Thinking Digital Conference: Entrepreneur sparks educational revolution

May 14 2009 By Andrew Mernin, The Journal

IMAGINE a school with 15,000 teachers and a curriculum so vast that you could choose to learn almost anything you want – including video gaming, skateboarding and relaxation techniques.
 
That is the vision of digital entrepreneur Paul Miller who unveiled the inspiration for his online start-up School of Everything at today’s Thinking Digital conference at the Sage Gateshead.
 
The School of Everything connects people with something to teach with people who want to learn online.
 
Mr Miller, whose enterprise is backed by angel investors, the Young Foundation and broadcaster Channel 4, now has thousands of students and teachers signed up to the website depsite the site being in its infancy.
 
He said the creation of the site was driven by a need to revolutionise the education system, which hasn’t evolved at the same rate as the demands of society in the last century.
 
He said: “The net is not just about information, it’s about organisation and that is the real power of the digital age that we will see over the next few years.
 
“If you think about education, it hasn’t changed since the 19th Century in the way that it is organised, it’s a mass production system.
 
“It was designed to teach people all the same thing because people were going into the same jobs. The economy and society has changed but education hasn’t. So we had this idea of what would happen if you took the institutions out of education.
 
“Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are teaching outside of the school system. We are just tapping into that.”
 
As well as creating the School of Everything, Mr Miller co-founded the Social Innovation Camp – an initiative which brings together ideas, people and technology to create new social start-ups during a 48-hour get-together.
 
Mr Miller was first to take the stage at this year’s Thinking Digital conference following the welcome address from Herb Kim, CEO of Codeworks – the North East’s digital industry body.
 
Mr Kim said this year’s event would more than live up to the build-up following last year’s successful conference.
 
He said: “We have spent the best part of six months scouring the globe to find what we feel is an incredible array of speakers and of content that we hope will impress you.
 
“We worked really hard to create an environment that’s really special and facilitates something magical, far greater than the sum of its parts.”