This episode will air on Saturday 9/30/2023 at Noon Eastern
Discontent with traditional one-size-fits-all education and the COVID-19 pandemic have stimulated a variety of innovate efforts to create new educational possibilities. Among them is the Hub created by Luba Vangelova, an education writer, consultant, and parent. The Hub is an online platform that enrolls students globally and uses facilitators from all over the world. The Hub’s mission is to help independent life-long learners have the best of both worlds: customization and community. In this episode, we talk with Luba and her colleagues about the Hub and more information about the Hub’s development can be found at https://thehub.community/about#9fb72a2c-760c-43b7-82c8-54438010.
More about our guest below the video
Luba Vangelova (education writer, consultant, and co-founder of pioneering, mixed-ages co-learning groups for independent learners). Luba is the Hub’s Meta-Facilitator. She has written widely shared articles about the future of learning for the likes of TheAtlantic.com and the NPR/PBS MindShift site, and I’ve curated a site on the topic. One of my most popular education articles was called “To Advance Education, We Must First Re-Imagine Society.”
The Hub—inspired by her research; countless conversations and site visits to other learning centers; and first-hand experience co-founding and managing pioneering, mixed-ages co-learning groups for independent learners in the Washington, DC area since 2013—is one manifestation of what she believes to be a shared vision to re-imagine both education and how people relate to themselves, to each other, and to the wider community and world.
More about her at her website https://www.lubavangelova.com/
Her work draws on the following:
- Education/facilitation training and experience. She has received formal facilitator training through the District of Columbia government and through the Agile Learning Centers. She has developed and taught classes on computer programming and travel writing to adults, and she has facilitated at a DC Citizens Summit. She has also tutored student athletes in math at the college level and facilitated activities focused on math, science, language arts and other subjects for mixed-ages groups of children.
- Academic training. She has degrees in systems engineering and journalism.
- Professional experiences. She has written about the future of learning and profiled scientists and engineers for a monthly careers column for The Science Teacher magazine. She has also covered many other subjects (ranging from the Olympics to architecture, social issues, and attempts to clone the extinct Tasmanian tiger) as a freelance journalist in Washington, DC and Sydney, Australia, tracking down resources and getting up to speed quickly on each new topic. Besides that, she has worked as a computer programmer for a Fortune 500 company, and as a media liaison and director of marketing and communications for international environmental and business-development nonprofits. Additionally she has run her own communications-consulting businesses, working with clients ranging from tech start-ups to large foundations, corporations, government entities, and multi-lateral organizations.
- Personal experiences. Among other things, she has lived in seven countries on five continents, and once spent a year backpacking through Australia and Southeast Asia without a set itinerary. Her areas of interest range from ancestral skills to modern economics.