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[The archived video is at the bottom of this post. Happy viewing!]

[Note: This blog post was authored by Curt Bonk and posted by Punya Mishra, May 6, 2020.]

Can you create a good question? The art of asking a good question was the road to literacy and success for centuries and that rings even more true today. Or does it? This session will rise above that as Paul Kim will be asking you for a “better” question or a “great” question, not just a good one. But what does asking a great question entail?

For more than a decade, Dr. Kim and his colleagues at Stanford have been building and fine-tuning SMILE (Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment). Smile has evolved over time. First it was built to help children’s literacy skills by having them ask and answer questions on their mobile devices. Now, with Kim’s ingenuity, SMILE has incorporated AI to place millions of questions in its database thereby allowing it to analyze and rank questions that students ask according to five different levels. Equally important, it can also generate questions on a topic according to those five levels. The result is a fun and highly engaging tool. And it can be downloaded for free (see links below).

Simply put, SMILE “turns a traditional classroom into a highly interactive learning environment by engaging students in critical reasoning and problem solving while enabling them to generate, share, and evaluate multimedia-rich inquiries.” The goals are multiple, momentous, and massive; among them, (1) to foster question generation skills which is a signal of critical thinking processes at work, (2) to involve learners in decision making as well as (3) creative synthesis, and (4) to formulate text in the form of a question to trigger critical thinking and analysis. Through competitive as well as collaborative SMILE sessions, learners, from early elementary schools to higher education classes, have fun with the challenge of generating higher levels of questions and ranking them. In the process, they improve their critical thinking and evaluation skills.

It is time for students to generate and evaluate great questions and find firm footing on the path toward inquiry-driven learning, instead of being sedated with a fact-driven route 101. Those attending this session, will not just learn about SMILE, they will have the opportunity to download the app and be part of the SMILE community. The session topics will include mobile learning, collaborative technology, online learning, youth literacy, creating engaging environments for disadvantaged youth, learning ecologies, MOOCs, and much more. See Dr. Kim’s bio below and related resource and video weblinks.

Dr. Paul Kim is the Chief Technology Officer and Assistant Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. An education technology entrepreneur, Dr. Kim leads initiatives involving the design of learning technologies, educational research, and community development. In a trans-disciplinary project aiming to promote innovation and competition by constructing a Programmable and Open Mobile Internet (POMI 2020), Dr. Kim designs and implements mobile technologies and social learning environments.

In 2009, Dr. Kim founded Seeds of Empowerment, a 501(C3) non-profit global education incubator for social innovations leveraging mobile technologies. Under his direction and leadership, Stanford undergraduate and graduate students carry out mobile-social educational research and development in real-world classrooms and virtual learning environments. Some of the student-initiated projects he has helped develop and sponsor include the multiple award-winning TeachAids, a global HIV/AIDS education NGO, Adina’s Deck, an award-winning internet safety education program, SMILE (Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment), a mobile platform that has been implemented in over 20 countries, ROSE (Remotely Operated Science Experiment), and 1,001 Stories, a global micro creative economy project. These and other Seeds of Empowerment initiatives have been recognized in global competitions sponsored by organizations including the Sesame Workshop, WISE by the Qatar Foundation, the Marvell 100K Challenge, Vodafone, etc.

Dr. Kim has dedicated himself to international development through education and information technology strategies and has advised Saudi Arabia’s national online education initiative, the national evaluation of Uruguay’s One Laptop Per Child project, Rwanda’s national ICT planning, and institutional advancement efforts for numerous universities. Dr. Kim serves on the Board of Directors of WestEd, the Committee on Grand Challenges in International Development for the National Academies of Science, and the advisory committee for the National Science Foundation’s Education and Human Resources Directorate. Dr. Kim was born in South Korea and received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Technology from the University of Southern California in 1999.

Paul Kim:

  1. Paul Kim’s Stanford Homepage: https://gse-it.stanford.edu/about/team/paul-kim
  2. CV: https://cap.stanford.edu/profiles/viewCV?facultyId=30964&name=Paul_Kim
  3. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kim_(academic)

SMILE:

  1. SMILE (Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environments): https://smile.stanford.edu/
  2. What is SMILE?: https://gse-it.stanford.edu/smile
  3. Smile video (5:47): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loCtB-9FiY
  4. Stanford pi: https://smile-pi.org/
  5. Mobile app for SMILE (currently supports English, Chinese, and Korean): https://www.smileup.site/
  6. SMILE Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Mobile_Inquiry-based_Learning_Environment_(SMILE)
  7. DNLE Week 8: S.M.I.L.E.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrgdJ5p2Ah4&feature=youtu.be
  8. Introducing SMILE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDL19HWQC1U

Seeds of Empowerment:

  1. Seeds of Empowerment: https://www.seedsofempowerment.org/
  2. Seeds of Empowerment (video Argentina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd8JEI-k6Zg)
  3. Seeds of Empowerment: WISE Finalist (Qatar): https://www.wise-qatar.org/project/seeds-empowerment-united-states-of-america/