Idea ad campaign

The ‘idea ad campaign’  has been catching a lot of attention these days. While many people appreciate the ad, there are some who dismiss that it is silly and absurd and that they are ‘abusing education’ and giving false hope to poor people to promote their product.

Both sides have a valid point. The ad in itself is good, creative, and appealing to the masses.

But I wouldn’t take it literally and assume that teaching through phones is going to become a reality. There are issues of cost, or pedagogical effectiveness, and, of course, great as it sounds, if one teacher is going to educate “a million students” in a single classroom, they might as well use a TV, considering the level of interactivity these classes would have. I just think of it as a clever, well-meaning ad and leave it at that.

However, this ad does convey the message that there is a lot you can do with connectivity and technology. That distance isn’t a barrier anymore, that with technology, nothing need be distant or impossible.

Every time I catch this ad on TV, I’m reminded of my grandma who finally had some idea of how EFF works—for her, it was a question of whether the Education for Free project was similar to this. The explanation is altogether a different story, but I’m thankful that there is something we can take away from this ad campaign—even if it is not teaching through phones.