May 8 OWL Global Wisdom Circle

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May 8 OWL Global Wisdom Circle: Kunal Chawla

A monthly video-circle for sharing wisdom, experience and support among global citizens everywhere.

Creating New Pathways
Can you recall a time when you were forced to admit that what you were doing with your life was not working, and the only way way forward was to change your reality map and find a new way?

Kunal Chawla is a teacher, course designer, social entrepreneur and science learning visionary. He’s led an education and employment development project in rural India, worked as a project manager for Google, taught middle school in India, earned an M.A. in Learning Technology and Design at Stanford University, and designed and delivered massive open online courses (MOOCs) at Udacity in Silicon Valley.

He describes a time when he was teaching science to middle school children in Delhi, India:

The way the school was set up, teachers had 30 minutes a week of preparation time to for a week’s teaching effort, which could be up to four hours of classroom instruction. Can you imagine that — just a half-hour to plan for science learning for a week? That led the teachers to rely on the textbook, which I found was at best mediocre. For the students, that content was boring! They couldn’t wait to run out of the classroom and play games on their smartphones!

This was painful learning for me. But it was also an “aha” moment that set me on a new course in life: there’s got to be a way to make science learning exciting and engaging for young people everywhere. And if we can do that, think of the possibilities: new doors of opportunity could open for many, many children — and maybe even new potential for accelerating the advancement of science!

Today Kunal is creating an on-line science school for children, with the initial content based on videos he’s made during his travels through India and the U.S. He’s calling it Chalees Min School. (“Chalees” = “40” in Hindi; “Min” = minutes”). The learning design: each lesson is 40 minutes — a four-minute video to start, and the rest in interactive activities. You can enjoy some of the early videos at Chalees Min School.

One of Kunal’s science videos:
Food: Where Does It Come From?

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Videos

Questions & Comments

10 thoughts on “May 8 OWL Global Wisdom Circle”

  3. Hi Kunal

    What you are doing (and how you are doing it) is very inspiring. To be free like that and just pursue something from the heart would assuredly give you and others so much joy and value.

    I do wonder about where the courage comes from to abandon the security of conventional path. How do you answer the ifs and if nots to yourself? Because I feel that is what stops most of us from truly doing what we want to do.

    Best wishes.

    Reply ↓

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