EdTech – The Learner

How Quest Alliance is playing the role of an ecosystem builder with Q2L

“We need to ask ourselves – are we really putting our heads together as a community to work on a problem? Or are we doing it in our own spaces?”

As the city cools off amidst a string of showers, so does the fervour that characterised this year’s Quest2Learn Summit. Weeks of relentless work had culminated in a two-day conference, inadvertently setting the standard for discourse around the future of work and learning.

In a freewheeling chat at the Bangalore International Centre, Aakash Sethi – CEO of Quest Alliance – sinks into a chair, ready to organize his thoughts and reflect on the days that passed by and what it means for the ecosystem. Excerpts:

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Not just another IAS aspirant

While it may not be entirely inaccurate to say that cyberspace may be saturated with desperate accounts of IAS-aspirants hailing from smaller towns. But I’m willing to bet that 17-year-old Amisha is special. Here’s why!

“A little to the right…no, too much…slight left…slight right…perfect!”

The limits of my moderately-priced phone’s camera is tested as it tries to do justice to the innocence and charm radiating from its subject. When not smoothing out the crease on her kurta or adjusting her spectacles, this lanky 17-year-old beams into the lens, silently imploring me to release her from her misery.

Meet Amisha Choubey.

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The Life Cycle of Online Communities

How do you make an online community thrive? It sounds simple in theory, but bringing people together around a particular topic or cause, and creating a space in which they can provide real and sustained support to one another, is not easy. As we at Quest strive to take Trainer Tribe, our online platform for 21st Century teachers, to the next level, we asked Danny Hutley, Impact & Learning Advisor at the Change.org Foundation, to share some of his experiences.

On November 29 Danny spoke to our MasterCoach Digital Learning Circle, via videolink, sharing failures, breakthroughs and routes to success from five years of curating online communities for Change.org.

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Tech Over: 5 Lessons Learned

Technology can only solve problems in the education sector once you actually know what those problems are. Quest Alliance’s Executive Director Aakash Sethi writes about how meaningful engagement with end-users has led to Ed-tech innovations which have brought about real changes in the Indian context.

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Everyone’s excited about using technology to bring about positive changes in the education sector. So excited, in fact, that all too often you see technology coming before the problem. There is a notion that ‘I want to use technology’, and that in doing that, I’ll definitely solve a problem or two.

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Design Thinking to Stay Learner Centred

Design thinking and innovation studio Quicksand has worked with Quest Alliance since its inception. Here, Quicksand’s Kevin Shane & Babitha George explain why sustained engagement is at the heart of designing something with the ability to meaningfully improve the quality of life of the individuals being designed for.

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Design thinking has become a favoured methodology for innovation and user-centered design in recent years. While there is a lot of interest and excitement, the nature of this process requires sustained engagement and commitment, in order to allow for sustained change. At its core, design thinking is about empathy and a deep understanding of people’s needs — and designing for those needs.

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