Educate to Innovate second programme runs with a great participation of Government Teachers

The second session of the Educate to Innovate workshop was successfully held at Berjaya Hotel Mount Lavinia on 05th July 2018 with a great participation of 137 governments school teachers representing Arts, Science, Mathematics, Technology & Engineering subject areas. The programme focuses on four key areas which massively impacts the paradigm shift of the education system in Sri Lanka namely, STEAM Education, Coding for School Kids, MakerSpaces & Entrepreneurial Thinking.

The first session was resourced by Ms. Nevindaree Premaratne, Project Officer, ICTA under the topic of ‘STEAM Education and why we need a shift?’ Mr. Chamil Kohona, Senior Software Architect – Zone 24X7 resourced the second session on Coding in Schools. The session showed out a simplest form which the teachers can use in schools to create the liking to the subject of coding. He further explained the necessity of coding as a subject form very young age and shared a few tips how a teacher can guide it. Mr. Jehan Wijesinghe, CEO & Co-Founder – Igniter Space conducted the MakerSpaces and Entrepreneurial Thinking sessions which he got the teachers to make car using little things you can find around the house. The main idea of this sessions was to get the teachers to think of ways and means to combine the STEAM content in to one pace to create an innovation from simple things. Ms. Tamasha Fernando, Project Manager, ICTA concluded the session by sharing what a teacher can do to get the future ready works force.

The workshop resulted over 40 inquiries form schools for coding and makerspace sessions in their schools and all most all the teachers were impressed on the content shared. Programme will implement covering 5 provinces impacting 2000 teachers across the island with in the year of 2018.

The next generation will be the workforce who will be unleashing their talents in the unknown jobs in the future. Hence creating that future ready workforce is in the teacher’s hand. A teacher should be a role model who is dynamic, explorative, creative and innovative, thus the students will naturally get on board to the next era of the innovations” – This was the main message to the teachers via the session.