Riyadh: Mohammed Fathi
At a time when the concept of creativity and innovation in education has become a talk for academics and researchers in all educational conferences globally, Some business leaders in the Kingdom are seeking to adapt the curricula to suit the revolution of digital technology putting in the same time forward a number of projects related to innovative education to create a leading generation that supports the knowledge economy. Among those projects there is an emerging project to support and spread the culture of digital industrialization, founded by the young Taher Al-Balawi under the name “Valley of Geniuses”, aimed at localizing technology and creating society ,as the project initiator dreams and aspires, to put children in places that aspire them to acquire progress scientifically from the technical side since childhood.The initiator of the project believes that such educational project makes children thinkers and innovators in various fields. they will be open-minded to them all.
“Al-Balawi” tells “Aeroshongir” that his project aims to support innovation in the Arab world in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular, through an educational platform that provides lessons and a series of videos in Arabic for all age groups, to learn digital manufacturing skills and innovation in the field of electronics. He reveals that this type of education achieves the integration of the teacher in The creative activities that his students undertake and participate in, and leads to the love of both the teacher and students for the school to which they belong and instills in the student a love of innovation.
He adds that the project owns an approved online store for many international companies to provide all needs for innovators with ease and speed. In addition Al- balawi says They are together with these companies will provide a series of workshops in the field of modern electronics for universities, schools and individuals in all cities, where they work on a number of events with their partners such as King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, King Salman Center for Youth and other government institutions and private sector companies.
Al-Balawi emphasizes that innovative education leads to students acquiring creative trends, and urges them to creative thinking, straightening it, opening horizons for new and unusual ideas, in addition to creating a student who produces ideas, in addition to encouraging them to create products that are the nucleus of the knowledge economy, noting that such Ideas break the fear barrier of making mistakes or failing.
Al-Balawi sees the necessity of creating an innovative student with awareness of the importance of creative innovations in making the history of civilization on the one hand, and its role in solving the problems of the present and the future on the other hand. Without these innovations and the creative people who were behind them, mankind would have been still living a poor primitive life.
The first breath of “Wadi Genius” was in a room belonging to a small apartment, by mid-2015, so Taher Al-Balawi described the beginning of his project, confirming that his betting on his passion, exert and ambition was greater than his wager on a master’s degree in electronic services, technology, or University jobs.
Within a few years, “Genius Valley” turned into an independent headquarters, a wide package of digital industrialization projects and the Internet of utilization, focusing on the discovery of “young geniuses”. The program gave clear indications of its desire to measure and explore early genius connotations among general education students’ segments, according to patterns of training camps. Scouts’, seasonal camps and then work to develop these unveiled young geniuses.
Also, “Genius Valley” worked as a group of exploratory and competitive work curricula dedicated to advanced hobbyists to take place in 2016 and 2017 in several Saudi cities, one of which was the NASA Space Applications Challenge Competition.
Al-Balawi says that his “Valley of Geniuses” experience embodies the Saudi spirit of artificial intelligence homes, promising with technical and investment leaps, as well as their absorption of the requirements of 2030, indicating that he got an investment opportunity for his idea, which will enable him to cover and implement a list of specific theses and projects in the field of digital manufacturing, innovation and the Internet of Things In the future, being a development need, and not a technical luxury, confirming his happiness in completing a package sale of a share of its shares to a Saudi investment company.
