David Calle (Coslada, 1972), a pioneer in the world of online education, gave this week at Expobienestar, the conference How to face the changes that digitize education supposes. A Telecommunications Engineer by training and a teacher by vocation, in 2011 he founded the YouTube channel and the most important educational platform in Spanish-language in the world in its category. Through the unicoos channel –which has more than 800 videos on mathematics, physics, chemistry and technology for Secondary and Bachelor, and registers close to one and a half million followers and more than 200 million visits–, it has created a community learning and teaching that fosters a fighting spirit, a desire to improve and scientific curiosity. Its platform www.unicoos.com is considered the most important of Secondary and Bachelor in STEM subjects in the world. And with his latest project, www.beunicoos.com, he went one step further to promote equal opportunities, with content for all subjects as well as resources and tools so that teachers can successfully face the digitization of their classes.
How does an engineer take the step towards teaching and become the promoter of the most important online educational platform in Spanish?
Well, it was by chance, I had taught when I was studying at the University and I loved it, but I finished Telecommunications and started working as an engineer. At the age of 30 I became unemployed and they rehired me in the same academy where I had worked, I thought it was going to be a while until opportunities as an engineer arose again, but the fact is that I discovered that what I am passionate about teaching, I set up my own academy, and I have been there ever since.
When did the idea of transferring classes to YouTube come up?
I had been thinking about recording videos for a long time so that the kids could review at home, although I did not do it because I was totally ashamed. But in 2011, with the economic crisis, half of the students left the academy because their parents had become unemployed and could not afford it. Then I told myself that shame was useless, I bought a whiteboard and a marker, I put the batteries, and that’s how the YouTube channel came out. At first my students told me, only 20 students are going to see you, but those 20 students have turned into millions, it is crazy, and the project has grown, now it is a YouTube channel and two web pages.
In the midst of the debate on educational reform, what would change about the current system?
Above all, it would change what and how we teach, because it makes no sense that we are forcing kids to be calculating and memorizing machines in a century in which robots calculate and memorize faster than we do. I would also change how we evaluate and grade, and would introduce some things such as having a critical sense or distinguishing fake news from others, but in a transversal way, I would not get involved in introducing new subjects. And above all, that they work as a team, that in class it was not so much an individual work but in a team, even the exams could be in groups. I do not know of any achievement of humanity that has been done by a single person, for man to reach the Moon there were surely three or four thousand people working. The school should reward group achievements more than individual achievements because life, in the end, is almost always teamwork.
The pandemic has revealed many shortcomings in the education system, but perhaps the most important is the digital divide, how does this inequality affect and how do you think it should be managed to protect the principle of equality for all?
This is an issue that worries me a lot, in fact Unicoos was born to try to give everyone the same opportunities, that has always been our obsession, to try to give everyone access to an academy or a private teacher. And with the pandemic, the gap has not only been digital, but rather social and that is what really worries me, because there are kids who live in rooms shared with their parents, or with more people and have no place to study, which they have to share a computer or a tablet with their four siblings, or they don’t have parents who can keep an eye on them because they have to work. That is the most difficult social gap to manage and for which I do not have many answers. Hopefully this type of special case would be supported, because many children can be left off the hook, and we are not talking about one course, but practically two.
Have the teachers been up to the task in this health crisis?
There are cases of all colors as in all groups. I know of cases in which teachers have been able and have been up to the task, and others that have not been able to do so because they have not been given training, they have not been helped, and they have not been given resources. When in June of last year I said that homework had not been done, some teacher took it personally, but I was referring to the administration. Giving classes online is not recording yourself with a camera, or sending homework to students, it needs many more things, and if they do not have the training and resources for it, they cannot do their job as they should. In this sense, I am convinced that those who have not done their homework are the administrations.
In these times when online teaching predominates, what do you think is the value of face-to-face teaching?
Well, for me it is irreplaceable, and it is said by someone who teaches on YouTube. What is done in class is irreplaceable, not only because of what your teacher can inspire you to talk with him, share with you or can serve you much better, since he will see immediately when you have not understood something, but because the kids They also need to socialize, in primary, secondary and high school. These children have taken a lot of time from socializing with their peers, talking, arguing, debating, playing, getting angry, making up … those social skills that are acquired when you are in a group can only be achieved if It is in person. Hopefully when we do something to digitize education, we try to ensure that all those values are the least lost in the process, because equations can be taught on a YouTube channel, but this kind of thing obviously cannot.
How do you assess the fact that during confinement parents had to become “teachers” to help their children with their studies?
The curious thing about all this is that it only took two or three months for everyone to understand how important school is. Although here we can also talk about the social gap, because not all parents can do it, help with homework and explain things to children. It has been hard, I know cases of parents with two or three children who were involved in a real madness.
Should autonomy be further cultivated among students?
Obviously they had to help them, especially at the beginning, but the job of a parent is not to teach their children mathematics for example, or to be aware of their homework, or worry about whether they will have an exam tomorrow. That autonomy must be worked on from a very young age, sometimes it is not easy, but it is important that they acquire it.
What message would you like to see after your intervention at Expobienestar Canarias?
That families, teachers and administrations should row together in the same direction. Education must stop being a political struggle to become the most important goal of our society along with health. Hopefully this pandemic will help us all work as a team for the kids, who are our future.
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