Creating Thinkers انشاء المفكرين

An online platform to create the future thinkers of the Middle East

Creating thinkers is a web based solution that aims to solve the problem of traditional teaching techniques that are still used in Palestine and in the Middle East and create autonomous learners and thinkers that will be tomorrow's leaders changing the dynamics of their countries from followers to leaders. 

Our solution will be an easy to access web-based platform that will be specific to each country of the MENA region. The content start from training teachers, preparing classrooms, building student values, and finally lead to guided and autonomous learning projects, challenges, activities, and so forth. The platform will take teachers and schools step-by-step to implement an integrated learning methodology that is designed to get students to think for themselves. This may seem like a very insignificant goal, but in our region, critical thinking skills are rarely taught and if a  question is not direct, students have trouble thinking out of the box. 

This project attempts to change the pessimism surrounding the youth in the area regarding education and to get those who are not enjoying traditional schooling and have left school or are thinking of leaving school motivated, by having them take more control over their learning to be a personalized meaningful experience creating a school environment that awards creativity and individuality of students.

This is an application of existing technology that will begin as a website and later develop into a mobile application. The innovation in the solution is to focus on the quality of learning in the public school system by shifting the learning from a traditional one to a more innovative one through a platform that will have the necessary content, materials, teacher forums, teacher training materials, student training materials and so forth to assist teachers to carry out sessions that use the public school curriculum in their country to encourage students to solve, create, and think in an active mindset.

Our platform will be web-based to make it reachable for all teachers within Palestine and the Middle East. Having a web based solution is very important especially in the Palestinian Territories as there is not a freedom of movement, so having a web-based solution will allow those studying the Palestinian curriculum in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza to all benefit from it. Similarly in other areas of the Middle East, teachers are looking for resources that are easily reachable, and having a web based solution solves all geographical issues and breaks the boundaries. 

In the next 12 months, we aim to work with Palestinian teachers and educators teaching all levels to begin creating the content for the platform taking into consideration the struggles and challenges they have faced with the curriculum and students throughout their experience. We then aim to launch the platform with the help of computer programmers and have it sample-tested in a few schools getting ready to propose it to the ministry of education in Palestine. 

We aim to begin in Palestine to first sample and test our platform and then to extend it to other Middle Eastern countries and work with their ministries of education and public school educators to create material and content suitable for their curriculum. We aim to grow our team to extend our project to one or two countries per year. In five years, we aim to cover  at least half of the MENA region.

We aim to deploy the solution through the ministries of education in each country as they are in charge of the public school curriculum in each of the areas we are targeting. It will be a web-based application, so it will be accessed through a computer, tablet, laptop, or smart phone with internet access. 

We are still in the idea phase, but we hope to start out with the Public and UNRWA schools in Palestine by the end of 12 months. The number of students in these schools are 100,000+ based on a 2017 consensus. We hope to serve these students who usually do not get these learning opportunities to help them develop as independent critical thinkers. 

Within 12 months, we expect to be serving the entire student population at Public and UNRWA schools in Palestine which are about 100,000+ students from first to twelfth grade. Within 3 years we aim to be serving over a million students in 6 MENA countries. 

The students in these public school systems will be getting a chance to challenge their thinking and think creatively without being forced to memorize and depend on the textbook and teacher for all their knowledge. 

We are educators in different fields of education : Teaching English as a foreign language, Technology in Education, and Special needs education. So we have a large skills base to work on large parts of the content for the platform. In addition, we have advocacy skills, a strong network of professionals, and fundraising skills. 

We do not aim to be soley for-profit. Our major aim is to cover the running costs of the platform which can be done by fundraising when the project is operating on a small-base, but later on funds will need to be secured in larger amounts especially when beginning to work in several countries, so we plan to charge the ministries of education an annual fee for using the platform depending on the number of schools. Private schools can also purchase the service for a higher fee.

We are applying to Solve to receive mentoring in developing a sustainable business plan and technological assistance in building our solution. We also would like our solution to become known through the region through Solve as it will help us overcome a lot of bureaucracy in the countries we aim to work in.   

The main barrier is getting recognition and approval from the ministries of education throughout the MENA region to implement our solution, through Solve, we will receive more recognition and thus introduce ourselves through Solve MIT which will help us when approaching organizations and governments. 

We still do not have a tangible platform, which Solve can help us build through technological assistance.