FutureEd Fest 2024 Kickoff Event

Starfish Education joined hands with Thai PBS and special panel discussion participants to officially announce FutureEd Fest 2024!

FutureEd Fest’s second iteration is taking place on October 5th at the historic Grand Postal Building in Bangkok with the theme of “Eduinnovate – Crafting the Future of Learning”, which was also the topic of the kickoff event’s panel discussion, which was livestreamed by Thai PBS.

During the discussion, Sanon Wangsrangboon, Deputy Governor of Bangkok, touched upon the importance of effective education for children in the Bangkok area, and the importance of the work that Starfish is doing to help transform curriculum and build capacity for local schools. He also mentioned that being open to new ideas from the global education sector such as the “Schools as Learning Communities” concept can be beneficial for Thai children and society as well.

Dr. Kritsichai Somsaman, Director of SEAMEO STEM-ED, shared about the need of a Maker Culture for educators and schools in an ever changing world, and how teaching and learning methods such as Maker Education and Project-Based Learning help children to truly develop and foster their intellectual curiosity.

Manit Chansuthirangkool, CEO and Founder of iMAKE Innovation Co. Ltd., discussed building future skills in the context of careers. Learning new technologies and capacities such as AI and data science as well as the constant need to promote lifelong learning and creativity is important for the current workforce as well as for children and students.

Dr. Nanthaporn Janchalia Seributra, CEO of Starfish Education, also shared her thoughts on future skills, mentioning that there not only needs to be a constant urge to upskill, but also curriculum and infrastructure that facilitates this learning. School leadership needs to possess the right mix of vision and knowledge in order to effectively design and deliver meaningful education. Lifelong learning is a core source of building future schools.

Dr. Seributra also mentioned that one of the biggest takeaways for visitors to the inaugural FutureEd Fest last year was inspiration to try new ways to innovate and to learn. She invited all to attend this year’s FutureEd Fest and hopes that the inspiration continues.

After the panel discussion, Dr. Seributra shared about the recently launched Future School Transformation Program, which Starfish Education is implementing in partnership with Octava Foundation from Singapore. It includes four core components – a Future School Leader course, professional development support for the 10 school leaders participating in the first round, financial support in the form of grants for setting up Makerspace and 3R Innovation curriculum programs at each of the schools, and research and evaluation of all of the above.