project zero, harvard graduate school of education

PROJECT ZERO, HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION INTERNTAIONAL PROJECT > Liz Dawes Duraisingh Forging a connection between the Georgian National Museum and the Harvard Graduate School of Education I n February 2015 I had the pleasure of visiting Tbilisi with two of my colleagues from Project Zero, a research unit based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the United States. We were there to meet up with renowned journa list Paul Salop ek, who is current ly engaged in a walk around the world to retrace the pathways of our ancient hu- man ancestors and to experiment with ‘slow journalism’ . We are working with Paul Salopek to develop an educational component to his Out of Eden walk: a free, online learning community that connects young people from around the world in intercultural exchange while inviting them to slow down to observe the world carefully and listen attentively to others. To find out more about our project please visit our website http://learn.outofedenwalk.com/. Because the has generously hosted Paul Salopek during his time in Tbilisi, we were able to spend some time at the museum during our visit. We particularly enjoyed meeting with the director David Lordkipanidze and members of the museum’s education department: Mikheil Tsereteli and Da- rejan Dzotsenidze. We were also excited to run a workshop at the museum, which was attended by local educators and students. In this workshop we introduced our project, Out of Eden Learn, and invited participants to engage in one of our ‘slow looking’ activities by spreading out into the museum galleries in small groups to look carefully at an object together. We also ran a similar workshop at nearby High School N: 1. After our visit, the education department colla- borated with Paul Salopek to produce a video of local Geor- gian children going on a walk with him around Tbilisi while modeling some of our learning activities as a professional development tool for teachers. Many people from around the world have watched an English version of this video. Also accompanying us on our visit to Tbilisi were Stephen Kahn and Emi Kane from the Abundance Foundation, the or- ganization that supports our work. They were so impressed by the museum’s interest in Project Zero ideas about active learning that they offered to sponsor two museum education staff to visit a Project Zero conference. It is for this rea- son that Mikheil Tsereteli and Darejan Dzotsenidze travelled to Amsterdam in early October to learn more about Project Zero practices and to exchange ideas with educators from around the world. Looking ahead, we hope to strengthen the connection between the Georgian National Museum and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 76

project zero, harvard graduate school of education

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