1st Yr Anniversary!
On 1st August 2022 (1 year ago today) I launched ToKToday, so I thought it would be a good time to look back at what has happened during that year. A reflection - we’re good IB learners, and IB learners know that reflection is central to learning.
ToKToday: Origin Story.
In summer 2022 I left my international school in Bangkok Thailand, and moved to beautiful Lisbon, Portugal. On the 1st August of that year I launched ToKToday, an online learning resource for Theory of Knowledge, with the aim to make “ToK more accessible for students and teachers. We aim to do this by providing accessible and effective resources for both the learning and teaching of ToK.”
The past year in numbers
Let's start with some quantitative knowledge (numbers, they’re nearly facts !):
We’ve published 144 videos on YouTube from analyses of Post-structuralist philosophy to the ToK of Taylor Swift, and 668 of you lovely viewers have subscribed to the YouTube channel, thank you so much for each and everyone of those subscriptions !
132 blog posts have been published on the ToKToday.com website (link in the video description).
32,000 unique visitors have come to the TokToday website (unique and special visitors), and those 32,000 visitors have collectively clocked up 66,000 views.
TokToday.com: global reach
People have visited the blog from 164 different countries in the world. The top 10 countries for visitors to the blog:
10: Turkey, 9: Japan, 8: Spain, 7: UK, 6: Hong Kong, 5: Canada, 4: Australia, 3: Singapore, 2: United States, 1: India.
The support from everyone has been great, but I need to make a special mention for India - the support of my Indian friends has been consistent and deep during the year. Further, in 3rd place there is Singapore, it’s not a big country in size, but it’s a big supporter of ToKToday - thank you Singapore!
ToKToday Ebooks
We’ve published 36 e-books on the ToKToday website, and they’ve been picked up by over 500 readers in 62 countries around the world.
I’ve worked with over 50 wonderful students in online coaching, and those students have come from 6 of the 7 continents of the world. - I’m still waiting for my first student from Antarctica
I’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank everyone who has supported TokToday this year by visiting the website, watching the videos, arranging coaching sessions and buying e-books. You have brought my vision to life, and given me the confidence to believe that this can actually work.
Qualitative learning from the past year.
Well, first of all I have to think about all of the wonderful people that I’ve met this year from all over the world through ToKToday.
Just to think that at this time last year I hadn’t met my new friends from Australia, they were the earliest supporters of the site, they helped me through a difficult time in the UK at the beginning of ToKToday, they gave me the confidence to continue to build the site, and have continued to be great supporters of the site over the past year - I won’t mention names, but thank you my Australian friends.
And then I also got to know new friends in Florida, USA who have also been wonderful supporters of the site, including giving me suggestions on content and direction - thank you so much to my special friends in Florida.
I have got to mention all of the wonderful people at United Lisbon International School here in Lisbon, they took me in at the beginning of the year, and have given me a practical element for ToKToday.
There are so many other people that I’ve worked with from all over the world who are new colleagues that I have met through ToKToday from HK, Singapore, India, Kenya, Latvia, Panama and Peru.
It’s been wonderful to meet all of you this year.
Unexpected outcomes this past year.
Well, to be honest - the whole vision of ToKToday has shifted during the year. There’s a saying : the first rule of planning is that the plan changes on first contact with reality. And that’s certainly true of ToKToday.
I thought that the main focus of the site would be videos on YouTube, but it’s turned out that the website gets far more attention & visits than YouTube. YouTube has been a lot more difficult than expected - I’m still working out what might work on YouTube.
Secondly, I thought the focus of ToKToday would be working with schools and teachers, and whilst some of this has happened most site views, video views and sales have come from students.
Another thing that I’ve learned this year is that student’s parents are very active in supporting their children’s ToK learning. It's parents who are looking at the site content and deciding whether I can support their children.
There are so many other things that I have learned this year from finding personal motivation free from institutional constraints to techy stuff like Search Engine Optimisation and ChatGPT.
Plans for the coming year for ToKToday.com
The first point of action is to redesign the website during the summer - the website needs to be more user friendly, and more aesthetically pleasing - so, I’m going to learn all about UX this summer.
The second aim is to produce more content for parents of DP students, and with that in mind I’m hoping to collaborate with other independent content creators & service providers in the DP space - there’s a couple of collaborations in the nascent stage, but if you’re interested in collaborating with me please get in touch.
And I’ll continue to improve the things that seem to be working in lots of other areas.
In summary
I recently read a quote from a teacher in the UK describing the state of education. She said that if a Pterodactyl were to land on the school roof the children would be told to ignore it so they could finish their allotted learning task.
Well I like to believe that ToK is a place in the school curriculum where we wouldn’t ignore the Pterodactyl. We’d go up to the school roof, and ask the Pterodactyl what evidence was required for its existence. Of course we'd also ask whether it could formulate 2 counterclaims for its existence.
Thanks for all of the support this year, thank you for watching & I hope to see you in the coming year, And of course,
Stay Tok-Tastic my friends
Daniel, August 2023