Benjamin Salka

Benjamin Salka is the co-founder and CEO of Story Pirates, an education and media company that brings together the world’s best entertainers with the world’s best educators to create mind-blowing learning experiences. Started in 2003, Story Pirates now has branches in New York and Los Angeles, with curriculum and programs in place at over 150 schools from coast to coast. Mr. Salka is also the chairman of the board of LinkEducation. 

What Benjamin will be doing at DIY DAYS

Experiential Learning

Join some of LA’s most innovative educators as they sit down for a discussion around what they are doing to engage their students within and outside of the classroom. Using creative writing, gaming, performers and props 826la, Story Pirates as well as individual teachers are challenging the way students are learning.

 

DIY DAYS asks Benjamin

 

What are you currently working on that you’re excited about?

Our obsession at Story Pirates is creating learning experiences that blow kids’ minds. We’re not just trying to make education more fun, we’re trying to shatter the distinction between learning and play. The magical ingredients for us are a reverence and respect for kids’ own ideas, and a skillful understanding of the relationship between great storytelling and powerful education. Both came together in a recent project with Penguin Books, who approached us about turning John Grisham’s new young adult series, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, into a live national tour. We suggested an interactive courtroom comedy, set in the world of the book, but where the very kids in the audience were called onstage to play the jurors, co-council and witnesses. We are so excited, because we can’t think of a more engrossing way to learn about the legal process—and fall in love with a book series—than for young readers to jump into the action themselves. So far, it’s been a big success, and the tour will conclude at The Geffen Playhouse in early November. 

What are some of your favorite sites and / or mobile apps and brief why?

I spend several hours a week on TED.com, KhanAcademy.com and Lynda.com. I am blown away by the power of the digital age to bring the most incredible teachers to anyone, anywhere, anytime, for free. As recently as ten years ago, access to the world’s best teachers was reserved exclusively for the elite. Now, all you need is a hunger for knowledge and a device that plays internet videos on demand. I believe it’s going to cause an education revolution, because great teaching actually creates a desire to learn, even where it didn’t previously exist. It’s going to hook people who otherwise would have never associated the pursuit of knowledge with pleasure.

What are you currently watching, reading or playing?

 
I went through withdrawal recently, having to give up Angry Birds cold turkey after losing eight hours of sleep one night to the game. I’m pretty sure that stuff is more addictive that cigarettes. My two favorite books of the past few months: The Boy Who Would Be A Helicopter, by Vivian Gussin Paley, and The Big Picture, by Dennis Littky. They are very different books, but both by brilliant people who believe that we ought to listen more closely to children. 

For more on Benjamin and his work visit

Site:
www.storypirates.org