Speaker Details

Lynn Sigouin Freiji

Biography:

Canadian , who has been living in Egypt for over 20 years. Lynn is Improving the Way Science is Taught By Introducing an Effective Outdoor Educational Platform.

Lynn wants to replace the stale, out-dated pedagogic methods that characterize science education in today’s classrooms with a hands-on, child-centered approach that gets students out of their classrooms and into the world around them. The forty or more structured outdoor activities usually half-day or day-long field trips, expeditions and excursions exploring Egypt, she has designed put children ages six to eleven at the center of learning; encourage them to explore nature, science, and history in ways that are fun and instructive; and link directly to homeroom lessons that are part of the national science curriculum. Rather than learning by memorizing, children learn by doing—they discover, explore the natural world, and deduce scientific principles based on their experiences, experiments, and observations. In the process, they gain confidence in their creativity and critical thinking skills and learn to formulate, articulate, and refine hypotheses.

Lynn has spent the past few years developing and improving her curriculum, designing a pilot field center, and welcoming her first classroom groups (the learners) and university students (the teachers and curriculum developers). She is now pursuing a national plan to introduce outdoor field centers as a standard in several communities throughout the country and by doing so, begin changing the prevailing approach to learning. Lynn has a clear plan for moving her idea forward. After consolidating and standardizing the different elements of her program—through trial, error, and adjustment—Lynn is now making it available broadly. This includes translating it into Arabic , linking with the right education partner to coordinate with schools and the Ministry of Education, and finding the right fee structure to sustain the effort and reach poor communities.

Since creating her centre, “Wadi Environmental Science Centre”, Lynn has created a nationwide curriculum for kindergarteners all the way to adult learners that incorporates international and Egyptian standards for science education. The centre receives thousands of guests each year, from Egyptian school children to international students and professionals. Lynn and her staff offer an excellent program that includes courses, workshops and curricula in topics ranging from: environmental and development Arabic, basic math and science, environmental science, agro-ecology, applied technology, renewable energy, and more. In the future, Lynn plans to expand the centre to include many more facilities that incorporate the best of cutting-edge ideas in technology, the environment, ecology, and education, such as having them be equipped with electricity-generating turbines, composting latrines, and more science labs.

Status: Confirmed