Education for Sharing (E4S)

Problematic

Education needs to adapt to the new reality. According to the 5th edition of a survey prepared by Cambridge University 67% of the teachers consulted stressed that the system has become obsolete and does not respond to the needs of the 21st Century.

Proposal 

E4S’s goal is to transform the learning process by changing its outlook for a practical one. Education systems must ignite the passion of teachers and children to solve daily issues for building sustainable societies.

E4S is an educational model that provides beneficiaries with 21st Century competencies (e.g. critical thinking and problem solving skills) so they can solve current and future challenges. 

The E4S model has the potential to revolutionize education systems worldwide. So far, the model has been tested in 8 countries. From Mexico to New Zealand, E4S has demonstrated its relevance since the methodology adapts to the idiosyncrasy and challenges of each context.

To thrive in times where uncertainty is the norm, children will need to develop creativity, imagination and resilience; they will need to respect the ideas and values of others.

A major challenge is to provide society with qualified teachers to teach and prepare the next generation of citizens. Education and skills are fundamentally linked. Without the knowledge and skills provided by educational systems, children cannot live empowered lives in which they decide their futures. 

According to the Institute for the Future, by 2030 more than 80% of jobs will require 21st century skills. Also, a 2020 report of the World Economic Forum states that 34% of students believe their schools are not preparing them for success in the job market.

These skills refer to competencies such as collaboration, critical thinking and digital literacy. A report of UNESCO in 2019, stated that children need to improve these skills; without them, they will not be able to successfully participate in new global structures for work and living. Traditional education hardly provides a meaningful approach to develop skills such as problem solving and collaboration. These systems use “one size fits all'' teaching methods, which are no longer useful for the diversity of students. 

What is it? 

Education for Sharing (E4S) is an innovative educational model that generates an atmosphere of meaningful learning for students through training their teachers and providing them with ludic tools to improve their teaching practice. 

What does it do?

E4S has an educational ecosystem based on the power of play to help teachers leverage their knowledge. 

This ecosystem is made of training workshops, educational programs on-site, hybrid and online modalities, digital and printed booklets on topics of digital citizenship, sustainable development, science and technology, among other  and a set of games and activities to meet the new normality in school contexts with an approach on socioemotional skills, healthy lifestyles, and play as a distance learning tool. 

 What technology do we use?

E4S employs the use of digital platforms like Zoom, WhatsApp, Google Classroom, Google Meet, Google Forms, all existing available and free apps. Currently, we are developing an E4S specialized app to follow up teachers’ performance.

Education for Sharing serves teachers and children from diverse backgrounds with the main objective of leaving no one behind. Mainly, E4S works in public schools in vulnerable settings that are striking with violence or insecurity.

Especially in these uncertain times, we work with teachers who lack access to training programs that help them use technology for meaningful digital education and support them with learning strategies to adapt to the new reality.

Moreover, the educational offer of E4S impacts children from 3 to 12 years old and teenagers from 13 to 15 years old, teachers and families ranging from rural populations to large cities. 

With the objective of developing better strategies to provide teachers with the pedagogical tools that will empower their practice, we carried out in-house assessment  to have a deeper understanding of our teachers’ network needs. The results of the survey showed that teachers want to: 

• Integrate didactic activities into their current educational strategy 
• Generate support networks among their peers to share best practices regarding online classes.  

E4S provides a solution by working closely with teachers and training them in how to transmit significant learning to their students using play to strengthen their pedagogical practices.

E4S main objective is the holistic development of the 21st Century students. Teachers apply E4S methodology by guiding learning experiences using cooperative games to merge the global agenda and civic values for developing sustainable competencies.

Once educators embrace the E4S model, they develop challenging activities to put their students' creativity into practice. The model adapts to the learning process of each student changing the perspective for a deeper understanding instead of achieving high marks.

The past 14 years E4S has been dedicated to the formation of better global citizens, having replicated and proven a play-reflect-take action methodology. In Mexico, E4S has implemented projects in the 32 states, reaching since 2007 more than 500 thousand teachers and children.

 As the educational offer is already present in other 7 countries, E4S is currently in a growth phase, working on the expansion strategy, with focus on understanding the best way to share the E4S formula to manage sustainability in each international chapter.

E4S has innovated education by implementing a disruptive change in the teaching-learning process. E4S is convinced that educators should be one of the main beneficiaries of the model as they are the core of educational systems all around the globe. Today the world needs solutions that don’t depend on a high monetary investment for them to be scalable. E4S optimizes resources and ensures the long-term permanence of knowledge by focusing on leaving installed capabilities in teachers, guaranteeing the formation of countless generations of future global citizens. 

How does it happen?

With a creative training model: Teachers are trained in E4S’s ludic methodology which gives them the opportunity to gain first-hand experience with the same activities and reflection process that their students will eventually participate in throughout the program. This encourages them to review and redesign their teaching methods to one where debate is encouraged, questions are asked and answers are sought, enhancing the development of creative skills, constructive criticism and careful reasoning in children. 

A disruptive methodology: The E4S core is the use of play-based learning as the universal language to connect with school communities. Rather than being an additional burden for teachers, play helps them to discover a useful approach for cognitive growth, problem-solving, and creativity. Throughout 14 years of experience E4S has evaluated that its learning method is integrated in a cross-cutting way, impacting the way educators learn and teach.

E4S’s operating model has incorporated more than ever existing technology. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated E4S’ digitalization by transforming its daily use into a ludic experience.

The technological component of E4S employs the use of digital platforms like Zoom, WhatsApp, Google Classroom, Google Meet, Google Forms, all existing available and free apps. 

For delivering a training workshop for teachers, we take advantage of the surveys of Zoom to know if the training has been effective and useful. Another app we commonly use is Mentimeter, it helps us develop dynamic quizzes, word clouds, Q&As with a real-time input,  regardless if the intervention happens remote, hybrid or face-to-face.

Mentimeter, and the previously mentioned apps, give us the opportunity to turn learning into a fun experience for teachers. At the same time, using these tools encourages educators to engage these technological resources with their students.

In remote areas without internet access the materials for teachers’ training are uploaded in an encrypted video format via USB. Also, we have reached out to our teacher network by SMS, phone calls and printed materials, especially in rural settings.

To kick off the positive effects of digital tools, such as the ones E4S utilizes, it is needed for the users to understand how to take the most advantage out of it. The use given in each intervention aims to diversify teaching strategies and offer didactic tasks that encourage the active participation of students. 

UNESCO reports had stated that teachers who are digitally literate and trained to use digital tools in a meaningful way, can lead to higher levels of thinking skills, provide creative and individualized options for students to express their understandings, and leave students better prepared to deal with ongoing technological change in society (UNESCO, 2021).

With the traditional method of teaching, to assess a student’s understanding, teachers take the answer to the question by ‘‘show-of-hand'’. However, this technique is of great limitations, particularly in a large class: only a few students tend to participate; mostly the confident ones; lack of anonymity; loss of data once the hands are down and is of relatively slow process. To avoid these issues, E4S provides a more effective teaching strategy than the traditional assessment. Using tools like mentimeter, students can answer the questions displayed on the classroom screen anonymously by using the hand-held device.

Video: How do we play from home?

Link: https://youtu.be/5tXE7MEG_wc

By using digital platforms and softwares to give follow-up with teachers and students from young ages, we faced challenges such as the safe use of this technology. Nonetheless, we manage to always put the security of our users first, having in place Policies, such as the E4S’s Child Protection Policy to safeguard our beneficiaries in non-virtual and virtual contexts.  

Additionally, we encouraged the practice of civic values as an axis to build ethical behaviours and as a pillar to respect the rights of everybody. Due to the digital environments shift, E4S had also considered the promotion of e-rights to create a healthier, peaceful, supportive, fair, and respectful coexistence in virtual environments. 

Finally, one of the challenges in using this technology is the simple fact that not everyone has access to it. In order to continue with a digital literacy plan so educational communities strengthen their role for a new normality, we have depended on offline solutions. We have been delivering booklets and printed materials with asynchronous activities that children, teachers and family members can do from home with the materials available to them, without being a requirement to use the internet to understand the different topics addressed.

Currently, E4S is reaching over 3 million people thanks to the digital campaign #AlsoatHome launched on social media last year. In 1 year it is expected to reach at least 40 thousand people through in-site programs and double the number of digital beneficiaries reaching 6 million people. 

 Link #AlsoatHome Campaign: http://educacionparacompartir.org/en/also-at-home/#tambien_en_casa 

 Finally, according to our strategic goals and our epic statements, in 5 years E4S will have reached at least 3 million people globally through in-site implementations.

For the years to come, E4S will mainly focus on:  

• Consolidate the E4S virtual implementation: During the past months, like almost every organization and business in the world, E4S moved into virtual spaces. These events have opened a window of countless opportunities to reach beneficiaries finding the best formula to deliver the E4S content both in-site and at a distance model. E4S will keep improving the use of new and existing technology to support learning, so everybody at home can have access to a meaningful education.  Currently we are working on an E4S app for tracking teachers performance and growth. 

• Build a training center for teachers: E4S is planning to deploy a specialized center for educators where they can constantly improve their teaching skills and update their practices according to the latest trends in education.

• Consolidate the E4S early childhood program: The E4S team is piloting a specialized training for early childhood educators, parents and tutors in Mexico. It will be oriented to promote positive parenting to unleash children’s potential in this stage because every educational level that follows depends on it. The goal is to scale the program arriving to new countries in Latin America like Colombia and Brazil.

E4S has a strategic planning document that compiles information for the organizational growth and allows focusing efforts in the short and medium term.

These impact goals are part of 10 epic statements. In particular, the aforementioned objectives are part of the statements of: pedagogical innovation and development, and operating model. The expected objectives and key results (OKR) of these statements lie in:

• Provide a flexible educational experience (in-site, distance and hybrid)

• Strengthen and diversify the organization's business model

In order to measure progress of these OKRs, periodic meetings are held to review the strategic plan in which perception surveys are carried out with collaborators, sponsors, and strategic allies, as well as thematic discussion spaces are created and analysis of the information is collected.

 The main indicators used to measure this process are:

 Consolidate the E4S virtual implementation:

• Number of virtual programs implemented

• Number of opinions of teachers collected regarding opportunities to improve distance intervention

• Number of teachers who sig in in the E4S’s app

Build a training center for teachers:

• Number of trained teachers

Consolidate the E4S early childhood program:

• Number of sessions held for the development of the program

• Number of countries where the program is present

Regarding the progress, during 2020 E4S successfully operated virtual programs, benefiting 891 teachers and 22,000 children. The relationship with teachers was solidified, creating virtual meeting points for training and follow-up, since this figure became the main face of E4S before students and the rest of the educational community.

• Full-time staff: 45
• Part-time staff: 32 
• Volunteers: 27

The E4S team is integrated by people of various professional backgrounds and different points of view that enrich and strengthen the organization from its core as every new idea helps to build new ways of engaging teachers.

The Operations, Strategic Partnerships, Evaluation, Pedagogic Development and Communications team interact and support each other to continue developing strategies that will allow our work to reach new countries where the power of play is recognized as an innovative milestone in education. 

Furthermore, we have been working closely with our advisory board to oversee the long-term strategic plans and therefore ensuring the sustainability and impact of the programs. E4S also collaborates with pro-bono allies to build up cutting edge processes to efficiently expand the organization: Mckinsey & Company has collaborated in the launching of an archetype that outlines the focus of the efforts we need to do on different strategic areas in each country in order to have the strongest possible institutional structure.

There are tons of stories on how inclusiveness and kindness work at its best in E4S. One of them is the story of Azaret and Roxana. They are two students with visual disabilities that were in a low motivation learning environment, as they didn’t have enough materials to be included in the school activities. When our operative team became aware of the situation, they knew that a change had to be made. In addition to having Braille booklets, they made sure that these girls enjoyed the full experience as the other students did. The E4S operative team sat down with them to understand what their needs were and together found the best way to engage them in the sessions.

Regarding E4S's response to promote gender equality, 80% of our Board of Directors are women. Also, we include a special session in our programs: agent of change.  In this activity an external role model is invited to inspire and empower children, we prioritize on giving visibility to successful women. 

We embodied diversity, equity and inclusion by celebrating our differences rather than judging them, these values permeate into the E4S methodology and are transferred to our teachers and students.

E4S is building a future where every teacher and student has access to a quality education, where at the same time they are empowered to take action for the wellbeing of their community. 

Being part of the TPrize Challenge laureates will be an excellent opportunity for the E4S play methodology to have an even bigger platform where we continue to leverage the power of play for developing 21st century skills. 

As a collateral effect of belonging to these communities we envision to create synergies with potential allies that will contribute to scale our hybrid and online training strategy that forms teachers towards the present and future challenges of education. 

We selected Technology because currently we are developing E4S´s app for teachers. And we are aware that for launching it has to perform perfectly and become a useful tool for our network of educators. 

 In E4S one of our major concerns is the relevance, results and impact of our educational offer. Our assessment process can be improved with long-term exercises to understand what happened with our teachers years after the program finishes. Also, we would like to explore if educators have access to better salaries and opportunities long after their training finishes.

We are always looking for inspiring initiatives to share and connect, as combining forces and working together towards the same goals we are empowered to achieve them all. 

 In E4S we invite everybody to the conversation, as education is an issue to be discussed in all dimensions, having cross-sector partners. 

 E4S seeks to maintain and generate relationships with the public sector such as institutions at the state and national levels, in order to address current issues aligned to the public agenda. As part of the MIT Solve community, it represents a great opportunity to engage with members that can support our digital interventions, such as HP and Amazon.

 For E4S it is essential to build a network of actors committed to sustainable development, as well as establishing partnerships with the academia, local business, multinationals, foundations, civil society organizations and governments. 

 All partnerships that we promote, seek to create a shared value for the benefit of the local communities. A match is made with the values and mission of the organization, with those committed allies who are actively involved in the solution of societal challenges