On Saturday November 20th, over 10,000 participants joined the China Education Innovation Conference in Beijing, China. This conference is organised by the China Education Innovation Institute, founded by the Beijing Normal University.

Saku Tuominen, Co-Founder of HundrED (Finland), Deepak Ramola, Founder of Project Fuel (India), and MyMachine (我的机器) Co-Founder Piet Grymonprez (皮特·格利蒙佩为), were invited as international keynote speakers at this massive event on (the importance of) education innovation.

In return we learned from the reflections made by Principal Li Xiaoqi, Professor Zhang Zhuoyu, and Vice President Kang Changyun.

Principal Li Xiaoqi mentioned that “to participate in global cooperation requires not only the cross-cultural application of educational innovation results, but also international cooperation from the design and action stage, so that all parties around the world can participate in the process of education innovation such as curriculum design, focusing on local education issues also have cross-cultural characteristics. What’s more important is to enable teachers to increase their professionalism in cross-cultural communication and empower sustainable development.”

Professor Zhang Zhuoyu shared believes that “innovation comes from pursuit, and pursuit comes from feelings. Behind the display of innovative vitality, wisdom and ability is the yearning and pursuit of a better life and an ideal society. Behind the appearance of innovation is in-depth thinking about society and life. Only innovators who firmly believe that greater and better things exist, and pay attention to social change, fairness and justice, social uncertainty and other higher-level and more principled ideas and thinking, can they have the motivation to pursue and realize such a beautiful thing.”

Vice President Kang Changyun states that “on the one hand, China’s educational innovation business is in line with the work done by its counterparts in the world; on the other hand, this has also increased the sense of urgency of the majority of Chinese educational innovation practitioners. China is an educational country with a long history and culture, a developed economy and a large population, but it still faces many difficulties and challenges in education. How to draw nourishment from the educational innovation experience in different cultural backgrounds, and feed back the reality of the country’s educational innovation, solve localization problems, and stand with the world’s educational innovation peers with greater courage, determination and attitude to find and solve common areas. It is a fundamental challenge that needs to be addressed in facing the future and coping with uncertainty. The Education Expo platform actively promotes Chinese educational innovators to walk with the world, share international educational innovation experience through this platform, and lead China’s excellent educational innovation experience and wisdom to the world.”

Many thanks to all organisers and speakers involved!