Preparations for a Summer at Porvir!

I am thrilled to be writing my first post for the Maharam STEAM Fellows blog! This morning started with a really exciting Skype call with Patricia Gomes at Porvir. In addition to going over the details of my arrival at their office in June, we spoke of all the exciting events happening between now and then!

Over the last few months, I have been researching all the sources I have access to for innovations in education, and philosophy on the most appropriate pedagogies for each situation. My assignment at Porvir this summer will be to compile the “top 100” innovations in education over the last year to create a roadmap for educators to include alternative practices in their classrooms. The idea behind this is not only to provide a resource to reach out to the widest possible audience, but also to serve as a reliable base for all education-related media from around the world.

Things are really crazy at Porvir this week in preparation for their annual conference, TransFORMAR. The conference, happening on April 28th, will feature Mitchel Resnik, from the MIT Media Lab as the keynote speaker, among many other international education innovators. I am really excited about this opportunity for Porvir to introduce these changemakers to Brazilian education reformers! I am doing my part in this effort by staying tuned to social media and advertising the live streaming from the conference in the networks available here at RISD and Brown. You can find out more about this event on THIS link!

In the next few weeks, I am also preparing for my participation in a really awesome workshop at the MIT Media Lab. This workshop will produce resources that I will definitely be able to apply to my job this summer, and I am so excited to get in touch with others in this field! Below is a short blurb from their website:

“The Education DesignShop is a 2-day workshop for interdisciplinary teams to first learn design thinking and then apply it to the education system. We will bring together 25 of each students, educators, policymakers, and industry personnel (100 participants in total) to create innovative strategies for implementing solutions in the world of education.”

You can also read some of the sweet articles I am beginning to revise for the publication on Porvir’s website. We are working on translations, making them more available to a international audience. The publication I will work on this summer will be a compilation of all these awesome resources that I, along with the Porvir team, have been researching and compiling over the last year. It is intended to reach to an audience even greater than our website, and the format will de determined by the best way to reach out–which is the heart of the challenge!

That’s it for now, but stay tuned for more updates as the semester draws to a close!