Welcome back to our series “We are Hong Kong”, which introduces Hong Kong enterprises or organisations founded by Hong Kong people in Thailand. In this issue, we will introduce VERSO International School, whose vision is to inspire everyone to be “future-ready”.
The ubiquity of smartphones by which most children can have everything at their fingertips and the advent of AI technology such as ChatGPT and Midjourney, have been a major disruption to today’s education. However, most schools and educational systems continue to remain stagnant, doing the same things they've always done.
Recognising critical necessities for educational transformation, VERSO International School, with the vision and impetus of its Hong Kong founders who have four-decade experiences in education, aims to become a pioneer in Southeast Asia to challenge the traditional model of education and prepare the next generation for the future. Fortune Hand Ventures Ltd, a Hong Kong education company that founded the American International School in 1986 in Hong Kong, is one of the biggest single foreign investors in international schooling in Thailand.
VERSO, accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, follows an American curriculum. It is the world's first international school to collaborate with a globally acclaimed design and innovation company, IDEO in San Francisco. They worked together to design the school’s DNA and conceptual blueprint, in alignment within the unique context of Thailand.
“We prepare our learners to become ‘future-ready’ in order to thrive in the evolving and unpredictable conditions of the future. Being future-ready is not only being ready for changes and immediate adaptability, it also implies a proactive and strategic approach to anticipate changes and navigate them effectively,” explained Mr Jarret Voytilla, VERSO’s Upper Loop (Grade 9-12) Leader.
“A good example would be the recent disruption caused by Midjourney or ChatGPT. Instead of banning them outright or being afraid of letting learners explore and use these new technologies, we need to embrace them and help our learners learn how to keep themselves updated with any cutting-edge technology that may become the next disruption next year or the year after. We must develop and instill our children with the mindset of being ready to learn something brand new all the time.”
With future-ready skills, learners will be able to discover and embrace their true personal identity. Afterwards, they will start to learn how to engage effectively with the world around them and develop confidence to lead themselves down a chosen path. Ultimately, they are growing into “citizen designers” who are equipped with transferable skills and a sense of stewardship and social responsibility.
“It goes beyond being a global citizen. As a citizen designer, they’re obliged to take action or contribute positively to society, and after graduating from VERSO, they will have the skills and confidence to do so,” Jarret added.
“Learning Labs” are the school’s main flagship for interdisciplinary project-based learning that instills those mindsets and skills in all learners. They differ in scale across the three loops of learners’ age ranges and gradually increase in breadth and depth from Lower Loop (Early Years 2 - Grade 4) through to Upper Loop. A Learning Lab in Upper Loop, for instance, covers nine weeks and one hundred and eight hours, with at least two different subject disciplines combined into a project with real-life applications and connections.
Furthermore, learners will journey “Beyond the Walls” outside the campus once a week to connect what they are learning in their projects to the real world and start building networks with local professionals and experts to learn what is actually happening in a particular industry or community. Examples include a day trip in Khlong Toei with architects and urban planners to design a smarter city, a visit to a vertical farm to gain insight into urban farming to combat the food crisis, and a visit to KMITL’s Robotics and AI Lab to learn more about how to design robots that express emotion. The school also brings some specialists in particular fields to the campus for in-depth workshops. For instance, a famous sculptor was invited to be an artist-in-residence for a whole semester to help learners discover their own great artistic talents.
“Because you won’t know what you don’t know. So, one of the purposes of Learning Labs is to expose learners to new ideas. For example, they’ve probably never thought about creating philosophy-inspired art pieces using AI software, so we decided to expose our learners to this cutting-edge tool and developed a framework for them to experiment within. This is a project we did last year and it ended up being displayed at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre for two weeks. The learners got a chance to speak to the public, share their insight about using emerging technologies, and their experience in collaborating with AI tools.”
Learning Labs also help our learners who can learn anything on the internet, feel connected and related to the classes.
“The idea of our Learning Lab projects is to grant our learners an opportunity to apply their knowledge from subject disciplines to a new real-life scenario that they haven’t seen before and see how well it fits and/or figure out why it does not fit. They can also independently design personal projects from scratch that allow them to focus purely on a personal area of interest. Our learners are allowed to modify the curriculum a bit into something more relevant to what their goals and passions are.”
AI and big data management, as well as leadership and social influence have been determined to be two necessary skills that many companies prioritise, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 report. Analytical thinking and creative thinking also rank as the first and the second skills that are significant to workforce development.
“These are all embedded in our future-ready skills, which are the learning targets within our interdisciplinary projects. As science, technology, culture, and the workplace change and evolve over time, we will also evolve our curriculum to align with the times, maintaining our relevancy and connection to real world learning. Our primary goal is that our graduates are prepared to be able to access any pathway they want,” Jarret concluded.