Sharing through education

Transferring knowledge into understanding
In this day and age, grasping the amount of information readily available to us can seem quite overwhelming. With technological advances allowing people to exchange information more quickly and easily than we have ever before, it seems that at every turn, we are bombarded with new facts, ideas, and beliefs. Many pieces of information sink in, and help to build our knowledge base, but many times, a larger part slips by. With this in mind, now more than ever, it is essential that people not only continually add to their knowledge base, but even more so, transform this knowledge into understanding. Understanding a subject enables us to predict the outcome in different, but similar situations, assess the validity of information, and formulate hypotheses and opinions on certain subjects, even when we don't have all the facts. In other words, we focus on using our intelligence, rather than using our memory.

If we continually aim to put knowledge into a context of understanding, we create a powerful knowledge engine that makes concepts relevant, useful and re-useable, as well as points out the relations and connections with other concepts. Based on this, we can formulate solid opinions, put them into perspective, and relate them to other people's thoughts and ideas. We can evaluate the ‘bits of true', the ‘bits of false' in existing theories and other opinions. With this, we also develop the ability to identify the essential gaps in our knowledge, and from that, ‘hunger for knowledge' grows. Therefore, every bit of knowledge that can be transformed into a solid understanding counts.

Beyond the theory
In practice, translating knowledge into understanding is not as easy as it appears to be. In the classroom, this is where the greatest teaching challenge arises. With an ever increasing variety of concepts to teach, and faced with standardized testing requirements that assess students' progress over time, a teacher has the difficult task of transferring an enormous amount of knowledge to students in limited time. At these times, teachers are challenged to find a delicate balance between finding time for teaching students the required facts in order to meet the fixed evaluation points, and time for moving that knowledge beyond the facts into deeper understanding.

Our interactive education programs and teaching aids provide teachers with an exciting way to engage students in the learning process. Through our exploration of different cultures and societies all over the world, we will add extra, unique tools to the teacher's tool kit that incorporate relevant, high-quality content, based on actual experience, into lively, interactive frameworks. In essence, we aim to help make the learning experience fun and dynamic. By doing so, students will be encouraged to think more deeply about what they have learned and be more inspired to put their knowledge into action.

Specifically, our education programs and teaching aids incorporate our knowledge, insight and experiences, and recommend ways to deliver the content, in what we believe to be, some of the most influential ways knowledge can be transformed into understandable realities. Our content is focused on elements learned in primary and secondary school (ages 5-18) and are best applied to concepts taught in social studies (geography, citizenship, history, culture, government, economics), science (earth science, health, life science/biology, general science), language arts (research, vocabulary, reading/writing, media), math (problem solving, number theory, statistics), technology as well as any subject that incorporates thinking skills and reflective writing elements. We recommend transferring knowledge by using the following principles:

Example and Experience
In order to make students feel part of the curriculum, and make the material relevant for them, students need to see concepts in practical, real-life situations. It is this hearing, seeing and doing, that explains why it is relevant to learn about this subject.

Self-Reflection
Reflecting on concepts, facts and theories by relating them to your personal situation, allow students to personalize them. This personalization creates additional relevance to the student. Secondly, relating the subject to (prior) experiences allows student to (re-) interpret them in a different context, and in this way, deepen the understanding of the subject as well as previously learnt subjects.

Big Picture and Relationships
In order to analyze information presented, students need to see how specific criteria fit into the ‘big picture.' By reviewing the relationships and connections between elements, students start to recognize how the pieces fit into the puzzle.

Practical Perspective and Applications
By seeing examples of concepts and applying them to real-life situations, students develop practical learning skills that help them to continuously learn how to use and apply information they have.

Abstraction
Identifying the underlying concepts and theories of a subject enables students to re-apply them to new situations, and compare and evaluate different subjects on a deeper level.

In collaboration with teachers, we design our education programs and teaching aids to meet the needs of teachers and students at various educational levels.