Technology meets Tradition: Felipe Spath, SOLE Colombia

Meet Felipe Spath, co-founder of SOLE Colombia (Self Organized Learning Environments), the next in this Spotlight Series! 

I met Felipe early one morning for a tinto (black coffee) in the Candelaria neighbourhood, the heart of downtown Bogota. Within minutes, he had connected me with other people doing great work in Colombia, and humbly shared his insights on rural education, technology, and innovation. We were able to film outside the coffee shop before campus became too noisy (with a few early skateboarders around!).

In this video, Felipe talks about the importance of technology and tradition coming together, collaboration rather than competition in learning, and his hopes for more community-based, and tribe-based learning in the future:

Felipe Spath: Educators Who Inspire Spotlight Series from Roopa Reddy on Vimeo.

Along with being a Co-Founder of SOLE (affiliated with Sugata Mitra's School in the Cloud initiative), Felipe is also a TEDx organizer in Colombia, a University educator and an "Associate Thinker" at th1nk.co. He lives in a rural area outside of Bogota, and has been engaged with rural development and sustainability issues for many years.

​I really enjoyed hearing Felipe's unique perspective, and had a wonderful time in his undergrad class on Designing Purposeful Experiences at the Universidad del Rosario later that morning. Being part of a workshopping exercise with students (similar to a design thinking session) reminded me of how much I love the energy and ideas in post-secondary spaces!

For more on Felipe's work, visit: ​http://www.th1nk.co/#.