127: Sir Linkalot – Spelling App
Before launching the app, Sir Linkalot (Andy Salmon’s alter ego) worked with 150,000 children (4 to 18 year olds) and presented to 15,000 teachers at 500+ schools (including 3 visits to Kenya in 2017 where he had record book sales). He has presented at many teacher conferences & one prison.
More than a third of 11-year-old children don’t meet literacy test standards. After using the app, approximately 600 students aged 7 – 13 found a 50% + increase in test results. Less able students were able to double their performance.
www.sirlinkalot.org
Twitter – @sirlinkalot
Show Sponsor
The National Association for Primary Education speaks for young children and all who live and work with them. This includes parents, teachers, governors and all those interested in primary education. NAPE is a non-political charity and works tirelessly to support teachers in the classroom as expressed in their ‘Value of Membership’ Document. NAPE leads the Primary Umbrella Group of thirty primary subject associations and unions and gives teachers and schools a voice at governmental level at consultative meetings with ministers for schools.
For full details of how they can support you please visit their website at nape.org.uk
126: Become a Superlearner with Jonathan Levi
Jonathan Levi is a serial entrepreneur, author, and lifehacker born and raised in Silicon Valley.
He’s the author of the blockbuster Become a SuperLearner series, and the host of the award-winning Becoming SuperHuman podcast. His passions include learning languages, musical instruments, acro yoga, weightlifting, and cooking.
He lives in Tel Aviv, Israel with his superwoman, Limmor.
Quick affiliate links to Jonathan’s 3rd book “The Only Skill That Matters.”
Questions asked:
1. Who are you?
2. What does your life look like now and how is it different from when you were growing up?
3. What was valuable about your school experience?
4. Which teachers do you remember and why?
5. Who did you admire when you were young?
6. What was it about that person that had such an impact?
7. What was the best piece of advice you have ever been given and who gave it to you?
8. What advice would you give your younger self?
9. What does your future look like?
10. What podcast, book, video, film, song or other resource has had the biggest impact on your life and why?
Resources mentioned
How to WinFriends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
The 4 Hour Work Week – Tim Ferriss
Drugs and the Meaning of Life – Sam Harris
Social media information
Personal website & portfolio: http://jle.vi
Facebook: http://fb.com/jonlevi
Twitter: http://twitter.com/entreprenewer
YouTube: http://jle.vi/youtube
Instagram: http://instagram.com/entreprenewer
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/jonathanlevi
Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/jonathanleviofficial/
125: Empathy Week with Ed Kirwan
The world needs more Empathy– but teaching it is not enough
Empathy Week 2020 is an invitation for 200,000 young people to put empathy into action and create a better world. Together, we are building the #EmpathyGeneration.
Ed Kirwan is an educator, filmmaker and photographer who works to challenge the status quo of social issues and lead people into tangible action. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Bath and worked as a research scientist for a year before he moved into secondary education where he taught science in North London. In the 2 years since, Ed finished a Masters degree in ‘Leadership’ from UCL:IOE before going on to highlight the issue of homelessness in the UK., educating the general public on ways they can help through powerful visual storytelling. Ed now runs a community that brings homelessness organisations together in the UK, acting as a key networker for the sector and between grassroots organisations and larger national charities. In addition to his work around homelessness, during the past two years, Ed has volunteered and worked in Uganda and India on international development projects and also documented the Homeless World Cup in Mexico in 2018 and Cardiff in 2019.
It is ultimately his experiences in the classroom, at the Homeless World Cup and working alongside Slum Soccer in India that led Ed to create Empathy Week 2020. A free secondary school resource, it invites young people to put empathy into action and create a better world by empowering them to make change in their own communities. Ed believes teaching empathy alone is not enough and that students need to be given the freedom, time and space to develop the leadership and empathic skills that are so vital in everyone’s career and life. As a dedicated basketball player, he also recognises the importance of sport in character development and has therefore focused on the theme of ‘Sporting Change’ for this year’s Empathy Week.
Ed now continues to work on Empathy Week, enabling its impact to spread across the UK as well as continuing to grow his own production company Both Buckets, which has a long term goal of showing that businesses can exist earning a profit whilst ‘doing good’ at the same time – fulfilling a life of filling both buckets.
Instagram – @empathyweek
Facebook – @empathyweek
Twitter – @TheEmpathyWeek
Twitter/Instagram/Facebook – @edkirwan
Show Sponsor
The National Association for Primary Education speaks for young children and all who live and work with them. This includes parents, teachers, governors and all those interested in primary education. NAPE is a non-political charity and works tirelessly to support teachers in the classroom as expressed in their ‘Value of Membership’ Document. NAPE leads the Primary Umbrella Group of thirty primary subject associations and unions and gives teachers and schools a voice at governmental level at consultative meetings with ministers for schools.
For full details of how they can support you please visit their website at nape.org.uk
124: Classroom Changemakers with Theo Knott
Theo manages the fairer strand of Nesta’s Education work which looks at how we can enable women, minorities and those from disadvantaged backgrounds to have better access to education and careers in technology and innovation.
Theo is especially passionate about equality of opportunities and how we can give everyone the chance to reach their goals and potential irrespective of their upbringing.
There is broad consensus that skills such as creativity and problem-solving will be vital in ensuring young people from all backgrounds are well-prepared for life and work in the 21st century. At Nesta we’re launching Classroom Changemakers, an award programme to unearth, celebrate and share great ideas from teachers and teaching assistants which aim to give young people the opportunity to be creative and solve problems in maths and computer science. We will award 15 teachers, or teaching assistants, £5,000 each to their school or college to celebrate their work.
Through these awards Nesta aims to:
- Reward and celebrate the great work of teachers and teaching assistants.
- Better understand how teachers and teaching assistants are giving young people the opportunity to be creative and solve problems in maths and computer science.
- Share this understanding and the bright ideas unearthed by the awards with other educators.
We are looking to award teachers and teaching assistants who have developed and tried out an idea in their classroom which aims to give young people the opportunity to be creative and/or solve problems in maths or computer science.
https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/classroom-changemakers/
@theodoreknott
- Complete the short online application form by 2 March 2020. The application form involves three questions and will take up to 30 minutes.
- If shortlisted complete a 30 minute call with Nesta between 9-13 March.
- W/C 16 March 2020: shortlisted applicants informed of the final decision
- 24 April 2020: celebration event in London.
- If selected as a winner take part in a case study phone interview with Nesta on your idea late March/early April
- We estimate that the total time commitment is 1.5 days.
- Nesta will reimburse reasonable travel and supply cover costs for participants to attend the final event.
Show Sponsor
The National Association for Primary Education speaks for young children and all who live and work with them. This includes parents, teachers, governors and all those interested in primary education. NAPE is a non-political charity and works tirelessly to support teachers in the classroom as expressed in their ‘Value of Membership’ Document. NAPE leads the Primary Umbrella Group of thirty primary subject associations and unions and gives teachers and schools a voice at governmental level at consultative meetings with ministers for schools.
For full details of how they can support you please visit their website at nape.org.uk
123: C.H.A.M.P.S. Mentoring with Vondale Singleton
Today we start to combine our 2 podcasts into 1. This is a bonus episode previously released on the Learning on Fire Podcast to show how education is not about being taught in silos. Schools, parents and community can work in harmony to create the whole picture for our children.
Vondale Eugene Singleton Sr. was born on the Southside of Chicago. After overcoming the death of his mother due to crack-cocaine, an incarcerated father throughout high-school, and the negative influences of the Ida B. Wells Housing projects he beat the odds becoming a first-generation college student earning his Bachelors of Science Degree in Elementary Education and his Master’s Degree in Marital and Family Therapy from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK. He credits his mentor, Steven Robertson as the person who invested sacrificially his time and resources to help him become the man he is today.
The last 16 years he has worked as an advocate in primary, secondary, and higher education, as both a teacher and administrator. He believes that “salvation plus education is an unbeatable combination.” He started C.H.A.M.P.S. for young men in an effort to mentor young men with similar circumstances. He helped organize the Award Winning Music Video at the White House Film Festival, which landed the C.H.A.M.P.S. a visit to the White House with President Obama.
Vondale has won numerous awards and received many recognitions for his work with C.H.A.M.P.S. He was recently named the “Father of the Year” for the State of Illinois by the Illinois Fatherhood Initiative, a Walmart Community Playmaker through the coveted Chicago Blackhawks as well aa MLK Community Champion. He is married to his College sweetheart, Dr. Patrina Singleton. They reside in Chicago, Il with their two beautiful children, Promise Singleton (9), and Vondale E. Singleton, Jr, (4).
Questions asked on the Learning on Fire Podcast Interview
- Who are you?
- What does your life look like now and how is it different from when you were growing up?
- What was valuable about your school experience?
- Which teachers do you remember and why?
- Who did you admire when you were young?
- What was it about that person that had such an impact?
- What was the best piece of advice you have ever been given and who gave it to you?
- What advice would you give your younger self?
- What does your future look like?
- What podcast, book, video, film, song or other resource has had the biggest impact on your life and why?
Resources mentioned
The Bible
Believe to Achieve by Howard H White
Contact information
Social Media – @champsmentoring
Show Sponsor
National Association for Primary Education
Our aim is to achieve a higher priority for the education of children from birth to 13. High quality learning in the early years of life is vitally important to the creation of an educated society. Young children are not simply preparing for the future, they are living a never to be repeated time of life and the best way to learn is to live.