

- First IF Cell (12 months)

- Successful ICO.

- 100 projects minimum in the database that are searchable via various criteria.

- IF toolbox downloads reach 100K.

- 100 self-assembled sites in multiple countries are included in our membership page

- Open-source platform (18 months)

We’ve developed a model from the acknowledgment we don't know what students will need to know in 20 years. Instead of trying to predict what kids should learn, we equip them with the skills to be lifelong learners. We’re a place-based, hands in dirt education that focuses on local issues. However, with the development of an open-source platform that incentivizes its users with its own cryptocurrency ecosystem, we intend to let our pedagogy seep across the planet. Just as MOOCs brought content to the masses, we’ll provide a progressive model that ‘ll bring future proof and fun education to all.  

Up until now, education access has mostly relied on the building of infrastructure; our model needs only an Internet connection. With our multicultural community and our robust toolkit, we’ll make it easy for anyone to find the opportunity to join an IF experience. Being open-source will allow our project to adapt to people’s needs, enabling this type of education to reach where it’s most needed. Furthermore, our model encourages local flavour above all, and requires that each IF cell becomes responsive to their community. Partnerships with local schools and organizations are at the heart of our plan to scale.  

Following a successful pilot with Green School and Kul Kul Connection, we’ll seek collaborators to create the first IF cell. We’ll offer our program to International schools, which will subsidize the offering to local schools. As we develop our online platform, both the project database and the IF toolbox will be open source materials. As our community grows, we’ll launch a training program on how to employ the IF toolbox, which will help subsidize local workshops. Future IF cells will form through partnerships with schools and co-working spaces, further extending the influence of IF.

We’re currently in the research phase and will continue to depend on Green School student tuition to continue the development of our concept. We will seek donations to help fund the project database development, and we’ll absorb the toolbox development into Green School’s operating budget. As we pilot the IF cell concept, we will depend on a combination of tuition from students and co-working hub fees. Each IF cell will function as an independent entity and therefore collect their own revenue.

Being an open-source network, we’ll count on the community to sustain the technology infrastructure costs. We’ll be launching a digital currency intended to build a practice around projects that positively impact your local community. The coin will be traded for education services as well as for social interactions and project contributions. ‘Idea Frackers’ are those who contribute to our project database and provide free education to disadvantaged youth.

Our largest barrier is the laws around what constitutes education in Indonesia. We feel pretty confident that we could accredit ourselves in North America, but there is far less flexibility here. We also would need to create partnerships early on with local and international post-secondary institutes to ensure our students did not find doors closed because of their choice to follow an IF education. Finally, we would depend on substantial exposure to ensure the model scales up when the time is right. We will need to ensure to build a sustained interest in our project as it grows.

https://www.facebook.com/greenschool/

https://medium.com/leap-academy

https://www.instagram.com/leapacademy/

We’ve tasted the kool-aid, which is an authentic learning environment, and can see the immediate benefits it has on our students and our community. It would be selfish to keep it all to ourselves, and so we’re hoping to find guidance and expertise which would let us scale this model. We know that in producing an open source model with supporting technology we can fast track the impact of this type of education. Solve’s experience in this field would be invaluable. Also, having Solve’s community back this project, would give this model the credibility needed for people to adapt it.

We currently act as a school within a school, and are woven into the fabric of Green School. We aim to extend our methodologies to KKC students this year. We have collaborated with Hubud, Mantra Consultancy, Tsa-Tsa House, Ewabi, and Charles Tsai among others.

We love everybody who is like minded, and would never consider them competition!